Two Guns seemed to take that as a personal affront and turned his attention toward Jack. He squatted behind the woodpile, gun hands resting on top of it as he turned to squirt bursts of lead at Jack, alternating between one machine pistol and the other. He had maximum firepower and minimum accuracy. The rounds flattened themselves against the ore car, sounding like someone was tap-dancing against it.
Two Guns’s change of position put him in Jack’s line of fire. His head was raised above the woodpile so he could see what he was shooting at. Jack squeezed off a triple burst that blew apart the other’s skull above the eyebrows.
Armstrong staggered, breaking stride. Had she been hit? She stumbled forward, falling behind the timber stack, dropping out of sight.
How many of the enemy were left? Frith had estimated ten to start with. He and Sanchez had each bagged one before Jack and the others emerged from the tunnel. Frith had since tagged another at the bottom of the hill, Sanchez had gotten one of the duo on the west ridge, and Jack had just neutralized Two Guns.
That made five. Frith’s estimate might have been off because Jack thought that there were more than five shooters still in play, maybe six or even seven. It was hard to tell for sure because they moved around a lot while rarely showing themselves for more than a brief blur of motion and a burst of gunfire.
Say six shooters remained. Six versus five CTU members. Three of the CTU team had heavy fire-power, the other two had pistols. Pistols were for close quarters combat, not much good in this kind of fire fight. Jack was a crack marksman with a handgun but he knew their limitations in such an encounter. There was also doubt whether Bailey would be effective at any range. He’d looked weak, shaky, on the verge of passing out. The bomb blast had inflicted serious damage on him, maybe internal injuries, maybe a concussion, maybe both. He needed medical attention as soon as possible.
Jack didn’t know if Anne Armstrong had been tagged or not. There was no sign of her behind the timber stack but then there wouldn’t be whether she’d been hit or not. The smart way to play it was to keep the foe guessing until the optimal moment for intervention.
Three CTU shooters versus six, maybe seven of the enemy. Not bad odds. Jack meant to do what he could to improve them.
Now Sanchez showed himself at the west side of the tunnel mouth. He immediately ducked back in, taking cover. The attackers opened fire, shooting at where he’d been. Jack scanned the landscape. He thought there were seven shooters left.
The shooting stopped almost as soon as it started as the foe realized that Sanchez’s ploy had only been a feint, a ruse to draw their fire to force them to reveal their position. A knot of two or three of them were clustered on the ledge below Jack’s, behind a massive old boiler that nestled in a collapsed framework of thick-beamed trestles and cross braces. The cylindrical boiler lay on its side. It was fifteen feet long and six feet wide. It and its shattered frame provided plenty of cover.
Sanchez’s move had exposed their presence but failed to lure them out from behind their cover. But the gambit was a double- feint. Frith ducked out of the eastern side of the tunnel a few beats after the shooting stopped. He ran for the timber stack.
Pistol fire cracked from behind the stack. Arm-strong had made it and was still in the game, firing steadily to help cover Frith. A succession of shots popped as she emptied one magazine, almost immediately following it up with another volley from her other pistol.
Gunfire blazed from three places around the boiler, tearing up the hillside, trying to intercept Frith before he reached cover. That was the heaviest concentration of firepower. Triggermen opened up from three other separate spots on the slope.
A seventh man was on the west ridge. He took advantage of Sanchez’s momentary absence to step out from behind his rock and train his weapon on the back of the running Frith.
Jack was ready for him. His burst cut the other down before he could fire. The shooter staggered backward, bumped into a boulder, and pitched forward headfirst. He looked like he was taking a bow. He kept on going, rolling and tumbling down the ridge. The ridge was steeper than the Silvertop bluff and he picked up a fair amount of speed on his way down, arms and legs flailing until he hit an outcropping and bounced off, falling straight down to land in a heap at the foot of the ridge. He was motionless after that.
One down, six to go. Jack withdrew into the ore car’s protective shell an instant before drawing heavy fire from the attackers. The ore car shuddered, raining a shower of rusty flakes down on Jack. But it held, impervious and bulletproof.
The crack of an M–16 told him that Frith had reached the timber stack and was responding in kind. Bullets spanged against the boiler and splintered timbers, quelling the onslaught from the three gunmen sheltering behind it. Armstrong’s pistol chimed in, cracking away as she fired.
Sanchez’s M–4 barked, adding its voice to the chorus. The other three shooters spread out among the rockfalls east of the boiler returned fire.
Sanchez would be making his move next. His firepower joined to Jack’s would make a potent and lethal anchor for the western half of the planned crossfire. Frith’s M–16 backed by Armstrong’s pistols would supply the eastern component. Together they could begin clearing the slope of the rest of the enemy.
Shouting sounded from below. Jack couldn’t make out what it was but it sounded like someone giving orders to the others, perhaps to unleash a counter-strike of their own.
He squirmed around in the hopper, changing position to cover the boiler and points east. He was shaggy with fallen rust flakes from head to toe. They dusted him like a coating of orange snowflakes. He ejected an empty clip and inserted a fresh one in the M–4.
The three shooters among the rocks concentrated their firepower on the timber stack. Those beams had the dimensions of railroad ties and there was a waist-high cube of them. The rounds could chip away at them but Frith and Armstrong were safe behind them, though their weapons were stilled for the moment while they took cover.
One of the shooters behind the boiler fired an assault rifle at Jack, snapping shots at him each time he stuck his head out from behind the ore car looking for a target of opportunity. A second shooter was trading bursts with Sanchez. The time was not yet right for Sanchez to make his move.
There was a lull in the gunfire directed at Jack. He’d been peeping out from behind the side of the hopper looking for a shot. He now changed tactics, unexpectedly popping up from behind the top of the overturned car.
He sprang up just in time to see a third shooter who’d been sheltering behind the boiler do the same. The other was a big man with a platinum- blond crew cut and clean-shaven face wielding an assault rifle with a tubular attachment underslung to the bottom of the barrel.
Jack knew it for a grenade launcher. He swung his gun muzzle toward its wielder but the man with the platinum hair fired first, instantly dropping out of sight behind the boiler.
The grenade launcher went off with a thump, a hollow crumping sound. It was immediately followed by a burst fired at Jack by the shooter behind the boiler who’d previously been busy trying to nail Jack.
Jack had seen the shooter take aim at the same time that the man with the platinum hair ducked. Jack dropped behind the hopper, a hot round smacking the hillside behind him.
The grenade described a tight lobbing arc, hitting the slope between the tunnel mouth and the timber stack. It bounced off, falling like ripe fruit on the ledge. It detonated not with an explosive blast but with a juicy wet splat like a fat pumpkin dropped from a height to smash apart on hard ground.
Masses of green fog erupted from it, blossoming, expanding into a monstrous cloud that squatted and heaved across the upper ledge.
The cloud was the color of mint mouthwash, a harshly unnatural green that was shot through with myriads of tiny iridescent yellow-green particles. The cloud seemed almost as much liquid as gas, like the smoke that comes boiling off dry ice.
The green fog that Lobo had told of, the toxic cloud that fell on Red Notch. Jack shouted, “Poison gas! Run! Run!”
He was up and running as he shouted. He didn’t have to worry about the enemy because they were running, too, fleeing down the slope and onto the flat for all they were worth. He couldn’t run downhill because they would get him. He couldn’t go up because that’s where the green cloud was massed.
He ran across the ledge toward the western ridge. He ran all-out, sprinting, legs pumping. The landscape
