“Okay, I think we’re in the clear,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She pushed off the tree and dashed out into the open, moving as fast as she could. The island had gone silent again, but then again, a single young mercenary had managed to sneak up on them without being heard. This fact helped her run despite the pain, and she reached the nearest gap in the fence in record time, Malin keeping pace with her. After slipping through the gap, she moved around behind the old barracks building and shuffled toward the cave entrance.
As she stepped into the cave, she pulled out the two-way radio and pressed the talk button.
“Guys, this is Elna Pasqualee. We’re back. Let us in.”
No one responded, but as she approached the back of the cave, the hidden door suddenly swung open, and she saw Cat standing behind it. She had her gun in hand, and she beckoned them with it.
“Welcome back,” she said. “You guys pulled that off like professionals. You keep impressing me.”
“We took out another one of the mercenaries,” Elna said, stepping through the door. “Well, Malin did, actually. Rolled him down a hill into a tree.”
Cat gave Malin a slow nod as she pulled the door shut behind him and locked it. “Not bad. I have to admit, when I first saw you, I thought you just looked like a typical California surfer-boy, but you’re a tough little guy, aren’t you?”
“Uh…thanks?” Malin replied, as if uncertain whether or not it was a compliment.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs and passed through the second door, Elna saw that the common room was empty. She looked to the left into their makeshift clinic and found most of the others. Dr. Ruzka was seated on a chair beside a bed, reading a book, as the injured Marine, Ant, rested under a blanket. Pop and Selene were resting on beds nearby. Joe and Rita Dulles were sitting together in folding chairs on the far side of the room, holding hands and chatting. It was so quiet in the bunker now. Too quiet.
“I’m supposed to be guarding the door, but come this way,” Cat said, drawing her attention the other direction. “I want to show you something real quick. You can watch the battle all on the monitors.”
Cat led them across the room and down the short hall to the surveillance room. On the way, they passed the control room, where Prig and Golf were bent over the computer, reading some tiny text on a computer screen. Prig looked up briefly and gave Elna and Malin a thumbs-up.
“Awesome job, guys,” he said, before returning to the screen. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Let’s see if we can’t track Mac and Spence,” Cat said, ushering them into the surveillance room.
Elna eased into the center chair, though it took some effort, and she had to grip the edge of the console. As soon as she looked at the screens, she spotted movement. The center screen on the top row showed the back road to the guesthouse. A body lay in the middle of the path near the old shed, a mercenary with a huge black beard who seemed to have been gunned down while he was running. Upon falling, he’d left a noticeable skid mark in the dirt and wound up in an awkward pose with one leg bent at the hip and the other thrust straight out behind him. Behind him, in the trees, Elna saw two men—gray on the colorless screen—darting deeper into the woods. Mac and Spence.
On another screen on the bottom row, she saw the open ground at the bottom of the hill beyond the fence. An enormous figure appeared at the end of the road, as if he, too, had been descending the hill. The leader of the mercenaries was also the largest of them, easily six and a half feet tall, with the brim of his black cap pulled low to shade his eyes. He wore a tactical vest that seemed weighted down with multiple weapons and overflowing pockets, knife handles and handguns poking out at various places. He also had some enormous object resting on his shoulder. At first, it just looked like a strange tube, but Elna studied it for a second and realized what it was.
“Is this guy carrying a rocket launcher?” she asked.
“So it would seem,” Cat replied. “He went back to their boat at some point during the fighting, and he returned with this thing. He hasn’t fired it yet. I assume he’s saving it for the bunker door.”
“These people are crazy,” Malin said.
“Yeah, well, these are the kind of weirdos you get when you have a lot of money for black ops and access to the dark web,” Cat noted.
Elna was watching the mercenary leader striding across the open ground, moving in the general direction of the fence, when she spotted some other moving shape in the top right corner of the screen. At first, she couldn’t tell what it was—just a vague whitish blob. Then it ran across the top of the screen, and her heart sank.
No, it can’t be, she thought. How did they get out there?
But suddenly she understood why the bunker seemed so quiet. Sniffy and Chloe! The little girl appeared to be chasing the dog, trying to catch him, as they headed in the direction of the rocky western shore.
“How in the heck did Chloe get outside?” Elna said.
She pointed out the tiny moving shape at the top of the center screen. Malin and Cat stared
