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Somebody was still alive up there, but it was Cat’s Minimi that kept firing, the other weapon that fell silent.
He reached the top to find Cat lying on the floor using an armored body as his shield, exchanging bursts with somebody who was some distance away, where Cole couldn’t see. Cole stayed on the stairs and got his rifle out, then inched forward until he could see into the room that Cat was firing into.
It was a narrow, high-ceilinged cavern with steel bracing extending up to the roof. The walls were lined with mechs, squatting on the floor like they were all taking a dump. Cole had always thought that the mechs would hang like suits, with their legs dangling. But then how would anybody get inside?
Cole pushed himself forward a little farther and found a target—a guy running for one of the mechs. Being in a good position, his shot was clean and he took him down. Slid farther in and took out another.
They stopped trying to get to the mechs. Instead, they fled the room. “Idiots,” said Cat softly. “They should have been in the mechs before we made it up here.”
“Maybe some of them already are,” said Cole. “Playing possum.”
“They that smart?”
“I just don’t want to walk down between those rows.”
Which was fine. There were corridors leading off to the left and right. Cole chose the one to the left for no better reason than that he was on that side already.
He tried to imagine the architecture of this place. It wouldn’t be like a building, with rooms one after another, divided only by thin walls. They had a whole mountain on top of them. So each room would have plenty of rock between it and the next one, with only corridors connecting them. The really tall corridors would be for mechs to walk along. Stay with the low, man-sized corridors, and they’d be more likely to face opponents that weren’t armored like tanks.
The cavern architecture also meant that corridors could be long and could lead anywhere. This one was sloping upward and turning. The turn made Cole uncomfortable. It meant he couldn’t see all the way ahead.
Then it looked like the corridor ended.
No. As he rounded the last bit of curve he could see that it took a sharp turn to the right. No door this time. No reason to put a lot of doors in here, when you were above the water level and nobody could get in here anyway.
But now Cole had to wonder: What was their mission now? They had headed for the cabin only to reconnoiter. They hadn’t meant to assault the place. Each step along this road, after the firing started, was oriented toward survival. Except . . . when there had been a choice about which way to run in the flooding tunnel, Cat had chosen to go toward the enemy, not away. And Cole had gone along without a second thought.
They had proof enough that this was where the bad guys were. One of the guys outside had to have taken pictures of the mechs and hoverbikes coming out of those huge doors in the mountainside. Video, too, of the rebels shooting at Cole and Cat on the ladder up to the cabin.
With no one actually shooting at them, Cole gave a hand signal for Cat to wait and keep watch. Then he switched on his transmitter.
“You think that’s still working?” asked Cat.
“Light still comes on,” said Cole. “And it’s supposed to use the ground as a conduit.” Cole coded for Drew first.
And got an answer. “Drew here. You guys okay?”
“Mingo and Benny get through to Gettysburg?” asked Cole.
“Don’t know yet,” said Drew. “But everything and everybody’s coming through those big front doors.”
“More guys looking for you?”
“We killed two mechs with rockets and then they all headed back for home. Trucks are coming out now, driving up and over the dam. Looks to me like they’re evacuating the place.”
“Just cause two guys got inside?” said Cat. “Big babies.”
“They’ve got to believe we’re just the preliminary team,” said Drew. “If they believe we’re just an advance team, and you actually got inside, I think they took that as a bad sign.”
“Besides,” said Babe, “these are the guys who decided against a military career.”
Evacuating, moving to a different location. Why? Because they intended to make this one unusable themselves. “I think they’re planning to flood this whole place,” said Cole. “Genesseret is higher than this whole complex. Run water through it all, ruin everything.”
“Doesn’t eliminate the evidence that it exists,” said Drew.
“If they’re planning to flood this, I want to get a little higher up,” said Cat.
“Tell us when Mingo reports that a strike force is coming,” said Cole. “Make sure you have a radio ready to tell them about the ordnance and personnel that are getting away. Capture it all on the road.” T
