Crab’s Claw Base 0811 Hours, Zone Time: August 25, 2008

In the dusty half-light of the passageway, Stone Quillain rolled off the form he had protected, relieved because he felt movement but concerned because he also felt the hot wetness of blood.

“Belle, you okay?”

“No,” the SB officer sobbed, “I’m shot in the butt and I really feel stupid. How’s the lee helm? He caught it too.”

Quillain glanced onto the bridge, noting that Admiral MacIntyre was dragging himself to his feet. He noted the other unmoving form as well.

“Your guy’s dead, Belle,” he stated simply. There was no time to fool around.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Quillain hauled himself to his feet as a Marine radioman and a couple of SB hands staggered up from the communications room farther aft in the bridge structure.

“Goldberg, you and one of the other guys get Miss Nichols to a corpsman! You, get on the SINGGARS, get through to the task force, and tell ’em we’re operating! Move it!”

“Aye, sir!”

“Yes, sir!”

Stone would have liked to say something more to Labelle — that she was going to be okay — but he didn’t have time. Nor could he fool with saying anything to MacIntyre just now.

Unslinging his SABR, Quillain raced for the starboard bridge wing, the port side being gone. Within the hull of the dead ship, boots were hammered on deck plates as his Sea Dragons poured topside. Stone had to seize control of the situation.

This was going to be the tricky part. They’d had no visualization of the tactical setup inside of the ship pen and tunnel complex. Quillain had to get the assault force deployed and advancing, developing his battle plan even as he was executing it.

Hunkering down for cover behind the bullet-riddled spray shield, he allowed himself one good look around, totting up the critical tactical factors.

The light was going to be bad. While daylight streamed in through the entrance, the back of the cavern was still heavily shadowed. The air was heavily smoke-hazed as well. Friggin’ twilight, too damn bright for night vision to work well, and too dark for the Mark One eyeball to be fully effective.

The two ships were wedged in solidly between the piers, side by side, the midships rails almost level with each other, the LSM with its ramp still down.

The left-hand pier looked pretty badly broken up. The right-hand one would probably be the same. Slow and careful moving would be required, with no cover. It looked as though there were all kinds of crap back on the stone shelf at the rear of the cavern, though, stacks of crates and such. And weren’t those tunnel entrances back there — two of them? That would match up with the surface entrances. There’d be laterals extending out from and maybe a cross connector between those two main shafts deeper in.

Stone could hear the intermittent thud and rumble of artillery fire topside. That was good. The ships were closing the surface entrances. The topside garrison wasn’t getting in. There wasn’t any shooting in the cavern yet. That was bad. Whoever was pinned down in here with them was holding their fire, staying concealed, conserving ammo, and waiting for targets. The mark of good troops.

Right. Forget the docks. Secure the ship’s decks and establish overwatch and suppression fire from the higher positions. Clear the LSM and assault down her ramp to clear the main cavern. Worry about the tunnels later.

It had maybe been twenty seconds since the frigate had crashed the gate and Quillain had his battle plan.

His communications carrier still hissed reassuringly in his earphone, and he slapped the communications pad on his chest harness.

“Dragon Six to Dragon elements. Deployment orders follow….”

• • •

Amanda shoved Sonoo into the technicians’ quarters ahead of her. Pausing for a moment, she snagged the machine pistol from the dead guard, along with the magazine pouches he had carried slung over his shoulder. Three more sets of reloads plus the readyuse magazine in the second Sterling. She hoped it would be enough.

She backed into the doorway with her back to the frame, positioning to keep an eye on what was happening both inside the room and out in the passageway.

Inside, half a dozen men of four different races stared at her. The room itself had been chiseled and blasted out of solid rock, then lined with concrete. Perhaps forty by twenty feet, its ceiling was curved and low enough so that an average man might hunch to stay below it. The door way Amanda occupied was the only entry or egress.

Some efforts had been made to improve the habitability. The walls had been scraped and painted white, but the lichen and slime were already creeping through once more. An odorous chemical toilet had been curtained off in one corner, and cots, camp chairs, and lockers had been provided; each claimed patch of floor space testifying by its degree of order and tidiness to the personality of its holder.

