In the lead slot of the three-ATV incursion team that had met Chinstrap Two in McKelvey — dropped there so they would enter Bull Pass behind Waylon’s men and guard their backsides — Cruz had spotted the Light Strike Vehicle up ahead moments after it launched from the pass’s crumbled west wall.
As he sped forward at maximum horsepower, pushing within range of the opposition’s militarized dune buggy, Cruz waved his accompanying vehicles into attack formation and hollered for his gunner to open fire.
The Light Strike Vehicle’s driver had been outwitted and he knew it.
The motor-pack of ATVs that had appeared from McKelvey were gaining behind him like angry hornets. Reymann swerved to elude their firing guns, his own rear gunner turned toward them in his elevated weapons station, swinging his.50-caliber in wide arcs, disgorging a torrent of ammunition from its link feed-belt.
The hornet vehicles continued to close distance nonetheless, two of them splitting to his left and right while the third stayed at his rear and dodged the lashing machine gun volleys. There was no room for his larger vehicle to maneuver in the tight-walled pass. No time to use his grenade launcher as the hornets nimbly hopped alongside his flanks, trapping him between them. Nowhere for him to go but straight ahead toward the leading trio of ATVs that had now molted speed before him, their tail guns pouring ammunition in his direction.
Boxed-in, caught in a vicious four-way cross fire, Reymann was cursing under his breath with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief when a sleet of bullets knocked him back in his seat, turning his head and most of his body into a crimson mire.
One of Pete Nimec’s biggest unanswered questions was resolved minutes after he entered the tunnel, Rice and the others following him down a metal stairwell into the darkness.
They had descended three long flights in a hurry when the beam of his tac light chanced on a kind of niche in the stone wall to his right — and then held there as he paused briefly on a landing.
The recess was filled with sealed steel drums.
Large fifty-five-gallon drums, stacked two and three high and going several rows deep into the surrounding rock.
Their warning labels were printed in various different languages, but it was easy enough to see they all said the same thing.
Nimec glanced over them.
“Goddamn,” Rice said. He stood slightly behind Nimec on the riveted metal landing, his own flash trained on one of the English drum labels. “Radioactive waste. They’re storing
Nimec grunted. He doubted that was all they were doing there. Before entering the tunnel, he’d looked down from atop the ridge-back and noticed heavy equipment at the bottom of the notch. Earth-hauling trucks. They were stashing this stuff, true. Hoarding it deep in the ground. But he had a feeling their operation would prove to be a two-way street. That they were pulling something
He moved his eyes further down the stairs, angling his tac light in that direction to illuminate the way.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll worry about this later.”
Burkhart waited in the dimness near the foot of the stairway, flattened against a rough stone wall on its right, his Sturmgewehr angled toward its upper levels. One of his men stood beside him, his back also to the cold stone. Three more men were hugging the opposite wall. All wore night-vision goggles.
They could hear the enemy sprinting downward.
Burkhart had counted three sets of footfalls. And while he could not be certain of it, he would have wagered the first of those sets belonged to the UpLink security chief… Peter Nimec.
Burkhart had never met him, of course. But he believed he understood him. The man had come from a world away with only a single purpose, a single
To what else could its timing and accuracy be attributed? Burkhart thought. He saw a flicker of light from above now, pulled further back against the wall. There was a great deal of information Granger had obviously divulged. Enough to bring Nimec and his men here to Bull Pass. To the notch. But his greatest bargaining chip would have been the knowledge he possessed about the whereabouts of the UpLink field team. And if he had told Nimec about the tunnel — a fact made evident by the helicopter’s landing on the ridge-back — then he would have surely told him its descending stairs were the fastest route to the cage in which the woman scientist was being held.
This man Peter Nimec…
A man who led on the ground, risked his life along with those who followed him…
Burkhart knew he would not delegate the actual rescue to others.
It would be Nimec leading the way down the stairs, just as Burkhart himself had chosen to meet him.
Nimec suddenly halted on the stairs and raised his hand, stalling up the three men behind him. He wasn’t sure why. Or at least he couldn’t have stated why. It might have been simple caution. Or that he’d noticed a trace of movement below, heard something below, a subtle forewarning that someone might be down there — except he wasn’t even positive about that. But he told himself that they had better proceed very slowly until he knew.
“Hang back,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder at Rice. “I want to check things ou—”
The first outpouring of fire from below silenced him mid-sentence.
Nimec ducked sideways as the gunfire split the darkness, throwing himself against the stairway’s handrail, motioning for the others to do the same. He twisted his tac light to its flood setting, saw the figure of a man launch off the wall to the right of the bottom stair, and triggered a burst of return fire from his VVRS. The man slipped out of sight, into the shadows, but then Nimec saw another man swing his gun up at him. He released a tight hail of bullets, saw the man drop to the floor, or ground, or whatever the hell was waiting for him down there at the base of the stairs.
There was a second volley from the bottom, this time coming out of the darkness at his left. Rice had his gun up, his own tactical light set on “spot,” beaming a concentrated circle of brightness onto the center of the shooter’s chest.
He squeezed out a rapid burst and the man crumpled.
“Okay, move it!” Nimec shouted, bounding down the stairs, leading his men down the stairs, thinking there was no sense in them making stationary targets of themselves here on these goddamned stairs at this point.
More movement as he reached the bottom landing — a third gunner. Nimec raked the gloom with fire, heard an agonized cry, saw a body fall straight from the knees, a fine mist of blood glittering in the throw of his flash. At the same moment one of the Sword ops racing down the stairway behind him — Rice? — he wasn’t sure in the confusion — loosed a sustained barrage and took out another of the waiting shooters.
Silence then. Absolute silence.
Nimec took a quick glance back at his men, all of them down on the lower landing with him now.
“Everybody okay?”
Three nods.
Nimec stood warily, moved his gun from side to side, sweeping the area in front of the stairs with his tac light. Four men lay dead below them, NVGs over their eyes. He wondered if there had been any more waiting, thought of the one who’d opened fire and slipped clear of his initial return burst. Was he among those sprawled on the ground?
He had no sooner asked himself that question than the answer was violently delivered.
Burkhart sprang from where he’d concealed himself to the right of the bottom landing, raised the barrel of his
