Elna hurried down to the broken section of fence. Both Malin and the young mercenary were sprawled in the grass. She reached the mercenary first and saw instantly that he was gone. It seemed his face had taken the brunt of the impact with the tree, everything from his chin to his forehead was dented in. Blood poured freely from his nostrils and mouth, from the corners of his eyes, from his right ear.
She went to Malin and dropped down beside him. He was on his stomach, his arms spread out to either side. Elna tucked his right arm in and slowly rolled him over. As she did, he groaned. She feared the worst, but when she finally saw his face, he had only a few superficial cuts and scrapes on his cheeks and forehead.
“Dude cushioned my impact,” he said, reaching up to touch one of the larger scrapes on his forehead. “Where’d he go?”
“I think he’s dead,” she said. “Or close enough. You can’t do crazy things like that, Malin. Do you know how dangerous that was?”
She helped him sit up as he grimaced and bared his teeth. “Not as dangerous as getting shot,” he replied.
Elna hugged him. “That was too close. Please be more careful.”
“At least the device is working,” he said, as if to change the subject.
“Yeah, and our buddy Golf almost got us killed,” she said. “Not that he meant to. Come on. Let’s get back to the bunker.”
They dragged the merc into some dense brush and tried to hide the body as best they could. Elna checked for breathing or a pulse and found neither. Before they left him, Malin looted his tactical vest of ammo and retrieved the AK-47. It was banged up pretty bad.
“I’ve heard these AKs are pretty durable,” Malin said, running his thumb over a large dent on the side of the stock. “Maybe it still works. Worth keeping.” He handed the backpack to Elna and slung the rifle over his shoulder. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Elna heard a single gunshot as they headed back down the hill, but there was no screaming this time. Descending the slope was much faster, but it hurt her back and shoulders just as much. She was wincing now with every step.
“I don’t understand how he spotted us,” Malin said, easily keeping pace with her.
They were making too much noise. She knew it, but she couldn’t help it.
“He might’ve been in the house and saw us pass in front of a window,” she replied. “We were careless. He snuck up to within a few feet of us. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve picked us off from a distance, and we would’ve been dead before we knew what happened. The only reason he didn’t, I imagine, is because he figured his commander would want to question us about the location of the bunker.”
“The guy must’ve been moving super quietly,” Malin said.
“Or we were making way too much noise,” Elna replied.
They reached the bottom of the slope and approached the last line of trees. Elna leaned against the same black walnut tree as before, half-hidden behind the brush, and gazed across the open ground and the fence. She didn’t see anyone in the vicinity, and there hadn’t been any more gunshots. What was going on with the battle? Was everyone dead? Had they moved farther off to the north? She couldn’t tell, but she didn’t see anyone ahead of them.
“Okay, I think we’re in the clear,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She pushed off the tree and dashed out into the open, moving as fast as she could. The island had gone silent again, but then again, a single young mercenary had managed to sneak up on them without being heard. This fact helped her run despite the pain, and she reached the nearest gap in the fence in record time, Malin keeping pace with her. After slipping through the gap, she moved around behind the old barracks building and shuffled toward the cave entrance.
As she stepped into the cave, she pulled out the two-way radio and pressed the talk button.
“Guys, this is Elna Pasqualee. We’re back. Let us in.”
No one responded, but as she approached the back of the cave, the hidden door suddenly swung open, and she saw Cat standing behind it. She had her gun in hand, and she beckoned them with it.
“Welcome back,” she said. “You guys pulled that off like professionals. You keep impressing me.”
“We took out another one of the mercenaries,” Elna said, stepping through the door. “Well, Malin did, actually. Rolled him down a hill into a tree.”
Cat gave Malin a slow nod as she pulled the door shut behind him and locked it. “Not bad. I have to admit, when I first saw you, I thought you just looked like a typical California surfer-boy, but you’re a tough little guy, aren’t you?”