Amanda could readily see why Sonoo had wanted to get out of this place so badly.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” she said with a degree of grim humor. “I presume most of you speak English. If anyone doesn’t, please translate. For those of us who haven’t been formally introduced, my name is Captain Amanda Garrett of the United States Navy. And that is the United States Navy attacking this complex, and you are my prisoners.”

The technicians took it in varying ways: the Koreans with wary stoicism, the Arabs with fearful disbelief, the Indian with simple fear, and the younger and more fit-looking Russian with anger. Amanda swung the muzzle of the Sterling in his direction.

“It would be advisable for you to want to stay my prisoner as well. Consider it carefully, gentleman. Right now, you six are a huge security risk to both Harconan and your respective corporations. Your testimony about what you have been doing here will destroy them all. At this moment, there is nothing they’d want more than to have you taken out into the jungle somewhere and fed to the crocodiles. Now, get back against that far wall, sit down, and think about how I’m your only way of getting out of here alive.”

They did so, obediently, hesitantly, sullenly.

Like a fighter pilot, Amanda kept her head on a swivel, one glance inward toward the technicians, the next out into the passageway. It was dank and almost chilly this deep in the complex, but she felt the sweat accumulate on her palms, slickening her grip on the machine pistol.

Suddenly the crash and clatter of small arms reverberated through the tunnels building rapidly into an echoing roar. The last battle was on.

• • •

“Chief Hanrahan,” MacIntyre yelled into his lip mike. “What’s the ship’s status?”

“Flooded to the waterline, sir, but resting stable. One or two small fires under control,” the answer hissed back in his headset. MacIntyre had reclaimed his M-4 carbine from the deck but had lost track of his helmet somewhere.

“Right. Stand by to move across and secure the LSM as soon as the Marines get her cleared. Stand fast until you get the word.”

“Aye, sir, will do.”

The cavern was a chaos of sharp-edged echoes. From the forecastle and upper works of the wrecked frigate, Marine SABR men and SAW gunners were engaging targets on the cavern floor, a score of different weapons types replying from the shadows.

Stone Quillain directed the developing fight from his ad hoc command post on the bridge wing, the Sea Dragon commander issuing a steady flow of orders, some over the tactical radio net, some by sheer leathery lung power.

“Heavy weapons. Hold and secure the frigate! Corporal, get your fire team dispersed aft along the portside rail. Yeah, to port! Maintain the suppression firebase. Assault Able, clear the LSM’s upper works and put the right side of the dock area under fire! Assault Baker… Hey you dumb bastard! Keep your head down! You plan on dying young?… Move into the LSM’s superstructure and commence compartment clearing! Watch out for hostages. I say again, watch out for hostages!”

MacIntyre moved in behind the Marine and clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep it up, Stone,” he yelled over the gunfire. “I’m going across with Assault Two. Keep me advised. See you later;”

Quillain didn’t even look around. “Aye, aye, sir. Good luck. Recon Alpha and Bravo, hold in reserve on the main deck….”

It wasn’t until after MacIntyre had started down the tilted outside ladderway that Quillain looked after him. “Gillruth, heads up,” he said into his lip mike. “Eddie Mac is comin’ down to hook up with your platoon. I want him back alive! You hear me, Lieutenant? Alive!”

Assault Platoon Baker made its jump off from the settling stern of the Sutanto, crossing to the higher fantail of the Flores. This kept the LSM’s superstructure between the Marines and the volume of fire from the cave front.

It also mandated a leap up to the LSM higher-deck edge and a five foot vertical haul to get oneself over the lip. Eddie Mac prided himself on the conditioning he maintained for his age, but as he sprang and straight armed himself up he heard and felt long-forgotten musculature pop and creak in protest.

Dammit to hell entirely, Eddie Mac, a red Corvette would have been a whole lot easier!

A youthful Marine, carrying three times Maclntyre’s burden, effortlessly bounced over the rail at Madntyre’s side. Turning, he reached down, extending a hand to the admiral. He was rewarded with a glare that could have maimed, and he hastily retreated.

Marine fire teams were already at work inside the deckhouse. Flash bangs were plentiful and they were doing a fast and dirty cleanout: a concussion grenade through every door, followed by a charge and a sweep around the space with a ready gun barrel.

