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The leaders of two converging friendly forces here in the poorly lit warren of tunnels, passages, and rooms both knew enough about this sort of thing to deconflict, and Pace spoke into his mic as he neared the other Americans. “Four of us coming through the passage on your right. Hold fire.”
Travers replied, “As long as you aren’t a fucking robot, I won’t shoot you.”
Soon everyone was back together; they approached the doors, moving between a group of parked golf carts, and Travers spoke softly. “How’s your ammo, Jim?”
“We’re going through it too damn fast.”
“Same with us. We need to start thinking about battlefield pickups.”
Travers was telling the rest that they would have to start confiscating weapons from fallen enemy or else risk being defenseless.
Victors Three and Four then knelt by the main door, and Three opened it.
Four flooded into the space beyond, followed by the rest of Juliet Victor.
Court was in back in the stack, just in front of Zoya and Zack but behind Pace and the Ground Branch men, and immediately he heard heavy firing and rushed forward. The single reports of a powerful Greyhound’s weapon were apparent, and soon the call came over the radio. “Four’s down!”
There were six men already in the room by the time Court flew in with his AK on his shoulder, and he saw a sputtering and sizzling Greyhound at the top of a stairwell landing ahead and above. Two of its legs were damaged to the point that it was positioned at a 45-degree angle, and it was unable to slew its barrel to find a target.
Court added to the gunfire, blasting the 225-pound device eight times before it stopped moving.
He then looked down and saw Victor Four, a man he knew as Moreno, dead at the bottom of the stairs, shot right in the throat. The man’s eyes gazed softly, unfixed, and blood pooled under him.
Zack filed into the room, saw Moreno, and then he knelt over him and checked his pulse.
After a shake of his head, Zack unslung the dead man’s rifle, then began stripping his body of his armor and ammunition.
No one said anything. Everyone understood that Hightower was doing the prudent thing, and they had to save all their grief for later.
For now, they told themselves they would assuage their sorrow with payback.
Travers looked away from his fallen man and then up the stairs. “We’ve got to get to that Cluster Room and also the assembly area to stop them from building all the bots.”
Everyone waited while Zack hurriedly finished jocking up with the fallen officer’s gear. He pushed the dead man’s radio onto his belt and placed his headset over his head.
“Radio check, how copy?”
“Five-five,” Travers said, and then the eight men and one woman began ascending to level U4, leaving their fallen comrade behind.
•••
Captain Jesús Sarzo of Enrique Company, first battalion, 28th Infantry Division of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, disconnected the phone call from Gareth Wren, then snatched the handset in his truck and broadcast company-wide on all radios.
“Antonio platoon, move into the Headquarters Building now via main door. Keypad number three, seven, seven, four, zero. Opposition inside is approximately twelve American paramilitary operators. You are to clear all levels, remain in contact, and if you meet too much resistance, we will come in and support you.”
Once the primer teniente, or first lieutenant, of Antonio acknowledged, Sarzo broadcast again. “Barcelona platoon. Dismount and move to the rear of the building, but stay on the perimeter!”
There were thirty-five men in each platoon armed with AK-74s, CZ pistols, and fragmentation grenades, and Antonio platoon unloaded from their trucks, formed into squads, and raced on foot towards the main door.
Sarzo sat in his vehicle in the middle of Carmen platoon, which remained parked in front of the SIGINT building in ten vehicles of different sizes. Soldiers stood behind four heavy PK machine guns mounted on the roofs of four small gun trucks in the group, training their barrels on the big darkened hulk of a building in front of them.
As Carmen platoon watched, Antonio platoon moved forward through the darkness in five-man fire teams, and eventually the lieutenant in charge made it to the door and tapped in the code.
The door opened and his first fire team filed inside a darkened space, with the other thirty men set to follow.
Sarzo had been guarding Hinton Labs for the past four months, and this was the first threat, and as surprised as he was that it looked like he would be battling Americans on his own soil tonight, he was doubly surprised to learn they had attacked the old Lourdes Signals Intelligence heaquarters. Sarzo had patrolled past the structure five hundred times and had never seen any activity in that particular building at all. He knew there would be underground levels—this was a highly secretive intelligence site from the Cold War, after all—but he’d never heard a word about Hinton Labs using this part of the university campus.
Within seconds, he got a call from the lieutenant in charge of Barcelona platoon, who was in the process of surrounding the exterior. “Capitán. We have two dead Hinton security guys here on the loading dock. The enemy must have entered from back here. Do you want us to go in?”