“Uh…thanks?” Malin replied, as if uncertain whether or not it was a compliment.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs and passed through the second door, Elna saw that the common room was empty. She looked to the left into their makeshift clinic and found most of the others. Dr. Ruzka was seated on a chair beside a bed, reading a book, as the injured Marine, Ant, rested under a blanket. Pop and Selene were resting on beds nearby. Joe and Rita Dulles were sitting together in folding chairs on the far side of the room, holding hands and chatting. It was so quiet in the bunker now. Too quiet.
“I’m supposed to be guarding the door, but come this way,” Cat said, drawing her attention the other direction. “I want to show you something real quick. You can watch the battle all on the monitors.”
Cat led them across the room and down the short hall to the surveillance room. On the way, they passed the control room, where Prig and Golf were bent over the computer, reading some tiny text on a computer screen. Prig looked up briefly and gave Elna and Malin a thumbs-up.
“Awesome job, guys,” he said, before returning to the screen. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Let’s see if we can’t track Mac and Spence,” Cat said, ushering them into the surveillance room.
Elna eased into the center chair, though it took some effort, and she had to grip the edge of the console. As soon as she looked at the screens, she spotted movement. The center screen on the top row showed the back road to the guesthouse. A body lay in the middle of the path near the old shed, a mercenary with a huge black beard who seemed to have been gunned down while he was running. Upon falling, he’d left a noticeable skid mark in the dirt and wound up in an awkward pose with one leg bent at the hip and the other thrust straight out behind him. Behind him, in the trees, Elna saw two men—gray on the colorless screen—darting deeper into the woods. Mac and Spence.
On another screen on the bottom row, she saw the open ground at the bottom of the hill beyond the fence. An enormous figure appeared at the end of the road, as if he, too, had been descending the hill. The leader of the mercenaries was also the largest of them, easily six and a half feet tall, with the brim of his black cap pulled low to shade his eyes. He wore a tactical vest that seemed weighted down with multiple weapons and overflowing pockets, knife handles and handguns poking out at various places. He also had some enormous object resting on his shoulder. At first, it just looked like a strange tube, but Elna studied it for a second and realized what it was.
“Is this guy carrying a rocket launcher?” she asked.
“So it would seem,” Cat replied. “He went back to their boat at some point during the fighting, and he returned with this thing. He hasn’t fired it yet. I assume he’s saving it for the bunker door.”
“These people are crazy,” Malin said.
“Yeah, well, these are the kind of weirdos you get when you have a lot of money for black ops and access to the dark web,” Cat noted.
Elna was watching the mercenary leader striding across the open ground, moving in the general direction of the fence, when she spotted some other moving shape in the top right corner of the screen. At first, she couldn’t tell what it was—just a vague whitish blob. Then it ran across the top of the screen, and her heart sank.
No, it can’t be, she thought. How did they get out there?
But suddenly she understood why the bunker seemed so quiet. Sniffy and Chloe! The
little girl appeared to be chasing the dog, trying to catch him, as they headed in the direction of the rocky western shore.
“How in the heck did Chloe get outside?” Elna said.
She pointed out the tiny moving shape at the top of the center screen. Malin and Cat stared in silence for a few seconds. Suddenly, Cat slammed both of her hands against the back of a chair.
“Damn, they must’ve slipped past us when all of the teams were heading out,” she said. “No one noticed. I remember the dog barking like crazy, but everything was really hectic.”
As they watched, the mercenary commander turned toward the girl and beckoned her. Chloe and Sniffy both froze, but Elna could see the dog’s mouth moving. He was barking with all his might.
“Where’s Miriam?” Elna asked. “Where is the little girl’s mother? Didn’t she notice her daughter was missing?”
“I don’t know,” Cat replied. “That lady doesn’t say much. She’s always just sort of lurking in a corner somewhere.”