Not too ready, however; these were SOC Marines, drilled in hostage rescue work. Fingers were kept off triggers and held extended out parallel to the weapons’ frames, mandating that extra fragment of conscious thought to fire, a deliberate risk taken to avoid a blue-on-blue kill of the hostage they were there to rescue.

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

The shouted chant from the fire-team leaders resounded through the passageways. No resistance met. The crew of the Flores had abandoned rather than fighting it out ’tween decks.

There was no cry of “We got a friendly,” either.

MacIntyre attached himself to the squad climbing two levels to the upper deck and to officers’ country and the wheelhouse. The things they were looking for would be there if anywhere aboard.

According to the rebuild diagrams MacIntyre had seen of the refurbished Froche LSM, the captain’s quarters and those of the three mates were located in a deckhouse just forward of the squat exhaust stack and under the wheelhouse and radio shack.

As he and the Marines worked forward around either side of the funnel, MacIntyre noted a curious sense of oppression and claustrophobia totally alien to what should be felt on the decks of a ship. A man couldn’t stand erect atop the LSM’s wheelhouse without striking his head on the rock ceiling of the cavern. The admiral jumped as something black flickered past his face, a panic-stricken bat fleeing its sanctuary, preferring even the hated day to the growing chaos.

The fire team rushed the rear entry of the deckhouse, and flashbangs roared again.

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

“Clear!”

Four for four again. No contacts.

Having gotten the Sutanto inside the cavern, MacIntyre hadn’t wanted to sit on his thumb aboard the hulk, waiting while somebody else did the dirty work. He’d wanted in on the hunt for both Amanda and Harconan. But he also wasn’t a fool. He was quite aware he wasn’t an SOC Marine and that many of his Special Boat skills were rusty. He’d been content to be the trailer at the rear of the clearing squad, with no more mission than to look back over his shoulder.

That’s what he still was, outside of the exterior hatch with his back to the steel of the bulkhead, when it happened.

Inside the deckhouse he heard the clunk, and clatter of something bouncing down a ladderway.

“Grenade! Grenade! Gre—”

There was an explosion — not the sharp crack of a flashbang, but the crash of the real thing. Two of the SOC Marines who had preceded MacIntyre through the door were hurled back out through it, partially by the force of the bomb and partially by their mad scramble to escape its effect.

He could not consciously recall how he got there, but MacIntyre found himself kneeling in the doorway, his carbine up-angled and firing ready. Only two Marines lay sprawled in the central passage of the deck house; the others had either been in one of the four cabins that opened off it or had dove for cover there. The attack had come from overhead, down the ladderway that led to the bridge.

Fortunately the grenade had been an offensive concussion model that didn’t spit shrapnel. It had flattened the assault force, however, leaving them open for a follow-up attack.

The carbine in MacIntyre’s hands was firing and he didn’t know why, ripping off burst after three-round burst at the top of the ladder. Then he caught up with himself and realized he was firing at movement seen through the opening in the overhead.

And what was he yelling at the top of his lungs? “Hostiles on the bridge! Hostiles on the bridge! Men down! Men down! We need corpsmen!”

Someone in the wheelhouse screamed and a second hand grenade dropped to the passageway deck. Now totally detached from his own actions, MacIntyre wondered what he was up to now as he dropped the M-4 and lunged forward.

The evil little sphere of the grenade skittered across the linoleum, and frantically MacIntyre groped for it. His time sense was so adrenaline-distorted that he couldn’t count the passing seconds. He got his hand on the bomb and twisted to throw it… but where? Semiconscious and wounded Marines sprawled in every adjacent compartment and outside of the only open exterior hatch. The ship’s funnel blocked a clean pitch over the stern.

The searing realization of his own mortality seized Elliot MacIntyre by his throat. A crazy, kaleidoscopic jumble of images tumbled behind his eyes. His sons, his late wife on her wedding day, his daughter Judy as he had held her in his arms that first morning in the hospital, Amanda Garrett as she would have looked smiling up at him in that black-lace chemise. He clutched the grenade to his stomach and wrapped himself around it to smother the blast.

A tremendous crash sounded in his ears: the sound of his own next heartbeat. Then he realized that the grenade was wet with someone else’s blood and that the safety lever and pin were still in place.

