“Marines are down,” Liu told him. “We have to finish the sweep before they can come in. Find anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“They’ll tell you. Keep at it. I’m going to go back up to the rooms in the front, make sure the data transfer is working. You okay?”
Boston nodded and kept moving forward with the probe.
Starship pulled off his control helmet and stared at the white screen at the top of his station. He could see from the sitrep at the bottom of the screen that the Osprey was landing.
He rubbed his eyes, trying to get them to refocus and adjust to the darkened flight deck. Finally, he pulled on his headset.
“Shit. You did that on purpose?”
Kick.
Was that a legitimate question, or was he being an asshole?
Both, thought Starship, even though he knew he was being unfair.
“Yeah, on purpose. Otherwise they’d’ve gotten squashed,” he said.
“I got the boat,” said Kick. “Sank the motherfucker.”
“Good.”
“You saved them,” said Kick.
“I did,” said Starship.
Kick said something to someone on the ground. Starship undid his restraints, stood up, flexed his back and legs, then sat back down. He clicked the radio into Zen’s frequency to tell him what had happened.
“I heard already,” said Zen before he got two words out of his mouth. “Good going. Watch Kick.”
Starship grunted, then reached to change the resolution on his main screen. A shiver shook his upper body. His throat was dry, and he felt a thirst more powerful than any he’d ever felt before.
“Looking good,” he told Kick. “Looking good.”
The good news was that the rest of the site was secure, with the Marines now arriving and holding positions around the perimeter. A computer shielded against electromagnetic pulses had been captured and was feeding itself to Dream Command.
The bad news was that preliminary data said there was no bomb here. They’d have to conduct a painstaking and no doubt time-consuming search, and hope that the local authorities took their time responding to the alarms that were now sounding about gunfire and explosions around the harbor.
But Danny had a more pressing problem to deal with: The man they had missed in the hallway earlier had barricaded himself inside a men’s room. He was armed with at least two machine guns — Belgian Minimis, compact 5.56mm machine guns known to American troops as M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, or SAWs.
Egg and Danny watched him from around the corner of the closed door, thanks to the helmet radar. The image was sharp enough for Danny to see that the machine guns were special short-barrel versions equipped with belt feeds contained in compact boxes ahead of the trigger area. The box could hold a hundred bullets.
“He doesn’t have a NOD,” said Egg. A NOD or “night optical device,” also known as night goggles, amplified available light or used the infrared spectrum to allow the wearer to see in the dark. “If we could get that door down, we could get in.”
“Too risky,” said Danny. “Those bullets can go through that wall like butter. Easier.”
While they were wearing body armor, a hundred shots at very close range were bound to find something soft sooner or later. At this point, it was better to go a little slow rather than take any unnecessary risk.
Danny switched his helmet’s com device to loudspeaker, and repeated the Mandarin word for surrender Dream Command had given him.
There was no response.
The language specialist at Dream Command suggested they tell the man he was under arrest, and gave him the phrase, which was rather long. Danny tried it.
“Didn’t work, Coach.”
“Try Cantonese.”
“Give me the words.”
To Danny, the phrase sounded nearly identical to the Mandarin: “Nay in joy bee ku boh”—
His pronunciation may not have been precise, and he couldn’t quite master the up-and-down bounce of the tonal language, but the captain did a good enough job to get an answer: A dozen slugs from the Minimi splattered through the hallway.
“You had the wrong tense,” said the translator. “That was
“Forget about it,” said Danny.
“Let’s just fucking take the bastard out,” said Egg. “Demo the door.”
“No. You got a flash-bang?” said Danny. “Let’s see if we can make him use up his ammo.”
Egg rolled the stun grenade down the hallway, hunkering down as the loud bang and flash filled the corridor. The Taiwanese guard immediately began to fire his weapon; if he didn’t go through the entire box of slugs, he came pretty close. Danny waited until he stopped firing, then told Bison to toss another grenade. It bounced, rolled a bit, and then went off. Another fusillade of gunfire filled the hall.
Danny trained his taser on the doorway, expecting that the man would run out into the hall, tired of being toyed with. But the guard showed admirable restraint.
“Let’s smoke him out,” said Egg. “I’ll go down and pop a smoke grenade in.”
“Not yet,” said Danny, fingering his own stun grenade. He set it, then underhanded it down the hall.
The grenade boomed and flashed, but this time the guard did nothing.
“Figured it out,” said Danny.
“Or he’s out of ammo.”
Danny put the visor in radar mode and went down the hall, half walking, half crouching. The man was still there, still staring at the door. Danny took out the telescoping IR viewer, angling to get an idea of what was left of the door. The center had been shot out, but the frame and lower portion remained intact.
The man inside began firing again. Danny fell back as a slew of 5.56mm bullets laced up the corridor, the last few only inches away.
No one would blame him now for saying the hell with the damn nonlethal crap. One conventional grenade — he had two — and the SOB and his stinking machine guns would be history.
But he had his orders.
“We’re going to use a variation of your plan,” Danny told Egg. “Post a flash-bang. When it goes off, I’ll toss in a smoke grenade. Nail the motherfucker with the tasers when he comes out.”
“You going down that close?”
“Bullet holes show where he can reach.”
“Damn, Cap. Be careful he doesn’t shoot your hand off.”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “Let’s go.”
The grenade rolled down to the end of the hall. Danny pushed his head down, waiting. The helmet took some of the loud impact away, but the charge was still unsettling; he swung up and popped the grenade into the hole, slipping and losing his balance as he did.
A shadow moved behind the doorway.
Danny saw the barrel of the Minimi inches away.
He pressed the trigger on his taser just as the first bullet flew from the Belgian-made gun. Something smacked him hard against the leg — then everything went blue, and he smelled fire.
“Shit, shit,” Egg cursed, running up. He fired his taser at the door two, three times without a target.
“He’s down, he’s down,” said Danny, seeing on his visor that his shot had knocked the Taiwanese guard back
