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“Yeah. If the other choice is him coming out peacefully and letting
us lock him up, or…”
Howard sidled up. “We standing around here all night or what? Orc’s, like, let’s do this or let me go home and go to sleep.”
“I kind of thought we’d take a couple of minutes to think it over,” Sam snarled. “We’ve probably lost Breeze. But if you’d rather just have Orc go barreling in there alone, fine.”
“No, man,” Howard said, backing down quickly.
Sam laid his hand on Edilio’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “He may have hostages.”
“Yeah,” Edilio agreed. “My guys. Mike and Mickey and Brittney and Josh.”
“Okay, as long as we understand,” Sam said. He made eye contact with Edilio. Edilio gave just the slightest nod in return.
“Here’s my plan. Taylor bounces in, carries a shotgun, starts to blast. One, two, three rounds, then bounces out. At that point we hit them all together, straight through the turbine room.”
“Yep,” Edilio said. “Straight through the turbine room.”
Looking perfectly casual, Edilio slung his knapsack off his shoulder and began rummaging inside. He called over to a kid named Steve, one of his soldiers. “Hey, Steve, man, where’s my Snickers bar? I had it right here in my backpack.”
Steve frowned and headed over. The pockets of his cargo pants were bulging.
Edilio drew a gun—too big, too brightly colored, and too plastic to be real from his backpack. He pumped it once, leveled it at waist level, and fired.
A thin stream of watered-down yellow paint sprayed thirty feet.
At the same time Steve drew twin cans of spray paint from his pants, aimed, and fired.
Edilio and Steve both sprayed in a circle, twirling, hitting kids and cars and foliage.
“There!” Sam yelled.
Bug was almost completely invisible at night. But a lot less invisible with a spray of yellow paint across his chest.
Bug bolted, looking like nothing more than a dancing, racing streak of fluorescence. He pelted away, yelling, “Open the door! Open the door!”
Dekka took a stance. “Make it look good, but not too good,” Sam whispered.
Suddenly Bug tripped. Gravity had ceased to exist, but he stumbled out of Dekka’s range, regained his feet, and hit the door.
“Nice,” Sam said.
The door opened, and Bug fell into the darkness beyond.
“You think he heard?” Edilio asked.
“Yeah. He’ll be blurting it to Caine right about now. So we go in hard and fast.”
“How?” Edilio asked.
“Right through the wall,” Sam said grimly. “Howard! Orc!” he yelled. He pointed at the turbine room door, which had slammed shut behind Bug. “Take out that door. Edilio, grab your best guy and go with them. Make lots of noise. Make it look good. Everyone else with me.”
“Lots of noise,” Edilio echoed in a worried voice.
Sam tightened his grip on Edilio’s shoulder. “If I were ever going to have a Mexican sidekick, you’d be the guy.”
“Yeah, right.”
