Chapter 54
Chapter 54
A ll eyes on me, I walked to the stove and slid the carpet away from one side, revealing circular scratch marks on the wood floor. Scratch marks caused when the stove was moved on its axis and slid out of place to expose the stairwell beneath. I pointed to the marks, then made a rather crude attempt to show a man walking downstairs with my fingers, which evidently worked. We circled the stove, which, unfortunately for us, someone had recently stoked and to which they’d added several pieces of wood. Another very smart move. I grabbed the poker, hooked it around the base of the stove, and pulled it in the direction of the scratch marks. As if sitting on ball bearings, the stove slid in a tight circle, turning inside its chimney pipe, suggesting a sophisticated and well-thought-out design.
To my right, Bill was talking on the phone. Nodding. When he hung up, he turned to Aaron, “The cavalry’ll be here in seven minutes. They’ve got sat view of the island. Anybody tries to leave, we’re on ’em.”
Aaron nodded.
Once the stove was moved, a basement stairwell revealed itself. If Ariel was correct, whoever we were fighting could have moved Miriam and Ruth out this tunnel long before we got here. We had no way of knowing, and standing there deliberating about whether to descend into a dark basement was not helping. I had two options. I could send Gunner, risking his life, which I wasn’t about to do, or skip the steps and jump. Complicating matters was the nagging thought that had it been my basement, I’d have wired it with explosives. Which reminded me of Steve’s call. But we’d already lost a lot of time, and time is life.
I turned to Ashley. “Sir, I need you to back against that wall.”
He knew his presence in the tunnel would require us to fight in two directions—the bad guys in front of us and protecting him behind us. He nodded.
I grabbed the truss, which would have been above my head had I descended the stairs, swung myself in, and jumped. My feet hit the ground about the time the explosion threw me against the far wall. Fortunately for me, jumping into the basement rather than running down the stairs meant I wasn’t standing where the explosion would have done the most damage. Other than being unable to hear, and having suffered what was probably a pretty good concussion, I fared pretty well.
Also fortunately for me, the explosion was more disorienting than maiming or flesh-tearing, which I saw as a real plus. I lay there, my bell rung, and kept thinking to myself, These guys are good and they are well financed . I almost felt like I was fighting Frank. If I hadn’t seen him shoot himself in the head, and the resulting damage of that bullet as it passed through, I very well could have been.
I woke to find Gunner licking my face. He was glad I hadn’t sent him down the stairs, and this was his way of both waking me and thanking me. “Hey, boy. Love you too.”
Camp knelt over me, and while I couldn’t hear what he said, I could read his lips. “You ’bout done?”
“Well, now that you’re asking, I’m tired of being shot and blown up.”
He ran his light across my pupils. “You still with me?”
I nodded. “I’m in here. Head hurts.”
“I’ll say.”
He helped me to my feet as the ringing in my ears subsided just enough for me to make out faint sounds. He pointed to the tunnel. “Mind if I lead?”
“Not at all.”
Clarity returned as we followed Camp down the dank corridor. Watching him move, I realized how catlike he was in these situations. While I had become a rescuer and had learned to make war in order to do so, Camp was a warrior who had turned to rescue. He’d become a true partner, and I felt much safer with him by my side. A brother in whose hands I’d willingly put my life. In addition, I’d grown to like his battle-earned humor. Walking behind him, watching his senses and skill function at an extremely high level, I experienced a strange and surreal emotion: Camp reminded me of Bones more than I liked to admit, and his presence made Bones’s absence that much more painful.
The tunnel wound through the hillside, coming to a large steel door several hundred feet from the entrance. Our lights reflected off the steel and we stopped. I tapped him on the shoulder. “Not to be Captain Obvious, but you do realize that’s locked from the outside.”
He nodded and began pulling C-4 from his vest, which he gently attached and molded to the back side of the door, eventually inserting the blasting cap, or ignitor, and then walking backward while he unrolled the trigger wire. “Excuse me.” C-4 is a plastic explosive that looks like modeling clay. It’s relatively stable until detonated via a trigger mounted to a cord attached to the blasting cap, at which point it produces a lot of gas and heat in a short period of time. When ignited, the resultant gases expand at 26,400 feet per second. So all those movies we’ve seen of people running away from a C-4 explosion are ridiculous. One minute everything is calm. The next it’s destroyed. How far the blast spreads depends on the amount of C-4 used. In Camp’s case, he used enough to blow the door off its hinges.
Having backed around the first turn, out of sight of the door, he glanced behind us. “All clear?”
I double-checked our six. “We’re clear.”
Camp triggered the detonator, igniting the C-4, and blew the massive door off its hinges, giving way to daylight, snow, and splintered evergreens. Camp was walking carefully to the door when I tugged on his vest and handed him a small mirror on a telescoping wand. He extended it, and we studied the picture. He shook his head. “Man, these guys are not messing around.”
“Nope.” I reached into my soft case, which Camp carried over his shoulder, and lifted Maggie. I extended the bipod and lay prone on the gravel, slowly inching my way forward. I was still several feet within the door but was trying to get a view of the cabin on the opposite hillside. If I could stay hidden inside the shadow of the doorway, maybe we could remain unseen.
The bullet whizzing into the tunnel told me we had not.
I’m right eye and hand dominant, so I normally shoot right-handed, but the configuration of the tunnel made that difficult, so I rolled, repositioned the rifle, and switched eyes and hands. This meant I was now shooting left-handed but doing so from a much more natural point of aim. In short, that meant my body tension wasn’t fighting my attempt to aim. Relaxed body equals relaxed aim. Camp knelt over me, studying the cabin porch through range-finding binoculars. He said, “That’s 2246 to the angry man with a rifle.”
Given that I’d zeroed Maggie at 200 yards, I came up 160 MOA, which meant I was now aiming more than 3,560 inches above the man. This bullet was more akin to lobbing in a mortar round than rifle cartridge. “Any guess on the wind?”
“At the door, maybe ten, right to left. Out there...” He shook his head. “No idea.”