In the sky around him, the rest of the flying complement swirled and crisscrossed through the air. Sometimes the extended glider wings of one nearly grazed another, but the samurai flew with an instinctive sense of distance acquired by men who had trained often and long together. For them the sense of battle was no different; only the locale and rules had changed. Blaine watched Johnny Wareagle actually twirl himself upside down to quicken his escape after diving into a strafing run with his M-16. McCracken kicked his knees up to drop fast and provide the Indian cover, then eased himself parallel to the ruins with machine gun aimed straight down. He fired in short, controlled bursts at areas of motion, and saw Johnny flash him the okay sign as he soared back upward already snapping a fresh double clip home.
A stray bullet pierced Blaine’s wing and he drove his glider into a rise to regroup. From that position farther over Masada the picture was akin to an ant farm constructed under glass. Rasin’s men were responding with true professionalism by ducking for cover into any of the labyrinth of ruins. They concentrated mostly in the area of the vast storehouse remains of the northeastern flank where they could form a new stronghold. A number of enemy combatants toted heavy machine guns and RPGs with them, just the kind of firepower Blaine had been most frightened they would encounter. The samurai continued to soar over the ruins, but the angle was no longer to their advantage and Rasin’s forces had regrouped sufficiently to fire up at them when they passed.
“Hiroshi, can you read me?” McCracken said into his wireless communicator.
“Loud and clear, Fudo-san.”
“We’ve got them pinned in the storehouses for the most part. I’m going down to look for Rasin. I’ll land between the inner wall and synagogue off from the northern palace lookout.”
“My men and I are already down. Be careful. Something bothers me about their number. I counted only forty in our initial passes.”
McCracken felt the familiar twinge of uneasiness creep through him, called up by the fact that Isaac’s intelligence indicated upward of sixty troops had accompanied Rasin to Masada. “You hear that, Indian?” he asked, soaring low to drop into his landing.
“Troublesome, Blainey. We’d be best to stay alert.”
Blaine hit the ground running, still in motion when he pulled himself from the harness and tore the glider off his back. In the process he was careful not to disturb the small earpiece and microphone rising from the rolled collar of his black turtleneck. He crouched low and charged into the remains of the synogogue overlooking the ramp path that had ultimately allowed the Romans to breech the fortress. The sound of rocks crunching beneath his boots seemed as loud as screams in the night to him, helpless as he was to silence his heavy footsteps. Pinning himself against one of the inside walls, he set about readying his weapons.
Above him, a complement of Hiroshi’s samurai under Wareagle’s leadership continued to wage the battle from the sky. They focused on the storehouse area where most of Rasin’s troops were concentrated, swooping in any direction additional fire came from. In a sense the strategy the motorized gliders allowed was a microcosm of war itself: they provided air superiority to better allow ground based troops to surround the enemy and attack from a position of strength. The clincher, of course, was that a primary weapon of attack here would be the sword in addition to the gun. In such narrow, serpentine confines, with much of the battle certain to be waged in exceptionally close quarters, it was a more practical and versatile weapon when wielded by experts. The six men in Blaine’s attack group were already closing from the south, Hiroshi’s party from the north.
Machine gun fire continued to split the night, the blend of ancient and modern weapons bizarre enough to be almost ludicrous. But the plan all along had been to reduce this to a hand-to-hand battle where Hiroshi’s samurai would have the undoubted advantage even against Rasin’s superior number of commandos. Blaine concentrated on the task of finding Rasin. As he eased back out through the synagogue entrance, though, the lights all over Masada died and the mountaintop was plunged into total darkness.
“Come in, Hiroshi!”
“I read you, Fudo-san.”
“There’s someone up here who’s good, sensei. They chose the same response I would have. And we must expect whoever it is to do more.”
“We must get the lights back on!”
“I’m going to call the Sikorskys down. Have them turn on their floods.”
“They’ll be sitting ducks!”
“Not if they stay on the move. Besides, what choice do we have? We’ll have to rely on your people to keep them from solidifying positions to fire their RPGs from. Where are you?”
“Outer wall of the bathhouse. My men are all within sight. Were,” Hiroshi corrected.
“Give me thirty seconds to turn the lights back on. Then we’ll finish the bastards once and for all. You get that too, Indian? Johnny?”
McCracken waited, his only sight that of the khaki-colored rock wall an arm’s distance away.
There was no reply from Wareagle.
“Come on!” Lace ordered, almost dragging Rasin as they rushed along beside a courtyard wall. They came to an open stretch by the building that had been the officers’ family quarters two thousand years before. The area was full of gray smoke the invaders had left in their wake.
“Where are we—”
Rasin stopped his question when Lace released her grip on him and drew a heavy scimitar from her belt. To use a gun now would be to risk exposure. If it came to battle, it would be with the sword. In her free arm she toted the heavy mortar Rasin needed to fire his containers of vaccine, held presently in a bag over his shoulder. But where could they fire from? Where was Lace taking him?
“You’ll see,” she whispered, responding to his unfinished question of seconds before.
They could hear the whirl of the motorized gliders soaring above them and then, louder, the wop-wop-wop of the Sikorskys that were speeding back onto the scene.
“I should have thought of that!” Lace lamented. “I should have!”
“Thought of what?” an exasperated Rasin asked.
“Hurry!” was her only reply.
They were running now through the uneven, rocky terrain, Lace doing her best to support Rasin. He felt the small cannisters that made up his ration of the vaccine clacking together in the knapsack strung over his arm. He had totally lost his bearings in the dark. He had walked Masada a thousand times since his youth, certain that in a past life he had died here among the Zealots, perhaps as the leader Eliezer himself. Only this time the cause would come to a far more fruitful end. The blackness deepened, and Rasin knew Lace had led him close to the southern wall; he was quite sure of it when the hovering Sikorskys switched on their lights, turning Masada ablaze. Lace had stopped, and now he followed her gaze forward and down.
They had reached the vast water cistern in the southwest corner of the fortress. The helicopter’s stray light was sufficient for him to see into the cistern’s vast depth. He realized Lace had led him to the perfect place from which to release his allotment of the vaccine.
But there was something else. Coming up from the depths to meet Lace was Tilly with nearly twenty of his soldiers behind her.
“We move,” Lace told her, and then she led the rush off in a chorus of crunching stones, leaving Rasin to the task before him.