“Maybe they expected to get in and out faster than they did,” Top suggested. “Maybe they lost their window.”
“Must be something pretty damned important down here,” Bunny said, “for them to still be at it knowing that we’re on their ass.”
“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Top said. “They might have twenty guys down here, in which case they can make a pretty good run at getting past us. They might also be waiting on backup. There were no vehicles outside, so if they plan to get out they must have a ride coming. Could be extra guns in that.”
It was a sobering thought, and none of us were getting cocky just because we’d managed to fight past their first couple of traps.
We pushed on. I used the schematic to plan our route, and that took us through a series of smaller chambers with more modern equipment that looked like it was part of the facility’s records management system.
“Clear!” called Top Sims as he and Bunny checked the room ahead of us.
“Two minutes’ rest,” I said. I tapped the PDA. “We’re half a klick from the target.” The tiny display screen showed a zigzag trail leading to the Haeckel bin. It crooked through twenty-three turns and a dozen doorways. It was an ambusher’s wet dream.
Top asked, “We getting anything from Brick?”
I shook my head. “We got about a billion tons of rock and steel between us and a signal.”
We moved out once more, and now we were down to it. Nerves were on hair triggers, and if my virgin aunt had stepped out from behind those crates with a puppy in one hand and a baby in the other my guys would have capped her.
Those Spetsnaz nimrods had fired first, no questions asked. It seemed only right to extend the same courtesy, but the Russians had no new surprises for us. We did find one spot where there were expended shell casings — all Russian — and a lot of blood but no bodies. No drag marks, either, so the wounded must have walked out or been carried.
I used the interteam communication channel on my commlink to try to raise someone on Jigsaw. Got nothing but white noise. I took another look at the PDA. “Two lefts and then fifty feet straight in,” I murmured.
At the first left we paused while Top quick-looked around the corner. He had started to say, “Clear,” when the whole world exploded in a firestorm of automatic gunfire.
“Down!” I yelled, and everyone got low and went wide, gun barrels swinging around to find targets, but there were no muzzle flashes. The rock walls amped up the sound of the chattering guns, but we hadn’t stepped into anything. At least not at the moment.
“It’s not in the next room, Cap’n. This is from around the second corner,” Top said as he slithered like a snake back from his observation post and wriggled behind a stack of wooden crates.
“Hey… Jigsaw’s come to the party!” Bunny yelled; then he frowned and cupped a hand to his ear. “No… no, wait, all I hear are AKs.”
Top nodded, crouched down next to me. “Farmboy’s right. That’s a one-sided gunfight.”
“Unless,” Bunny began, and then bit down on what he was going to say.
So I said it.
“Unless it’s an execution.”
Jigsaw. Christ, don’t let it be so.
“Saddle up!” I bellowed, but as we clustered by the door to make our run something changed. The gunfire had been hot and heavy for nearly half a minute, with dips in the din as magazines fired dry and were replaced, but during one freak gap in the noise just as I was reaching for the doorknob there was a new sound.
It was a roar.
Nothing else describes it. The sound was deep and rough and charged with incredible power. It slammed into the walls and bounced through the shadows and came howling through the crack in the door.
It sounded like an animal. A really big and really pissed-off animal.
“What the hell was that?” Top yelled.
“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out,” said Bunny.
“I do,” I said, and opened the door.
The hallway was empty and I could hear another roar and more shouts coming from down the hall. I crept along, keeping close to the wall and low, barrel ready to pop a cap in anyone who stepped out of the next chamber. I knew Top and Bunny were behind me, but they moved as silently as I did.
We stopped outside of Haeckel’s bin. The metal door was still closed, but there were dozens of jagged bullet holes in it, all of them chest high.
Top leaned his head toward me. “We going in, Cap’n?”
Just then the gunfire started up again. We dropped down and got wide. None of the rounds had penetrated the block-stone walls of the bin.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and waited for a lull.
“Jigsaw!” I yelled as loud as I could.
The gunfire flattened out for a moment and then there was a second roar. Not a response to my call. Not a human voice. Definitely an animal of great size and immense power.
“JIGSAW!” I yelled again. “ECHO! ECHO! ECHO!”
Then a man’s voice cried out in response. It said, “Help!”
But he said it in Russian. Pomogite!
Not Jigsaw.
I yelled back using Hack Peterson’s combat code name: “Big Dog! Big Dog… this is Cowboy!”
The voice cried out, “Nyet! Nyet! Bozhe moi!”
No! No! Oh, my God!
Then, “Perekroi dveri!”
Block the doors!
There was another roar, this one slightly different in pitch, not as deep but just as feral, and a new flurry of gunfire.
Top looked at me for orders. I leaned close to the bullet-pocked door and tried it in Russian. I called for Hack. I called a general question asking what was going on.
No one answered my question. There were more roars, more gunshots, more men yelling in hysterical Russian. “On moyrtv!”
He’s dead! I heard that twice. And then a single voice crying, “Othodi!”
Fall back! Over and over again.
“Are we joining this party?” Top asked, but I shook my head.
The flurry of gunfire thinned.
“Fewer guns in play,” Bunny observed. “Still no return fire that I can make out unless everyone’s using AKs.”
The last gun cleared its mag and then we heard something that froze the hearts in our chests. Another throat-ripping scream tore through the darkness, but this one was definitely a human voice: high and filled with pain and choked with a dreadful wetness. It rose to a piercing shriek and then suddenly cut off, leaving behind a terminal silence.
Then nothing.
I pushed the door open and crept out, low to the cold concrete floor, my .45 pointed at the bend in the hall, finger ready to slip inside the trigger guard. A moment later there was another scream, but this wasn’t the cry of a man in pain — no, this was an ear-rending howl of bloody animal triumph. Even after the thunder of gunfire it was impossibly loud; the echo of it slammed off the walls and assaulted our ears like fists.
The silence that followed was harsh and filled with dreadful promise. We stared at the bend in the corridor, and then one by one my team looked to me for direction.
“We’re going in,” I said. “I’m on point. I want two rounds in anything that isn’t DMS.”
“Hooah,” they whispered.
I reached for the door handle and gave it a quick turn. There was no gunfire. I took my last flash bang and lobbed it inside. We covered our ears for the big bang, but a split second later we were going through that door in a fast line, ready to finish this fight.
We stopped in our tracks.