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“Oh, my. You great big bad boy, you,” Tam purred.
Davy’s voice cut into her performance. “Everybody in position.”
A commotion in the guardhouse. A clatter, a gasp, heavy thuds. “Oh, my God! What’s wrong with him? He, like, just keeled over on me!”
Thud, smack,a shout of alarm, several more thuds. “What the fuck are you—nngh!” A man began to scream. The sound was cut off.
Nothing. Nick held his breath. One second, two, three, four, five, oh no, six, ohfuck—
“All four down,” came Tam’s husky voice. Cool as a cucumber. The chick wasn’t even breathing hard. “Stand ready for the gate, boys.”
The thing began to grind. They slipped through and sprinted, to the guard hut. Tam was poised in the doorway. One guard was slumped in a chair on the far side of the room, a dart protruding from the back of his neck, the rest sprawled on the floor in the center of the room.
“Dead?” Nick asked.
Tam snorted. “Just tranked. Better than they deserve, the gutter dogs. They’ll all have different recovery times, but we’re good for a half hour. Unless you want to just kill them, Nikolai.”
“Nah.” He fished zip-ties out of his pouch. “Bind them.”
Davy was checking out the security. “Infrared and thermal imaging around the perimeter,” Davy said. “Sentries every hundred yards. No motion detectors that I can see. The guards’ uniforms transmit an identifying signal that shows up on both systems.”
“Good. So Tam can spot us on the monitor from the guardhouse and send alerts.”
“Hell. I have to miss the big party?” Tam pouted as she collected the guns that the guards were carrying.
“You’ve partied enough,” Connor said. “Butterscotch. Jesus.”
“A hundred bucks says you try it with Erin, first chance you get.”
Con clapped a gas mask over his face by way of reply, and ducked out the door.
What followed was a race against time at a slow crawl. The ice cells in the thermal cloaks were already warming, but they still had to ooze over the ground like slugs to avoid being spotted on the infrared.
“Monitor just lit up. Sentry coming around the building on the right,” came Tam’s low voice. “He’s moving towards…ah. He’s not moving anymore. Davy, you sneaky bastard, was that you?”
“Dart,” was Davy’s terse reply.
“Cover him quick with the cold cloth. He looks bad lying on his face,” Tam warned. “And deactivate that transmitter on his shoulder. Two more coming from the other side…ah, nice work. Who was that?”
“Spray gas,” Aaro’s laconic voice said over the comm. “Never saw it coming. Fuckin’ amateurs. I’ll use one cold cloth to cover them both.”
“Would you fuckers cut out the mutual congratulation and concentrate?” Nick snapped.
“Chill, Nikolai,” Tam said. “Don’t spoil our fun.”
He ignored her, peering through the transparent window of the hood towards the building entrance. The door opened. Nick sagged into a pool of shadow. “Everybody stay put,” he murmured, as some guy peered through binocs towards the guardhouse, put a comm device to his mouth, spoke into it. Spoke again. Tapped it, irritated, when he got no response. He shut the door and set out towards the guardhouse.
His trajectory was taking him right over Nick. He slid his hand through the slit, gas at the ready…and reared up at the last minute.
Pffsssss.Down he went on top of Nick like a half ton of gravel.
“Good job, was that Nikolai?” Tam asked.
“Yeah.” Nick struggled out from under the man’s three-hundred-pound bulk, and jerked out a pouch with a camo thermal blanket. He ripped the transmitter pin off, and tossed the cloth over the guy’s sprawled form, which would make him invisible until the ice cells melted.
He placed the transmitter on a rock and smashed it.
“Heads up. The rest of you reptilian sons of bitches are still invisible, but our hot-headed Nikolai is starting to show,” Tam said. “Pick up the pace, gentlemen. Your window is closing.”
