The panel didn’t give. Impact resounded in an echo he was certain would attract every guard in the compound.
He waited another two minutes before shifting his body from one end of his compartment to the other. Obviously he had tried the wrong side, the cost being near exposure and a painful repositioning within the crate. Finally he drew his knees up to his chest again and repeated the procedure.
The panel came away with surprising ease and fell to the floor.
McCracken became utterly rigid, daring barely to breathe, as if his silence might erase the noise already made. He took a deep breath and pushed himself from his prison.
His legs hit the cement floor and collapsed under him from the strain. He massaged them to get his circulation going, and pulled himself to his feet. His entire body felt compressed. He stretched his muscles and fought to loosen up. The pain was seething as his limbs expanded to normal size. Blaine’s eyes began their work.
The room he was in was the size of a high school gymnasium with a high ceiling. Sun spilling in through the windows provided enough light to see that the floor was crammed with crates of all sizes. Blaine walked past them through dirt and dust, noting their contents. There were grenades, rifles, bazookas, and countless crates of ammunition. So far as he could tell no guard was prowling here, but he couldn’t tell what might lay beyond the huge sliding door. He would have to make a careful check before even contemplating his exit.
A narrow ledge ran under the windows at the front of the building. Blaine leaned his shoulders against a crate and shoved it forward until it was almost touching the front wall. He pulled himself atop it and then, inhaling deeply, leaped for the ledge with his hands.
They grasped the edge, and his legs smacked up against the wall. Grimacing, he started to pull himself up. The process was slow and agonizing, and Blaine was constantly aware that the slightest slip would mean a twenty-foot drop to a hard surface.
Finally he was upright, wavering a little but maintaining his balance. Stealthily, he ducked down and gazed through the dust-coated window.
What he saw took his breath away.
The window looked out over an army base, on the perimeter of which lay a series of training fields, where dozens of men were drilling. Blaine saw target ranges, obstacle courses, hand-to-hand combat areas, war games props where two sides seemed to be engaging each other at that moment, one dressed in blue, the other in red. The target range was the farthest off and Blaine could barely make out the figures chewing up man-sized dummies with automatic weapons. The dummies danced mechanically across the field to give the shooters practice with moving targets.
All the training fields were too far away to make out anything clearly. He would have to get closer to do that. But getting closer without drawing attention would be difficult. All the men were wearing combat fatigues, and McCracken didn’t have a pair handy. Besides, the soft scraping of boots beneath him indicated a guard was just outside this supply depot, not visible from his vantage point but nonetheless ruling out the possibility of Blaine escaping through the front. That left the back, where there was no door, and no convenient ledge below the windows. There were rafters, though, which ran beneath the whole ceiling. He would have to make use of them.
What Blaine really needed now was rope, but a quick inspection of the hangar yielded none. His best substitute was the twine wrapped tightly around a number of crates. He yanked an all-purpose knife from his jacket pocket and set about cutting as much as he would need. It took another few minutes to fasten the twine strips together in knots learned long before in ’Nam.
Blaine pulled the different segments of the twine taut to check for weakness and then, satisfied, he tied one end to the knife and looped it over the lowest rafter. Then he twisted both ends together so the twine swirled upward like a single snake. He began to scale it, using both his arms and legs. The twine was sharp, and his hands quickly grew raw. He felt the sweat soaking his eyes when he finally grabbed hold of the rafter and pulled himself onto it.
He was in line with a window and he edged toward it. He reached for the latch. The window opened inward, allowing him ample passage out. Blaine felt for the twine behind him and passed its length out through the window. It came up three or four feet short of the ground, an easy drop at that point. Then he swung around so that he could pass his legs through the window first. Gripping the twine, he began to lower himself to ground level, where he landed firmly on his feet. He felt to make sure his knife and the Heckler and Koch were still in place. His next order of business was to obtain a uniform.
The guard at the front of the building would have to help him out.
Blaine moved to the side of the building and pressed himself against it, staying within its shadow. He crept along step by step until he was barely a yard from the corner. Then he kicked up dirt with his shoes. When that got no reaction, he dug deeper and rattled some pebbles.
The guard’s boots pounded closer.
Blaine waited for him to round the corner before he moved. The man saw only a shape lunge from the shadows. By the time his mind had registered anything else, McCracken’s blade had slid deep into his lower back. The guard stiffened and died without a sound. Blaine dragged him away from the corner farther into the shadows, then undressed him and pulled the guard’s clothes over his own. His placement of the wound allowed him to tuck that part of the dead man’s shirt into his pants. He noticed that the guard was white, which seemed peculiar, but there was no time to think about it.
It took no more than a minute for Blaine to put on the entire uniform of the dead guard, a poor fit, with the pants baggy and short and the shirt too loose. He pressed the man’s corpse into a depression in the ground right against the building. Finally he stuck the Heckler and Koch into his belt, swung the guard’s M-16 over his shoulder, and took up his position in front of the storage hangar.
From there he had a clear view of the various training stations, and inspection of them proved truly chilling. He recognized the methods of the same guerrilla training he had excelled in so many years ago. Several men at each station — the instructors, obviously — were dressed in darker uniforms topped with berets. Krayman was sparing no expense. He had probably hired the best paramilitary instructors available, men who had learned their trade in ’Nam or Korea. Most of the drills he knew well, others appeared to have been modified for an urban climate rather than a jungle one.
Blaine gazed to his right and saw rows of jeeps and troop carriers lined up in what must have been the motor pool. Beyond them lay a half dozen M60 tanks, scorched and scarred metal indicating they had seen battle at one time or another.
Blaine was wondering what possible use the PVR could have for tanks when something else occurred to him. The techniques the men in the training fields were practicing had nothing to do with what they would face on Christmas Eve. All the drills were based around coming up against similarly armed and prepared men. By rights, though, the PVR would be using a hit and run, total terror strategy, destruction of property their foremost aim. People would die, but most easily without a fight. The only resistance they might meet would be token police forces at Christmas Eve strength; most of the population would be home watching Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Taking over major urban centers should prove effortless for such well-trained troops, but nothing they were practicing suggested that was what they expected.