playing on the area in front of the fence, the embankment they’d just come down. Dean moved toward the black hole Karr had disappeared into, knowing he could count on only a few more seconds.
Bare seconds — but where the hell was Karr?
He could feel the lights coming, one playing across the interior of the yard errantly, another more purposefully. There was a second explosion, this one in the woods beyond the embankment where they had come down. Automatic weapons began to bark from the guard towers.
Dean felt the skin in the soft spot behind his jaw prickle with electricity. He ran forward at full speed, forgetting for a second that he was running into a minefield. He saw a shadow on his left that had to be Karr, began to dart toward it, then suddenly felt himself upended, flying in the air. He crashed against hard ground, cowering instinctively, sure the next thing he felt would be oblivion.
“Don’t get ahead of me, baby-sitter,” said Karr, who’d reached out and upended him. “We’re real close to the mines.”
The guards stopped shooting. They concentrated their lights outside the fence, where the truck continued to burn.
“Sucker’s still going,” said Karr. “Guess we’ll have to walk if the chopper goes down, huh?”
“More likely fly to heaven,” said Dean.
“Hey, speak for yourself,” said Karr. “I’m going to the other place. Reservation’s all set.”
He knelt down, holding what looked like a miniature boom mike out in front of him. A thick wire ran to his back.
“First mine’s two feet in front of you. Then there’s one, um, on the left — shit, these guys are not fucking around. I’ve seen checkerboards that were in a looser pattern.”
It took nearly twenty minutes for Karr to pick through the minefield. By then, things had calmed down to the point where the guards weren’t firing randomly and they weren’t shooting off flares willy-nilly. Sooner or later, there would be a thorough perimeter check. A careful look would find the hole in the fence. They needed to be in the building by then.
Karr waited next to a four-foot Cyclone fence for Dean to catch up as he cleared the end of the minefield. Just beyond the fence was the main road in. About fifty or seventy yards to the right was a row of buildings that would block off the view of the guards inside the gate, but with time getting tight Karr decided they’d have to take a shot at crossing the road and not being seen. The Bagel’s infrared or IR camera showed that there were only two guards at the gate and another two between them and the target buildings. Get past them, and they could get into the buildings without a problem.
Then the real fun would begin, since they didn’t know for sure which building Martin was in. The Art Room had assigned percentages to the possibilities, though they hadn’t explained the formula they used to come up with the figures. The building on the left was marked at 70 percent; the building on the right, 30. Karr’s gut refused to let him make a call, so he’d go with the Art Room’s numbers.
According to the Art Room, there had been no more than six or seven people in both buildings at the time their bugs had run out of juice. That struck him as optimistic, but you never knew — they were due for one good break somewhere along the way; maybe that would be it.
Dean finally crept next to him.
“OK, baby-sitter, here’s the gig — we run straight to that building right there, one at a time. First guy runs, other guy watches the observation post.”
“That’s a hike,” said Dean. He thumbed right. “Why don’t we head that way? We can sweep around, just be exposed on the right there.”
“We can’t afford the time, and besides, the barracks will be able to see us anyway, so it’s not that high a percentage,” said Karr. “At least here we know it’s just the one or two sets of eyes.”
He looked at the image from the Bagel; there was a truck coming from the barracks area, behind them to the right. “We’ll wait for the truck to clear. It’s got troops in it. If they go to the gate, that’s where the guards’ attention will be.”
“OK.”
“If you start shooting, remember the contingency plan.”
“Which contingency plan?”
“Every man for himself,” chuckled Karr, hunkering down as the truck’s headlights swung up the road.
41
Lia punched the button on her handheld several times, frustrated that they had lost the feed from the Bagel. That didn’t mean it had been shot down or run out of fuel — reception was notoriously difficult in the Hind.
But it wasn’t good. Lia pushed against the restraints of the gunners’ cockpit. It was a tight squeeze, even for her. With the missiles and gun pod loaded on the stubby wings, she was paranoid about hitting the switches on the panels, even though the gear was fully safed.
Karr had gone too far this time. It was uncharacteristic — she was the one who took chances, not him, not like this. Jesus, he was out of his mind.
Dean’s fault. Karr obviously thought he had to impress the old fart.
Not that Dean was old, actually. Or a fart. Not a fart at all.
“How we doing?” Fashona asked over the interphone, or internal communications set.
“They’re working their way to the building, but I’ve lost the feed from the Bagel. Can you get higher?”
“I don’t want to show up on the radar. We’re just barely out of coverage range as it is.”
“We’re five miles away and five feet off the ground.”
“That would be twenty. The radar is definitely on and scanning.”
“I’d like to see what the hell is going on.”
“Relax. Karr knows what he’s doing.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about.”
“Hots for Charlie Dean, huh? He’s a hunk.”
“Screw yourself, Fashona.”
“Physically impossible, though many have tried,” he said. “You want me to go over the target list again?”
“Why don’t you suck on a grenade?”
“If I go, you go,” he told her.
“That may be an acceptable trade-off.”
42
Dean threw himself against the cement bricks of the building wall, his pulse thumping in his throat. The night glasses blurred so badly all he could see was one dark shadow around him.
“Up, up,” said Karr in his ear.
Easy for him to say. Dean put his hand out and moved to the left, fishing for the nylon rope Karr had left for him. He found it finally, took a breath, and started pulling himself upward.
“Jeez, Louise, what’s taking you?” hissed Karr. “I had to get up without a rope, and I gotta weigh about fifty pounds more than you.”
“The fucking guard just about saw me.”
“Relax. I would’ve nailed him.”
“Fucking Ruger’s bullets would’ve bounced off his head.”
“Only if his skull’s as thick as mine. Come on. I’m ready to go through the roof.”
Dean pulled himself over the low rise at the edge of the roof, then immediately began hauling up the rope.
