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Chapter
71
ROBIE PUT HIS finger in the muzzle and spun his digit around. Slowly something came out of the muzzle. He held it up as Reel shined her light on it.
She muttered a curse under her breath. “Restrictor plug.”
Robie nodded. “That explains the box of blanks you found at Randall’s cabin. The restrictor caused just enough blowback to make the slider functional and enable the ejector to kick the bullets out. That’s what confused me. I hit three of them with no result.”
He popped the mag and pulled out a bullet. The end was crimped.
“Gunpowder but no bullet,” said Reel.
Robie rolled Malloy’s sleeve up and examined her wound. “You were right, in and out.”
He tore a strip of cloth off his sleeve and used it to stanch Malloy’s wound and then wrap it.
When he looked up Robie could see Blue Man and the others huddled near a doorway across the room.
Blue Man approached. “Status?”
In answer Reel raised her pistol and fired at the ceiling. Everyone jumped but when no bullet impacted the concrete ceiling Blue Man’s features indicated he understood immediately. “So much for a fair fight,” he said. “So what do we do now?”
“We keep moving,” said Reel. “And we find or make weapons we can use against them.”
“Let’s go,” said Robie. “I hear them coming.”
They rushed out through the other door and Blue Man led them through a labyrinth of passages until they reached a steel door. They opened it and moved through.
“These are the crew quarters,” said Blue Man as they looked around the dimly lit space. There were metal beds, some with rotted mattresses. Gunmetal-gray desks and shelving were aligned in another room they could glimpse through an opening. Cabinets were built into the walls.
“They must have a generator down here,” observed JC Parry. “To make the lights work.”
Robie and Reel weren’t listening. Reel was collecting all of the ammo from their guns.
Lamarre said, “Why are you taking those? Guns are worth shit if you don’t have bullets.”
“Don’t you get it?” replied Reel. “They’re blanks.”
“Blanks! We’re in a shootout and we got blanks?”
Reel didn’t answer. She took the mags over to a desk, set them down, and started searching drawers and cabinets. Blue Man helped her.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Anything. Don’t care what it is, just anything,” she said tersely. “And look for a first aid kit. The medicine in there might not be any good, but there might be bandages for Malloy’s arm.” She called over her shoulder. “Robie, this is going to take time. We need to secure our flanks.”
Robie nodded and said to Blue Man. “Is there any other way in here, other than through that door?”
Blue Man paused in his search and said, “Down that hall and to the left. It’s the space where the missile would be stored before it would be raised up to fire. There’s another door down that corridor coming off a hallway that runs perpendicular to this space.”
Parry said, “Raised up? I thought there was a silo that the missile was lowered into.”
“There is a firing silo, but the missile was kept on its side and then raised up into the silo for firing,” explained Blue Man.
“Which doesn’t really matter right now, guys,” pointed out Reel as she grabbed things out of the drawers and piled them on the desk.
Robie motioned to Camilla and Mateo. “Camilla, you help them look for stuff we can use. Mateo, we need to find things to secure the two doors, okay?”
Mateo looked frightened but nodded.
Robie looked over some of the things that Reel and Blue Man had pulled from the drawers and cabinets. An old first aid kit was in there. Blue Man took some of the gauze and a roll of tape over to Malloy, who was sitting on one of the beds looking pale and sick.
Robie grabbed a roll of gray duct tape, then snagged some wooden boards that had formed the shelves of a storage unit against one wall.
He broke two boards in half, leaving jagged edges on each one.
He handed them to Mateo.
Next, Robie stepped to the door they had come through. He listened at the metal and then cautiously opened it and did a quick turkey peek. If there was someone out there he couldn’t see or hear them.
He wrapped the outside doorknob over and over with the duct tape. Then Robie closed the door and took a board from Mateo. He jammed it under the door’s bottom edge on the right side. He inserted the other board into the doorjamb and wedged the other end against the floor. He unlocked the door and tried to pull it open. It didn’t budge.
He locked the door.
“Okay, that’ll have to do. Let’s go take a look at the other door.”
As they passed by Reel, Robie could see that she had taken Parry’s and Blue Man’s glasses and had broken the plastic lenses and filed them to a jagged edge.
“Give me some of that duct tape, Robie,” she said.
He did so and watched as she used the tape to secure a shard of the plastic to the end of a rifle barrel from which she had broken off the wooden stock. She handed it to Robie.
“Best I can do right now. I hope to have more soon.”
He nodded, and he and Mateo headed off.
When they reached the second door into the space, Mateo said, “If we block off both doors, doesn’t that trap us in here?”
“It could. But until we can equal the playing field we have to secure our flanks first. I’m hoping we get the chance to attack these suckers, but we’re not there yet. So we make them come get us.”
Robie did another quick turkey peek out the door.
This time the result was totally different.
Robie’s hand moved faster than the eye could follow. It did so after years of training and fieldwork that demanded that he be able to do this or else die.
The shard of eyeglass lens cut right across the throat of the man who was standing on the right side of the door.
Blood spurted out from the man’s slashed throat. His hands went up to his neck and his rifle dropped to the floor. Before it could hit, Robie caught the rifle and with his other hand he grabbed the man’s collar and jerked him through the open doorway.
He kicked the door closed as bullets slammed into it.
Robie laid the man on the floor as he called out to Mateo to wedge the boards under the door and lock it.
Mateo rushed forward to do so.
Robie knelt next to the man, who was gurgling with blood in his throat. The man stared up at Robie, panic in his eyes, but also an emerging resignation.
Robie took the man’s sidearm and held it against his temple. But he didn’t pull the trigger. He didn’t have to. The man’s eyes became fixed and his mouth sagged as he finished bleeding out.
Robie looked back over his shoulder and saw Mateo frantically wedging the boards under the door and into the doorjamb.
Robie took the man’s night optics, rifle, and spare ammo. He also took a sheathed knife from the dead man’s belt.
“We’re starting to even the playing field,” said Robie.
“He’s…he’s dead?” asked Mateo, slowly straightening.
Robie headed off without answering. Mateo followed more slowly after giving a backward glance at the dead man.
Chapter
72
REEL AND THE others had been busy.
Blue Man had fashioned a makeshift knife using a piece of wood, duct tape, and a long sliver of jagged metal he had found in an old toolbox.
Reel had used a pair of rusty pliers and an old vise bolted to the top of a worktable to extract all the gunpowder from the blanks. She had placed half the powder into a canvas bag they had found under one of the beds. The other half she had put in an empty paint can. She then added to