Elliot MacIntyre screamed an oath such as he had never before even attempted. Leaping to his feet, he ripped the pin out of the grenade and hurled it back where it had come from. Why in the name of sweet sleeping Jesus hadn’t he thought of that before? The explosion overhead made the plates ring, and he charged up the ladder, clawing his Beretta service pistol out of its holster.

Two Bugis seamen lay sprawled amid the broken glass on the bridge deck. Dead, alive or indifferent, each received a finishing triple tap of a nine-millimeter. There was only one other place to go — the radio shack with its door blown half off its hinges. Forgetting everything he had ever known about sane combat entry, MacIntyre threw himself at it.

The air inside the small communications room was thick with smoke, and fragments of half-burned paper were everywhere. A middle-aged, balding European in a white tropic uniform lay sprawled at the rear of the cabin, a dazed expression on his face, the four gold strips on his shoulder boards marking him as the Flores’s captain.

The man’s eyes snapped clear as he recognized MacIntyre and grabbed for the Walther P-38 that lay on the deck beside him.

MacIntyre emptied the Beretta. Panting for breath, he went into the automatic-pistol-reload drill, ejecting the empty clip and slapping a fresh one home. As he did so he noted the black and white Bakelite name tag standing out against the spreading scarlet stains on the man’s shirt. Onderdank. A funny sort of name.

Gradually, MacIntyre resumed conscious control of his own body, a little amazed at the berserker who had been in possession for a time. It had been rather like that little dustup over that Croatian gunboat. Not too bad, though. His breathing was easy and the old heart was steady. He might be a little out of practice, but he wasn’t ready for the breaker’s yard yet.

He glanced around at the exceptionally well-appointed communications room, noting the stack of large ring-bound notebooks that had been piled on the floor along with the contents of a sturdy-looking document safe. Obviously they had been stacked up and set ablaze in a frantic effort to destroy them, only to have the detonation of the concussion grenade blow the fire out.

As he tramped out a few of the smoldering documents he noted a small red cylinder lying in the corner. MacIntyre recognized it as a thermite bomb, the type used for emergency document destruction. The pull ring had snapped off but the pin was still frozen in place, a spot of rust showing where the humid sea air had gotten to the device.

And blown into another corner was the flat gray case of a laptop computer, blistered and charred from the fire into which it had been tossed.

But still essentially intact. Collecting it, MacIntyre turned it over in his hands, noting a data card slot but no networking ports. What had Chris Rendino said about those code computers of Harconan’s? It would be a stand-alone, with no physical means of networking it for security’s sake.

“Admiral MacIntyre?” A cautious voice called up from below. “You okay. sir?”

For the first time MacIntyre noted that the volume of fire had dropped off again in the cavern. “I’m fine. How’s the fire team?”

“The corpsmen are here, sir. I think they’re going to be okay.” A helmeted head poked up the ladder and looked around. “Holy shit, sir,” the leatherneck commented respectfully.

“Yeah, we had a little trouble. We have some critical documentation here. I want a couple of hands to get this compartment secured and get this materiel collected and ready to move. This laptop computer is to be personally hand delivered to Commander Rendino on the Carlson. Personally! Got that, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Have we located Captain Garrett yet?”

“No, sir, and we have the ship cleared. The captain isn’t aboard any where.”

Damnation, Amanda, where the hell are you?

• • •

The first phase of the operation, the battle for the cavern, had ended in a defeat for the defenders. Crouching behind their barricades of stacked cargo and equipment on the rear shelf of the ship pen, they had found themselves stricken by some inexplicable and frightening force. Not mere bullets: The air itself seemed to explode over their heads, slashing at them with dagger tips of burning steel.

Their barricades provided no shelter, no firing cover, and the pirates and Morning Star mercenaries — those who were still alive, at least — were forced to retreat into the two main access tunnels.

More grim news awaited them there. The surface entrances were blocked, smashed and caved in by the attacker’s shell fire. There was no way out.

From the cavern, strange metallic, inhuman voices spoke as loudly as the thunder, demanding in Bahasa that the defenders surrender, promising that none would be hurt. The last few dozen remaining of the garrison were shocked beyond rational thought, however. The flight-or-fight instincts had been triggered, and with flight rendered impossible, they would fight as a trapped animal would fight, to the death.

