“I can’t get hold of Spence and Mac,” Golf was saying from the control room. “They’re still out there somewhere.”
“Surely they’ll hear the explosions and come back to the bunker,” Cat replied.
Prig shook his head. “Their job is to draw the mercenaries away from the bunker, and that’s exactly what they’ll do. They’re both expert marksmen, though, so maybe they can snipe that big ape from the trees beyond the fence.”
“So we’re just going to let him stand up there and fire at the door?” Cat said. “Sir, let us go up there and return fire. While he’s loading another rocket, we can open the door and take him out. With all three of us firing at him, he’s not going to get away.”
Prig furiously scratched at his short blond hair. “No, not safe. And we’d be confirming the location of the bunker. We’re trying to get the comm equipment up and running. We have a signal, but there have been some technical problems. Golf and I have to keep working on it. You guys make sure the other people in the bunker are out of harm’s way. That wannabe soldier up there can’t have many rockets. He won’t breach the door, even with an RPG. If he does, then we’ll take him out. Got it?”
And with that, he signaled Golf and returned to the console. Elna could tell Cat was struggling not to respond to the staff sergeant in anger. Elna had seen enough. Things were tense. She headed down the hall into the main room. As she did, the bunker shuddered again. This time, she saw the walls shaking, and a ceiling panel far down the long hall near the game room door crashed down, exposing the support posts above it.
She much preferred Cat’s plan. It seemed reckless to let the mercenary commander fire rockets into the cave. As she approached the bunker door, she saw that most of the people had huddled together in the clinic. Norman, Raymond, and Daniel were seated together on a bed.
“Didn’t any of you guys realize that Chloe chased that dog out of the bunker?” Elna asked, struggling not to shout at them.
Daniel gave his dad a sheepish look. “Well, we were just sort of chasing the dog around, and I lost track of her. I didn’t know she went out the door.”
“You didn’t notice she wasn’t around?” Elna said.
“I thought she was with her mom somewhere,” Daniel said.
“We were busy setting up traps,” Norman replied. “Hard to keep an eye on that kid, or the dog, for that matter.”
Selene and Dr. Ruzka were changing Ant’s bandage and cleaning his wound. He seemed stable now, though his color was all wrong, and he hadn’t opened his eyes in hours. Pop was in the bed next to him, sleeping soundly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, though she noted a few small bandages on his face and arms.
Standing there, furious that Chloe, Miriam, and Sniffy had somehow gotten outside without being noticed, Elna realized she had no one to yell at. It was no one’s fault. It had just happened. Still, that realization didn’t make her feel better, and on top of that, she was thoroughly exhausted, struggling to stay awake, and still in quite a bit of pain.
“Are the bad guys going to get in here?” someone asked. It was a creaky voice coming from far away, and it took Elna a second to realize that Joe Dulles had shouted it at her from the far end of the room. “Can’t we stop them somehow? We’ll be cornered like rats.”
Elna turned to Cat, who was standing near the bunker’s inner door, her hand resting on the butt of her Beretta. She was a tough-looking woman. If not for her injury, Elna thought she could probably take on the mercenary commander all by herself. And why wouldn’t Prig let her do it? Clearly, he didn’t want to verify the location of the bunker, but if they took out the commander, what did it matter?
“Are we going to rescue Chloe and Sniffy?” Daniel asked. “They didn’t mean to get lost, I’m sure. Sniffy is just really stressed out because of that explosion. It really scared him.”
“We might have to wait a little bit,” Raymond replied, patting his son.
For the moment, all seemed quiet outside the bunker. Maybe the commander had run out of rockets. Maybe he was taking time to consider his next move. But the air in the room was dusty, and Elna was tense. She didn’t like the idea of waiting.
“We have to do something about that guy,” she said to Cat. “Aren’t there other ways out of this bunker?”
“There were,” Cat said. “We brought down the only corridor that connected them. This is now our only way in or out.” She nodded at the bunker door.
“And what if that mercenary ends up blocking it by bringing the cave down?” Elna said.
Cat shrugged one shoulder. “Then we dig our way out, I guess.”
“I’m not…” Elna’s nerves were so on edge she couldn’t think straight. After all she’d been through already that day, standing in the bunker and waiting while a madman tried to blast his way in was just too much to ask. She turned to Malin, but he was looking at her with a little frown on his face, as if he was more concerned for her than the bunker itself.
Finally, Elna trudged back across the room and down the hall to the control room. The door was ajar, and she pushed it open. Golf was fiddling around in a space behind a panel on the wall as Prig tapped out something on a keyboard. Prig glanced up at her.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “Just had to make a few tweaks to get it all up and running. We’re short a few Marines, but the two of us
