nowhere, descending swiftly.
“Sound the alarm!” he said, then, remembering his communicator, he turned it on. “Red Alert! Red Alert! We are under attack!”
Martingale karate-chopped one of the guards and wrenched his laser away from him, but Shiro was on him before he could fire. His right foot arced around in a lightning, spinning-wheel kick and the laser flew out of Martingale’s hand and over the side of the wall. Only the mercenary’s swift reactions saved him from the second kick, which followed the first with astonishing speed. Shiro had continued the spinning movement that initiated the first kick and came around with the other foot flying up at Martingale’s throat. The mercenary deflected it, backing away as Shiro continued moving forward rapidly, spinning around and around, cutting loose with kicks as if he were a moving buzz saw.
“Kill them!” Drakov shouted to the guards, activating his warp disc in the same instant and vanishing from sight.
Before the guards could fire, they became briefly enveloped in a blue mist of Cerenkov Radiation and their atoms disintegrated. Darkness turned his disruptor on Shiro, but his target reacted with amazing and decisive swiftness, vaulting over the side of the wall and dropping forty feet to the ledge below. Darkness could not move to shoot him.
“Quick little bastard, isn’t he?” said Darkness. He tossed the disruptor to Lucas. “Catch.”
For a moment, von Kampf had been mesmerized by the sight of the guards disintegrating, but as Darkness tossed the gun to Lucas, he suddenly roared and charged him. He passed right through the Doctor’s body and his momentum carried him over the wall and past the ledge. With a scream, he fell down to the rocks below.
“Quickly, take these,” said Darkness, taking several more disruptors off his belt and tossing them to Andre, Finn, Martingale and Land.
The moment he had sighted the attack force, Benedetto had shouted out his warning, then fled. Things had happened so quickly that they only now remembered him.
“The elevator!” Finn said, turning and sprinting for the door. Martingale was after him in an instant.
“How the hell do you fire this thing?” said Land, gazing at the warp gun in puzzlement.
As Andre quickly showed him, Lucas approached Darkness. “Thanks. You saved our lives. Can you get down to the submarine?”
“I don’t have the coordinates,” said Darkness. “I can’t home in on it as I can on you and Martingale. You’ll have to manage for yourself; I’ve done all I could. Good luck.”
He disappeared.
They quickly followed in the wake of Finn and Martingale, but by the time they had descended the stone steps, they saw that Benedetto had already taken the elevator down.
“It’s no good,” said Finn. “He’s jammed it. We’ll have to get down another way.”
“There is no other way!” said Martingale.
Without a word, Land stuffed the disruptor inside his jumpsuit and leaped out onto the cable. For him, it was like the rigging on a sailing schooner and he made his way down it hand over hand with surprising swiftness.
“That guy’s nuts,” said Martingale.
“Maybe,” said Finn, “but that’s the way to go.”
“Gentlemen,” said Verne, who had finally found his voice after the shocking appearances and disappearances he had just witnessed, “I fear it is impossible for me to make such a descent. I have not the strength. I should surely fall.”
“Go back to the house,” said Lucas. “Stay inside. We’ll come back for you after it’s over.”
“God protect you,” Verne said.
Finn leaped out into the shaft and grabbed the cable, wrapping his legs around it as Land had done. He started lowering himself, though not as quickly. Andre waited for him to get a slight start, then took a deep breath and jumped.
“You’re next,” said Lucas to Martingale.
“No, you go ahead.”
Something in the mercenary’s voice made Lucas glance at him sharply. The man was deathly pale.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” Martingale snapped. “Go on!”
“You’re afraid of heights,” said Lucas.
“Yeah, so what? Don’t worry about it, it’s my problem.”
“Okay, forget it. Stay here with Verne. You’ve done more than enough.”
Martingale stared at him. “Like hell,” he said. He swallowed hard and leaped into the shaft. For a second, he hung there precariously and didn’t move, his eyes tightly shut. “Oh, Christ, I wish I hadn’t done that! Jesus. Jesus.”
“Open your eyes, Martingale!” shouted Lucas. “It’ll be all right, just don’t look down. Watch the cable. You hear me? Watch the cable!”
Martingale opened his eyes and began to lower himself hand over hand.
“You’re doing fine,” said Lucas. “Just keep it up. Watch the cable. Don’t look down.”
“Not for all the tea in China, Jack!”
“I’m right behind you,” Lucas said. He jumped and grabbed the cable. Heights didn’t bother him since he had taken the plunge off the wall of Zenda Castle into the moat during his last mission. He looked down and saw that Martingale was making steady progress. Land had almost reached the bottom of the shaft. But Drakov had a very large head start.
As the jets on the floater-pak carried him down toward the mouth of the volcano, Forrester heard the whoop-whoop of an alarm reverberating through the air. So much for a surprise attack, he thought. There was nothing for it now but to come in fast and hit them hard.
He unclipped the auto-pulser from its fastening on his flight harness and held it ready in front of him. Just then someone shot past him with his floater-pak jets on full, leveled out in a fully stretched-out position to offer minimum wind resistance.
“Bryant!” shouted Forrester over the com-circuit, but with the wind from the speed of his descent, Bryant might not have heard him. And if he had, he would not have listened in anycase. Forrester knew exactly what the fool was doing. He was going in first, ahead of-Forrester, in an effort to draw fire away from his commander.
Several more commandos hurtled by Forrester in the same position and he cursed them, then stretched out himself and kicked the jets in, plunging into the mouth of the volcano.
Laser beams and pulser blasts came up at them like flak as the commandos fanned out upon entering the volcano, so as not to give a concentrated group as a target. Sullivan was in a flat dive, heading directly toward the submarine, firing his auto-pulser. Plasma blasts screamed past him and Forrester saw his floater-pak on fire. As the jets cut out, Sullivan fell, still firing his weapon as he hurtled to his death.
Bryant flew down in a fast arc toward the catwalks high on the left side of the base, where groups of men stood firing their weapons. He came in high through a barrage of pulser blasts, then abruptly angled down, still going flat out, making it difficult for the gunners to lead him. As he swooped past the catwalks, he fanned them with his auto-pulser and they burst into white-hot flame as they were enveloped in plasma. Men screamed as they were cooked to a crisp and the steel sagged, as if it were taffy, finally melting through. The entire structure collapsed to the roofs of the buildings below. Bryant kicked in his pilot jets at the last possible moment before he would smash head-first into a rock wall jutting out into the crater. He missed it by scant inches.
“Damn cowboy,” Forrester swore. He changed his own course and flew down low, feeling the heat of plasma blasts erupting around him. He angled up beneath the cable span bridges. Several other commandos followed him, providing covering fire. On the bridges, gunners tried to track them as they came in. One blast narrowly missed Forrester and hit Wendy Chan. There was nothing left of her.
As he came up beneath the bridges, Forrester cut loose at their cable supports while the others concentrated their fire on the gunners. Some of the commandos were using lasers, sweeping concentrated beams of coherent light across the spans. Several of Drakov’s men were killed instantly, others had their legs amputated and they fell over the side, screaming as they plunged down into the lake below.
One of the bridges collapsed with a roar as the supports parted, sending men tumbling into the water. The