Crates of ammunition were broken open; they had a mountain of it to resist with. Other packing crates and cases were dragged from the lateral tunnel storerooms, and new barricades were hastily built, walling off the main passages from floor to ceiling with only firing ports left open.

In the haste of the construction, errors, critical ones, were inevitable. No one among the Bugis and Papuan survivors could be blamed for not being able to read the Cyrillic words for MORTAR SHELLS-120 MILLIMETER.

• • •

Stone Quillain sprinted across from the bow ramp of the Harconan Flores, angling wide to stay out of the line of fire from the tunnel mouths. His path took him behind some of the resistance points used by the cavern garrison, and he had to lengthen his stride to spring over sprawled bodies. Grudgingly he had to admit that the electronic do-jiggers bolted on to the Marine’s SABR weapons systems did seem to work as advertised.

The grenade-launcher half of the Selectable Assault Battle Rifle could be used to launch a 25mm “smart grenade.” As these rounds were fired, their microchip fuses could be programmed by the SABR’s integral laser range finder to air-burst at a specific designated distance from the launcher, such as directly over the head of an enemy concealed behind cover.

Such smart shells were also very handy for shooting around corners. Stone would never have believed it possible, but the foxhole was rapidly becoming obsolete.

Quillain slammed up against the rear wall of the cavern, joining the Marine squad that flanked the right-hand tunnel entrance. “Okay, what have we got?”

The squad leader intently studied the screen of a palm-size low-light television unit while one of his men cautiously extended its optic-fiber scanning head around the tunnel lip on an extendable aluminum rod.

“They’re back there just short of the first lateral tunnel, Skipper,” the noncom replied. “They got the tunnel blocked off with a whole pile of crap, and they got at least two medium machine guns set up to cover the tunnel mouth. If anybody sticks their head around that corner, they’ll saw it right off.”

“Damn, how ’bout the other tunnel?”

“Donaldson’s squad is covering that side and he says it’s pretty much the same setup. What we gonna do, sir?”

Stone scowled. “It looks like we got three choices: blast ’em out, gas ’em out, or wait ’em out. Let’s study on this a minute.”

The sound of boots slapping on stonework and the creak of equipment on a MOLLE harness sounded in the half-light of the cavern, and Elliot MacIntyre moved up to join the Marines. The admiral was helmet less and his graying brown hair was sweat-slick, but he was holding his M-4 ready at port arms and he was moving easily.

“Situation?” he demanded.

“Checked at a couple of barricades inside the tunnels. We’re still up against a valid defense. We’ve had the loudspeakers goin,’ yelling at ’em to surrender, but no takers so far.”

“Any sign of Amanda?”

Quillain shook his head. “No, sir, not out here. Any sign aboard the ship?”

“Some western woman’s clothing in the captain’s cabin,” MacIntyre replied. “Looked right for Amanda… Captain Garrett’s size. There was some indication that the cabin was being used as a prisoner holding site. That’s all.”

“Hell, then they must have got her into the laterals before we hit. She’s inside here.”

“If she’s here at all,” MacIntyre added. “God save us and her, we might have figured this wrong. Have there been any attempts at negotiation by the defenders? Any threats against a hostage?”

“Just bullets so far, but if that’s going to come, it’s going to come soon.” Quillain snapped a command into his lip mike, and the recorded and amplified surrender demand ceased to boom from the crumpled upper works of the Sutanto.

“We have to know if she’s in there or not before we can make our next move,” Quillain continued, “and if she is in there we need to figure where….”

The Marine hesitated, tilting his helmet slightly to listen, then a rare genuine grin flowed across his blunt-featured face.

“What is it?” MacIntyre demanded.

“A firefight. Listen.”

Now that the loudspeakers were silent, the sound of rifle shots and machine-gun fire could be heard echoing from somewhere back in the tunnel labyrinth.

Quillain’s grin widened. “Well, bless her heart. We might have known that the skipper wouldn’t be one to just sit around, tending to her knittin’.”

• • •

Amanda hadn’t wanted to fool with the sprawled bodies of the guards outside of the technicians’ quarters, so she had done the next best thing. She smashed the work light outside of the door with the butt of the Sterling, plunging the end of the tunnel corridor into darkness. She’d done the same with the closer of the two lights inside the room, leaving the remaining one to illuminate her prisoners. From her position in the door way, she’d be in the shadows while anyone coming at her would be backlit. After adding the last guard’s M-16 and ammunition to her arsenal, she crouched down to await events.