The commander moved toward Chloe and Sniffy. The dog immediately jumped in front of the girl, lowering his head as if preparing to charge, but when the commander continued to advance, Sniffy finally turned and fled. Chloe followed him as they ran toward the trees beside the back road. They had no chance. The commander caught up to them in three strides, grabbed the little girl’s left arm in his free hand, and swung her around. Sniffy came running back, dodging and weaving, as if torn between wanting to rescue the little girl and wanting to escape. After a couple seconds of this, the commander kicked the dog, and he went tumbling off toward the trees.
“We have to get up there and help them,” Elna said.
“Yeah, but we can’t let the commander find the bunker door,” Cat said. “There’s too much at stake.”
Suddenly, a fourth figure appeared on screen, also coming from the direction of the western shore. She was stumbling along, clearly out of breath, her hands pressed against her belly. She wore an oversized Marine uniform that was clearly two sizes too big for her. Miriam, the little girl’s mother. Sniffy had recovered from the kick but ran off out of frame as the commander hoisted Chloe up and tucked her under his arm. She was like a little doll next to the massive mercenary.
“Miriam must’ve realized her daughter was missing and went looking for her,” Cat said. “I was guarding the door. There’s no way they got past me. They must’ve slipped outside when everyone else was leaving.”
“What do we do?” Elna asked. No one seemed to have an answer for this.
Miriam dropped to her knees in front of the mercenary commander, clasping her hands and raising them above her head, as if pleading with the man. The commander set the rocket launcher on the ground beside him and began gesturing with his hand, even as Chloe thrashed in his grip.
“Where are Spence and Mac?” Cat muttered, smacking the back of the chair again. “They have the perfect opportunity to take this guy out right now.”
Suddenly, Miriam rose to her feet and pointed in the direction of the fence. Then she made some kind of motions with her hands: a circle, a line through the circle, a door opening.
“She’s ratting us out,” Cat said. “Can you believe it? After all we did for her.”
The commander thrust the girl at Miriam, and she grabbed her daughter. Then the two of them ran off again toward the western shore, soon disappearing out of frame in the direction of Sniffy. The commander picked up the rocket launcher and headed for the fence. Elna watched in disbelief as he passed through the fence and slipped into the gap behind the barracks building. Indeed, it seemed Miriam had just given him the location of the bunker in exchange for her daughter.
“You rescue some poor civilian, and this is how she repays you,” Cat said.
They lost sight of the commander for a second but located him again in another monitor. He was standing outside of the cave entrance, kneeling, bringing the RPG up to his shoulder.
“What do we do?” Elna asked.
Cat flung the door open and rushed out of the room. However, Elna watched, frozen in horror, as the commander took aim, pointing the rocket toward the cave entrance. There was a sudden burst of smoke, and he lurched slightly, as he fired the weapon toward the bunker door.
30
Elna felt the rocket hit as a kind of shudder, like a brief, low-strength earthquake, going through the walls and floor. Dust rained down, and she heard another ceiling panel crashing down from somewhere distantly in the bunker.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Prig shouted from the control room.
Elna watched the mercenary commander drop a small backpack on the ground at his feet, stoop down, and shove his hand into the large pocket. After a moment, he produced another rocket and began fitting it into the launcher. Smoke was gushing out of the cave entrance.
“Is he just trying to bring the whole cave down?” Malin said.
Elna pressed her hands against the edge of the console and slowly pushed herself, wincing all the way, to her feet. “I assume Miriam gave him only general directions to the bunker. It’s not as if she drew him a map. He knows it’s hidden in the cave, so maybe he wants to draw us out of hiding.”
The commander had socketed the second rocket, but he turned and aimed in a different direction. Elna had to triangulate between a couple of screens before she realized he was aiming at the lighthouse building. He fired, and the rocket cut a smoky arc, hitting the building just above the door. It blew a sizeable hole in the side. Elna felt the vibration of it. The walls around her shuddered, and something crashed down in another part of the bunker.
“If he knocks down the lighthouse, there goes our signal,” Malin muttered.
