Minotaur

20

Chapel had no idea what kind of training Michael had, or whether he’d ever led men into combat. Somewhere along the line he’d gotten a few basics down.

As Chapel came around the corner, rifle blaring and jumping in his hand, he saw immediately that the guards were all behind cover, keeping their heads down. He had expected as much—mostly he was just laying down suppressing fire as he sprayed bullets over their heads. But now he knew where they were. Two were hiding behind a shelf over by the stairs. One was crouching behind the side of the workbench. A fourth had his back up against the maze of crates, facing away from Chapel.

That one nearly killed him. The guard had been creeping up on his position, probably intending to get the drop on him while he was still talking to Michael. When Chapel came out from behind the crates he was nearly behind Chapel, flanking him, and he didn’t waste time on being surprised. He lifted his pistol and fired even before Chapel had taken his finger off his own trigger.

The bullet tore through the silicone flesh of Chapel’s artificial bicep. He felt it tug him around, to the side, but he threw himself the other direction and rolled onto his back on the floor. The flanking guard shifted his aim, lowering his arm to hit Chapel where he lay. Chapel didn’t give him the chance. He lit up the guard with a quick burst from his rifle and saw the man dance like a marionette on strings.

He didn’t wait to see the man go down. Instead he rolled over on his side and dashed back behind the crates.

Back in the relative safety of his previous position, he listened to the man moan and try to scream. He was pretty sure the flanking guard wasn’t going to survive.

He closed his eyes and tried to think.

You couldn’t think of them as human beings in a situation like this. It had been years since Chapel had fought in real combat but he remembered how it was done. They weren’t people with lives and families and maybe children out there. They were obstacles, deadly hazards strewn in your path, and you removed them from play as quickly and efficiently as possible.

It was a logistics problem, where if you forgot to add things up right or carry the one, you were dead. You had to work it through like that.

Chapel had expended more than half of his rifle’s magazine. He had an unknown number of pistol bullets as well. He could collect more ammunition, but only once the six men in the cellar had been accounted for. So far he had disarmed one, wounded one, probably killed one. That left the two behind the shelves, and the one by the workbench.

Assuming there had been exactly six of them to start with, and not seven. Or more. Underestimating the number of opponents you faced was the absolute best way to get killed.

The second best way was to assume your opponents would stay put while you came and took them out one by one. If Chapel had some backup, someone to lay down suppressive fire while he moved in, that would be one thing. In this situation he had to accept that his targets would keep moving, that he was going to have to adapt and respond on the fly. Which meant the faster he moved, the more likely he was to live through this.

But they’d already seen him come around the corner, once. Their weapons would be trained on that position as they waited for him to show himself again. They might also logically expect him to go behind the crates to the far side, and come out guns blazing from that position. Appearing in either of those locations would get him shot. He needed a third option.

Time to head for higher ground.