Given the multiple explosions and the sound of heavy gunfire, a hellacious fight was going on out in the cavern. Amanda did not doubt her people would win eventually, but she would have to hold out here until they could reach her.

She glanced at her prisoners, who were huddled against the back wall. None of them looked like much of a physical threat, except maybe for the Russian. Still, she wished she could have tied them up somehow. She hadn’t wanted to get that close to them or be that diverted from the door way. Without someone on her side, it couldn’t be helped.

“Ah, Captain… Captain.” It was Sonoo.

“What?”

“You must realize that we, none of us here, have had a part in any of the violence that has been done in this affair.”

“Really?”

Sonoo shook bis head. “Not at all, nor of any of the decision-making. We are only employees here under the instructions of our firms.”

Amanda shifted her vision back down the outside passage. “I see. You were only following orders. Well, Professor, I’m afraid that didn’t wash for Nuremberg, and it won’t wash here. At least the SS were following an ideology and not just a profit margin.”

“But Captain… you are a person of great authority in this situation. I am sure that if you could be… open enough to assist us in avoiding unpleasantness in this matter, we, our corporations, could be most generous… extensively generous.”

The breath hissed from between Amanda’s teeth, and she swung the stumpy barrel of her submachine gun back into the room to pan across the row of corporates. “I am sick,” she snarled, “of people thinking I will sell out for money or sex or anything else! You may take your employer’s generosity and shove it up your fat ass, Professor! You and your playmates are going to stand trial for your part in these crimes, and you are going to help convict your lords and masters of the same! Now, sit back, shut up, and pray my people reach us in time, because if they don’t, I intend to empty my last magazine into you leeches out of sheer self-indulgence!”

The paralytic silence she desired answered her.

She caught movement in the outside corridor and sank down into a prone firing position, trying not to think about the cooling slickness in which she was lying, using one of the guard’s bodies as a barricade and aiming down the passage.

Three Bugis were loping in her direction, their weapons at port arms, obviously in a hurry and obviously with this room as their destination.

Amanda half exhaled and took up the trigger slack.

The Bugis noted the pool of darkness they were running into and hesitated some fifty feet down the passage.

“Aim! Short bursts!” Stone Quillain yelled out of her memory. “Save your barrel! Save your ammo! Don’t hose it!”

She dropped two of the three men, the third springing aside into a lateral passage so her bullets only chipped concrete. He bounced back an instant later, snapping off a shot from his AK47. Amanda felt the body in front of her jerk, and she blazed an answer, driving the rifleman back around his corner.

Reaching inside the door, Amanda caught the carrying straps of the second Sterling and the ammunition pouches, dragging them up beside her. Guns hot, fangs out, and fight’s on.

• • •

“Do you really think it’s her?” MacIntyre demanded.

“I can’t think of who else would be shootin’ at these guys.” Quillain slammed the touch pad on his harness. “Hey, Donaldson! We’re getting fire inside the tunnel complex. You hear it?”

“Roger that, Skipper,” the reply from the far side squad leader came back in his earphone. “I can hear it.”

“Does it sound like it’s coming from your side — you know, from up your primary tunnel?”

“Kinda hard to tell with the echoes, but I don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so, either. Stand by. All Sea Dragon elements, this is Sea Dragon Six. Rally! I say again, rally! Position to the left and right of the primary tunnel entries! Move it!”

Stone tore a smoke grenade from his harness. If the Lady was in a fight at the rear of the tunnel complex, he intended to pull attention to the front. Yanking the pin, he flipped the smoke bomb into the entry. As the white chemical smoke began to billow, the Bugis machine gunners cut loose, their tracer streams snaking wildly out of the tunnel mouth and spraying across the ship pen.

“Admiral, if the Lady’s shooting it out in there, we don’t know what shape she’s in or how long she can hold. We gotta do this fast and dirty.”

“I concur fully, Stone. The faster the better!”

“Right! Donaldson, put some smoke into your tunnel entry. Get me some satchel charges up here! We’re going in!”

• • •

Amanda’s lips ached from the tension of the fighting snarl fixed on them. The Bugis recognized that she, as a hostage, might be their only means of escape. Obversely, if they couldn’t have her as a hostage, then they wished her dead out of vengeance.