For a few seconds, everything around the lighthouse was obscured by smoke. Gradually, the smoke dispersed, and Elna saw the lighthouse still standing. Most of the building beside it was gone, collapsed to the foundation.
“He’s going to bring it all down,” she said, “and maybe bury us alive down here in the process.”
She pushed off the console and headed down the hall. Prig, Golf, and Cat were gathered by the door, already in a heated discussion.
“I can’t get hold of Spence and Mac,” Golf was saying from the control room. “They’re still out there somewhere.”
“Surely they’ll hear the explosions and come back to the bunker,” Cat replied.
Prig shook his head. “Their job is to draw the mercenaries away from the bunker, and that’s exactly what they’ll do. They’re both expert marksmen, though, so maybe they can snipe that big ape from the trees beyond the fence.”
“So we’re just going to let him stand up there and fire at the door?” Cat said. “Sir, let us go up there and return fire. While he’s loading another rocket, we can open the door and take him out. With all three of us firing at him, he’s not going to get away.”
Prig furiously scratched at his short blond hair. “No, not safe. And we’d be confirming the location of the bunker. We’re trying to get the comm equipment up and running. We have a signal, but there have been some technical problems. Golf and I have to keep working on it. You guys make sure the other people in the bunker are out of harm’s way. That wannabe soldier up there can’t have many rockets. He won’t breach the door, even with an RPG. If he does, then we’ll take him out. Got it?”
And with that, he signaled Golf and returned to the console. Elna could tell Cat was struggling not to respond to the staff sergeant in anger. Elna had seen enough. Things were tense. She headed down the hall into the main room. As she did, the bunker shuddered again. This time, she saw the walls shaking, and a ceiling panel far down the long hall near the game room door crashed down, exposing the support posts above it.
She much preferred Cat’s plan. It seemed reckless to let the mercenary commander fire rockets into the cave. As she approached the bunker door, she saw that most of the people had huddled together in the clinic. Norman, Raymond, and Daniel were seated together on a bed.
“Didn’
t any of you guys realize that Chloe chased that dog out of the bunker?” Elna asked, struggling not to shout at them.
Daniel gave his dad a sheepish look. “Well, we were just sort of chasing the dog around, and I lost track of her. I didn’t know she went out the door.”
“You didn’t notice she wasn’t around?” Elna said.
“I thought she was with her mom somewhere,” Daniel said.
“We were busy setting up traps,” Norman replied. “Hard to keep an eye on that kid, or the dog, for that matter.”
Selene and Dr. Ruzka were changing Ant’s bandage and cleaning his wound. He seemed stable now, though his color was all wrong, and he hadn’t opened his eyes in hours. Pop was in the bed next to him, sleeping soundly, as if he hadn’t a care in the world, though she noted a few small bandages on his face and arms.
Standing there, furious that Chloe, Miriam, and Sniffy had somehow gotten outside without being noticed, Elna realized she had no one to yell at. It was no one’s fault. It had just happened. Still, that realization didn’t make her feel better, and on top of that, she was thoroughly exhausted, struggling to stay awake, and still in quite a bit of pain.
“Are the bad guys going to get in here?” someone asked. It was a creaky voice coming from far away, and it took Elna a second to realize that Joe Dulles had shouted it at her from the far end of the room. “Can’t we stop them somehow? We’ll be cornered like rats.”
Elna turned to Cat, who was standing near the bunker’s inner door, her hand resting on the butt of her Beretta. She was a tough-looking woman. If not for her injury, Elna thought she could probably take on the mercenary commander all by herself. And why wouldn’t Prig let her do it? Clearly, he didn’t want to verify the location of the bunker, but if they took out the commander, what did it matter?
“Are we going to rescue Chloe and Sniffy?” Daniel asked. “They didn’t mean to get lost, I’m sure. Sniffy is just really stressed out because of that explosion. It really scared him.”
Island Refuge EMP Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 72
