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If your soldiers can’t fight at least as well as the enemy’s soldiers, it doesn’t matter how good a commander you are. Training is the foundation of everything.
The two dead bodies had been disguised as park rangers. The guys they were facing now wore body armor.
Whatever training the rebel troops might have had, it wasn’t at Army Ranger level. They relied too much on their armor. It made them feel invulnerable. So they constantly revealed themselves. And they shot carelessly—too quickly, without stability. They also didn’t learn from their own bad shots. They’d overshoot the first time, and on the next shot they’d do it again.
> Even undertrained soldiers can kill you with a lucky shot, though. Cole had no intention of dying because he had contempt for his enemy.
Their pistols were mostly for noise and show. The rebels dodged the bullets—they didn’t trust their armor enough to overcome their reflex to flinch.
Cole reached up and detached the M-24 sniper rifle from his pack. It fired a heavier round than the pistol—that’s why he brought it. Testing had shown that at fairly close range, it penetrated the rebels’ body armor at certain key points. Like the faceplate.
Two shots. Two rebels down.
“Good work,” said Cat. “Now it’s time for Minimi.”
Cole fired into the cabin window, shattering glass, as Cat scrambled up the slope and got into position against the cabin wall, just beside the window. It was an obvious time to toss a grenade into the cabin, but they both knew they couldn’t risk damaging whatever mechanism concealed or locked the passage down into the tunnels. So Cat reached down and pulled up a lump of turf and tossed it through the window as if it were a grenade. It would take the guys inside a split second to realize it wasn’t an explosive device. During the split second, Cat raked the inside with automatic fire from his Minimi.
They both reached the door of the cabin at the same time. It was open. They came in low, Cole first, and found three rebel soldiers, two dead, one trivially wounded in the left arm.
“I surrender!” the wounded guy said.
“How are we supposed to take you captive?” said Cole.
Cat walked over to the guy.
Terrified, the rebel said, “I’m an American, you can’t kill me.”
“Tell it to the cops you guys killed in New York,” said Cole. “And the apartment building doorman.”
“You guys are all murderers!” shouted the rebel. “You love to kill!”
Cat reached down and broke the guy’s right arm.
The guy screamed, staring at his arm. When he could speak, he groaned, “I’m an American!”
“American with a broken arm,” said Cat.
“He might be left-handed,” said Cole.
Cat broke the other arm. The guy screamed again. “Threat neutralized,” said Cat.
“Torturers,” the rebel gasped.
“Look, you said not to kill you,” said Cole. “Which do you want, pain or dead?”
Cole gave the guy a dose of morphine. “I think he wants us to surrender to him,” said Cat.
The cabin didn’t have any obvious elevator doors. Hardly a surprise. Nor was there any visible trap door in the wooden floor, or anything that looked like a passageway inside the fireplace.
“You’ll never find the entrance,” said the rebel.
“Kick his arm,” said Cat. “He’ll tell us.”
“Torturers!” shouted the rebel.
Cat picked up the clod of dirt and grass that Cat had tossed inside as a fake grenade. He pushed it into the rebel’s mouth. The rebel sputtered, spat. But he wasn’t talking.
Then, using his sniper rifle, Cole shot downward into the floor. Methodically he crossed the room, shooting straight down. Obviously there was concrete under the wood. Right across the room, no change. He moved over closer to the fireplace, put a new magazine in his M-24, and started firing downward again. Concrete. Concrete. Steel.