Of the six magazines she’d had for the machine pistols, she’d already burned through five, holding them back. After that, there were only the sixty rounds for the more clumsy assault rifle. The body she had used for a shield had been chopped to hamburger by incoming fire and burned by her own muzzle blast. The scent of charred flesh made her want to vomit.

The shooting had fallen off out toward the ship pen, and she heard, or thought she heard, a noise in the room beyond the ringing in her ears. Convulsively she rolled on her side, whipping the smoking barrel of the Sterling around.

The Russian, Valdechesfsky, had eased to his feet and was lifting a long-shafted screwdriver out of a tool kit.

“Drop it and sit down, you son of a bitch!” she hissed. “Try that again and you’re dead!”

Glaring, he obeyed.

From up the corridor someone emptied an Uzi from around a lateral corner. Slugs chopped and whined about her, and a jagged fragment from a ricochet laid the skin of her forearm open. Crying out, she rolled back and fired, spraying the passage side, driving the gunner back at the price of half a precious magazine.

She tried to swallow and wished for just one sip of cool water to clear her powder-parched throat.

Somewhere down the passageway she heard a commanding voice bellow an order in Indonesian, repeating it twice as the speaker apparently met resistance. Amanda thought she recognized it, then she was sure.

“Amanda? Are you all right?”

“Makara, is that you?”

“Just me. I’ve sent the guards out to reinforce the main tunnels. I don’t think it will do much good. We don’t have much time.” His voice, reverberating up the passage, was amazingly conversational. “We’ve got to be going. Amanda.”

“No one’s going anywhere, Makara. You have to surrender. End this without the loss of any more of your people.”

“That’s simply not a valid option for me,” the reply came back. “Be careful, now, I’m stepping into the passage. I don’t want to startle you.”

He appeared in the pool of work light fifty feet away. His hands were empty and he wore no weapons at his belt. Disheveled, dust-grimed, yet still standing tall and undefeated. He smiled. “I must say, I am impressed; I’d never have imagined anyone ever finding this place or breaching its security. Your people are good, Amanda, you’ve trained them superbly, imprinting your flair for the daring and the unexpected onto them. You are everything they said you were.”

Amanda rose onto her knees, leveling the Sterling. “Give it up, Makara.”

“As I said, that’s simply not possible. You would have to hand me over to the Indonesian authorities, and before I could arrange the real thing, I’d be shot trying to escape. I’m too dangerous, and Jakarta knows it now.”

He started to saunter slowly forward. “It would be easier to simply end it here. Let me haunt these caverns with the ghosts of the Japanese.”

“Don’t be a fool, Makara.”

He shook his head. “I’m not. It’s either leave here or die. And I do not intend to die, because I have too many things left to do. I want you to help me do them, Amanda.”

“Stop!”

He hesitated, as she stood with the Sterling still aimed at his chest. “I’ll say it, Amanda: I want you as my ratu samudra, my queen of the sea, with the golden islands at your feet and a thousand ships at your command.”

“That’s insane,” she whispered.

“No, it isn’t!” He held out his arms. “We can do it, you know we can. The two of us, and, with my Bugis, we’d be unstoppable. Five years from now, we’ll be sending our ambassadors to the United Nations. All you have to do is let free all the fire and boldness within you. No one can stop us!”

“I will, Makara; I’ll stop you.”

She wondered if he’d heard, so faint was the rasping whisper she managed.

He was moving forward again, into the gun barrel. Somewhere out toward the main cavern, machine guns were firing again.

“Come with me, Amanda. We’ll go to that island I had prepared for you. For a week we’ll swim and lay in the sun and talk about everything in the world except war and nations and politics. Then you decide. One week.”

He was almost within touching range, danger range. She drew up on the Sterling’s trigger, feeling the sear ready to drop.

“Stop!” she pleaded.

He smiled gently at her foolishness. “Amanda, I know you can’t do it to me, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it to you.”

• • •

The Mark 138 satchel charge is as elementary as a weapon can get. Forty pounds of high explosives in a canvas bag and primed with a nonelectric blasting cap on a length of timed fuse, it is usually delivered by a strong throwing arm.

Simple or not, it’s still the weapon of choice for serious bunker busting.

