“What about me, sir?” asked Gavin, the long barrel of the Remington M167 assault gun jaunting about like a naked flagpole.
“You’re also with Rulaine, Gavin. I want a good solid base of supporting fire, and you’re an artist with the Remington.”
“So I am sir. I’ll be your guardian angel.”
Gavin an angel? Heaven would blush. “Great.” Trevor drew abreast of Stosh as they neared the rally point from which they intended to rush into the inner compound—and he saw a figure staggering through the smoke toward them. It’s upright, so it can’t be an Arat Kur, and it’s too small to be a Hkh’Rkh. But it could still be trouble: Ruap’s troops or maybe some still-loyal clones. “Who goes there?”
A pause. “Trevor?”
Trevor placed the voice the same moment the face swam out of the humid mixture of mist and smoke: Caine Riordan. “Jesus—what the hell are you doing out here? Taking a walk?”
“More like a run. The Arat Kur have surrendered.” He shouted over the beginning of a few exultant shouts, including Stosh’s. “But the Hkh’Rkh wouldn’t have any part of it. They’ve gone rogue.”
“What’s their objective?”
“Not sure they’ve got one other than to kill as many of us as possible. They don’t have any real commo net left, so they’re defaulting to their basic game plan. When in doubt, terrorize the opposition with everything from knives to nukes until they cower in fear. Then take control.”
“They’re a little outnumbered for that strategy, don’t you think?”
“Of course, but at this stage, they’re not thinking. They’re operating as much on instinct as planning—and a bunch of them are after me, particularly.”
“You? Why you?”
“Long story. Worth telling if we’re both alive tomorrow.”
“Okay. Can you lead us to their command center?”
Caine looked around, squinting into the smoke. “Yeah—yeah, I think so. It’s over here near—”
Trevor caught his arm. “Whoa, let’s arm you first.” With one hand, he passed Caine a brace of smoke grenades, with the other, he reached back toward Cruz, who was unshouldering the rifle they were still carrying in anticipation of Winfield’s eventual return. “This is the eight-millimeter CoBro liquimix assault rifle: state of the art. I know we didn’t get a chance to train on one, but are you familiar with it?”
Caine hefted the long, light barrel. “Read about it.”
“Okay: here’s the quick rundown. All the weapon’s sensors feed data to the visor—yeah, there, hooked on the side—and include IR, laser-designator, rangefinder, and aimpoint. The video pickup gives you look-around/shoot-around capabilities at corners. The liquimix gives you plenty of control over projectile velocity and recoil, and provides the launching boost for the underslung smart semiautomatic grenade launcher. You’re familiar with that from Barney Deucy. It’s got dual purpose HE/frags in the tube. Got it?”
Caine nodded, a bit uncertainly. “Most of it. I’ll learn the rest on the job, I guess. You want their HQ?”
“Yup.”
“Then follow me.” And Caine jogged off into the fog.
Stosh looked after him. “Goddamnit, just what we need. Another officer.”
“He’s not really an officer, Stosh.”
Stosh looked Trevor straight in the eye. “Oh no? I’d know that tone anywhere. He was born an officer, even if he doesn’t know it yet.” And Stosh also disappeared into the mist.
As Trevor waved for the others to follow, he gritted his teeth and smiled at the same time: Damn Stosh, anyway.
Winfield held up a hand. The figures in the smoke up ahead stopped.
“Who goes there?”
“Insurgents,” responded a woman’s voice—a voice that was either American or Canadian.
“Come forward, but slowly,” ordered Commander Ayala as the rest of his Team fanned out.
They did. There must have been almost a hundred of them. At their head were two men, grizzled and wearing Kopassus uniforms that were about twenty years out of date, and a woman. The woman was so incongruous that Winfield forgot security considerations for a moment. She was tall, dark haired, fair-skinned, and with a figure that bordered on the dramatic. And stranger still, he knew her.
“Ms. Corcoran?”
She started, veered toward Winfield. “Do I know you—er, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know if you remember me, ma’am. I was Trevor’s XO, when we rescued you on Mars last year.”
She flushed. “My God—yes, of course. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you immediately. But I never expected to see you he—”
“Quite all right, ma’am. This is Commander Ayala, another SEAL. We’re heading to the Roach Motel. Uh, I mean the—”
“Yes, Lieutenant Winfield, I know of it. That’s where we’re heading, too.”
Ayala stepped forward. “Ma’am, first—my respects for your Dad. Hell of a man. But I can’t let you go on to the enemy HQ. That’s going to be—well, pretty hairy.”
She smiled. “Commander, I understand, and I appreciate your concern. But all the same, I’m going.”
Ayala put his hands on his hips. “Listen, Ms. Corcoran, I don’t have the time—”
“Exactly right, Commander. You don’t have time to stand around arguing. And since I’m a civilian, and you can’t order me about, I suggest—along with my one hundred or so friends—that you stop wasting your time on an argument you can’t win.”
Ayala seemed about to counterattack when Winfield leaned over. “Commander?”
“Yeah?”
“Captain Corcoran told us two important things about his sister.”
“And what were those?”
“Never hit on her, and never try to win an argument with her. Particularly when she’s backed by a hundred Indonesian insurgents.”
Ayala stared at Winfield and frowned. Then he looked at Elena and frowned some more. “So I guess you’re coming with us after all.”
She smiled the same smile Winfield remembered seeing in the pictures of her father. “I guess so.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Three more of the insurgents went down, one of them hit by so many of the large bore Hkh’Rkh assault rifle rounds that his torso went one way, and his groin and legs fell the other. Caine kneeled, saw a dim thermal silhouette bloom through the drifts—loping, loping—and squeezed off three shots. The bloom tumbled into a long lump on the ground and did not move.
“Riordan, did you hear me? Pull back! Now!”
Caine checked, saw another bloom pop up, sighted quickly, fired in that general direction, then spun on his heel and ran.
Five seconds of sprinting and he was going past the fire team of insurgents who had been ostensibly covering their retreat.
“Caine,” Trevor called from the smoke up ahead, “are you coming?”
“Yeah. I’ve gotta—”
Thunder shattered the sky overhead.
“What the hell—?” asked Cruz, whose crouched, upward-looking silhouette loomed suddenly out of the mists.
As if in answer to his question, the rain came down with a pervasive roar against the streets of Jakarta. Caine was soaked by the time he had run the additional ten meters to Trevor. “What do we do now?” he shouted over the driving monsoon and the intermittent crashing of nearby lightning strikes.
“We find another way to get to their command center. That’s got to be the better part of a platoon we ran into.”