Thick chemical smoke billowed out of both tunnel entrances, the trapped garrison within firing wildly through it.

“Five seconds, sir,” the demolition man said. “You ready?”

Quillain himself had elected to place the charge. “Just about. We’ll go on a three count. Hey, Donaldson, you set?”

“Ready, sir,” the reply snapped back over the tac radio link.

“Then let’s get it done. On my mark, three… two… one… Mark!”

Stone’s demo man yanked and released the ring of an M-60 fuse igniter, the pop of the shotgun primer and the needle jet of smoke announcing a successful fuse light.

“Fire in the hole!” Quilbin roared. Swinging the satchel charge by its strap, he hurled it into the maw of the tunnel. Then all hands fell back fast to evade the results.

In the right-hand tunnel, Stone’s placement was perfect, the thrown charge skidding along the tunnel floor to bump against the foot of the barricade fifty feet in, its defenders not even noting its arrival between the smoke and the sound of their own gunfire.

The placement in the left-hand tunnel was almost as good, only the charge came to rest against a crate bearing a certain Cyrillic inscription.

The right-hand charge functioned perfectly as well. Its detonation blew an almost perfect cylinder of white smoke out of the tunnel mouth, the force of the blast being absorbed in the disintegration of the barricade and the fighting men immediately behind it.

In the left hand passage, however…

The entrance spewed flame and wreckage like a vomiting dragon, the roar of the blast dwarfing the solid thud of the first charge’s detonation, the stone underfoot leaping, taking the assault teams off their feet.

And following the explosion, there came the terrifying grate and rumble of shifting stone.

• • •

The world inside the tunnels went black as the power failed. A shock wave hurled Amanda back against the end of the passage. The deeper blackness of unconsciousness almost overtook her. She beat it back, fighting to stay on her feet, screaming at her hands to keep their grip on the machine pistol.

She couldn’t see! She couldn’t hear! She couldn’t breathe! The air was thick with dust and lung-burning fumes.

Then she felt the powerful arms closing around her, hemming her in against the wall. She wanted to scream a denial but she couldn’t force the filthy gases out of her lungs. She fought him. She fought madly to maintain possession of the gun, the stumpy weapon caught vertically between their bodies. She felt herself start to lose.

“Makara!” It was a despairing wail inside her mind, but the faintest rusty whimper without. She locked both hands about the Sterling’s hand grip, yanking back with the last of her failing strength. She felt the muzzle slip under his chin, and she closed her finger on the trigger.

To her disrupted hearing, the hammer of the automatic weapon was the patter of a summer rain on a roof. Hot fluid and matter sprayed in her face.

She fell beside him on the stone floor. The Sterling was gone. It didn’t matter. She forced herself up onto her hands and knees but could go no farther. She’d lost all orientation. Even if she had had the strength to move, she didn’t know where to go. She begged the tunnel atmosphere for oxygen and was spurned.

Harconan whispered his farewell to her: “Amanda…”

“Amanda!” Not a whisper… a shout.

Another voice. Another name. Here?

Hands closed on her, lifting her. Her mind, sputtering along on her last deliberate actions, made her try to writhe free.

“Skipper, hey, Skipper!” Another muffled but recognizable voice exclaimed, “It’s okay! It’s us! We gotcha!”

Stone?

“Amanda, are you all right?”

Urgent, almost frantic. Elliot?

Someone was forcing a gas mask over her face. She drew in a lungfull of filtered air, thin and far from fresh, but infinitely better than what she had been trying to breath. A battle lantern blazed on, and through the murk she saw Stone Quillain and Elliot… Admiral MacIntyre. Both had AI2 vision visors flipped up on their foreheads, but only the Marine wore a gas mask. MacIntyre had pressed his over her face as he supported her in the curve of his arm.

With a flare of strength, she brushed the mask aside. “The corporate representatives, in the room — get them out!”

“We’ll handle it, ma’am.”

“Harconan.”

“We’ll handle him too. Admiral, get her the hell out of here! This whole shebang’s coming down in about two seconds!”

Maclntyre nodded, holding his breath against the smoke. Amanda found herself being lifted and carried, a pair of strong arms tight and protective about her. They felt good. It was all right now. She could stand down. Consciousness was no longer a thing to cling to.

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