“We can’t see anything!” someone in of the vehicles ahead reported.
“Keep pushing on,” Whyte told them. “All cars, use the vehicles as cover. As soon as we enter, get out and take them down.”
Gunfire erupted ahead of the car. Mark both wanted to curl into a corner and sit in the front to watch the battle. The latter half won out, and he peered past the seats. Ahead, the damaged APC opened and mercenaries poured from it, their rifles lighting up as they entered the thick cloud of smoke. The only thing Mark saw beyond the smoke were quick flashes of shots going off.
Their car pulled up behind a Humvee and Whyte turned to Heather and Mark. “What are you two waiting for? Get out there.”
Mark opened his door and checked the rocky floor carefully. Mines or whatever the Cave defenses used would be sure to kill him, and he took careful, lively strides into the heat of battle. Heather followed behind him. “If you can, try to escape during all this.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Won’t they blame you then?” he asked.
“Just do it.” She ran forward and attacked one of the Cave guards. She chopped at his throat and kneed his stomach. He fell and Lionel descended from the haze all around. He jumped into the poor man’s mouth and ended his life with a short spasm.
The Humvee turrets fired nonstop beside Mark and, through the noise, several dying screams pierced his nerves. He ran along with Heather, ignoring the carnage and dead bodies building along their path. They emerged from the smoke and saw that the BEP forces were retreating. “Fall back!” they ordered. “Fall back!” Among the faces, Mark found Lydia, stained with dust and bits of rock. A friend of hers flew into a mercenary, pushing him forward into Lydia’s uppercut. The mercenary sailed through the air and fell with a whump! next to Mark, and then groaned and lay stiff, his face twisted in pain.
As the BEP forces, Lydia, and her friends filed into a large, three-story building comprised mostly of windows, one of the mercenaries kneeled and took aim with a rocket launcher. He fired at the second floor, blowing out a couple of rooms with the blast. Glass exploded and rained down like twinkling stars all around, and bits of furniture crashed against the rocky ground.
Whyte stalked behind them and knocked the rocket launcher out of the mercenary’s hands. “You idiot! You’ll bring the whole thing down! I want Arthur and Lydia alive!” He kicked the mercenary’s backside. “I’m sure they’ve called for help by now, so we don’t have all day. All of you! In there and find them!”
“What about those that escaped?” Lionel asked.
“Leave them for the helicopters,” he said. “Focus on those that are left.”
“And if Arthur isn’t still here?”
“Oh, he’ll be here.” Whyte gave a knowing nod. “He won’t leave anyone behind. He would be the last one to leave. Find him.”
“On it,” Emeryl said. He split his group, ordering a couple of small squads to check an off-white building to the side. In the meantime, some of the BEP Division guards had perched in the upper floors of the glass building. They took potshots at the mercenaries below, killing a couple without losing any of their number. “They have the high ground! We have to get inside!” Emeryl hustled their BEPs and mercenaries inside the building, with a few mercenaries laying down suppressing fire as they went.
Inside the reception area, they found a struggling man handcuffed to a desk. He yanked on the drawer, grunting and thrashing his head. When he saw them, he waved for Whyte. “Over here! Here!”
“There you are, Gary,” Whyte said. One of the mercenaries picked the handcuff’s lock.
“They evacuated most of the non-combat BEPs and personnel,” Gary said. The handcuffs popped open and he rubbed his wrists. His fingers were crooked and bent at odd angles on one hand. “There’s not enough to stand against you though.”
“Guess again!” Lydia shouted from down a dark hallway at an intersection. The mercenaries raised their guns, but Whyte stood in front of them.
“No, don’t kill her,” he said. “Aim for her legs.” They shot at her, and she dove for cover in one of the other halls.
Suddenly, a loud wham! echoed around them as a metal sheet slammed down in front of the door they’d come in. Except for blood-red emergency lights on the wall, they were plunged into darkness.
“Perfect,” Emeryl said, unclipping his walkie-talkie. “Squad D, come in. What just happened?”
“The whole building went into lockdown,” the other side said. “It’s covered in some metal sheets, except for the snipers’ windows.”
Whyte laughed. “Oh, Arthur.” He rapped on the metal sheet. “I didn’t even need my foresight to see this coming.” He mused to himself, pushing on the metal. “You knew I wouldn’t bring the building down with you and Lydia in it, so you mean to trap me. No creativity whatsoever.”
“Want us to punch a hole in it?” Squad D asked.
“No,” Emeryl said, catching Whyte’s headshake. “Cut out the front entrance. Move up the vehicles and use them for cover while you do. Radio us once you’re in.”
“On it!”
“What now?” Emeryl asked Whyte. “We can’t stay here.” He looked ahead, his expression grim. “And that’s a kill zone if I ever saw one.”
Indeed, even Mark realized that the glass-lined hallway with its blackened rooms could hold the entire BEP Division’s remaining forces. They would be cut down in a matter of seconds. Going back out wasn’t an option. They were surrounded.
Whyte snatched a rifle from a mercenary and a spare clip. “Must I do everything?” He walked brazenly into the hall, without a care in the world. He spun on his heel and fired left, shattering some glass. Somebody gagged and choked, and a gun clattered to the floor. He about-faced, killed an office worker with a gun, two more behind him, and a guard in the corner of a room. When he reached the end of the hall, he beckoned everyone else forward.
Mark was impressed until he remembered Whyte’s power. With his foresight, this battle was all but won.
Lydia had gone and the hall split off into three directions. “I’ll go this way,” Whyte said, pointing down the right hall where Lydia had gone. He took a few of the mercenaries, Valerie, and Sheila with him. Emeryl and Lionel went straight with most of the remaining mercenaries, while Mark, Oliver, Heather, Roy, and the rest went left.
Mark’s group happened upon two girls and two boys standing in their way. One of the girls wore a pair of ice blocks on her hands, and the other had a legion of various dog breeds standing at perfect attention around her. The older, plump boy had a cast-metal nose filled with water held over his face, sniffing from it and exhaling. The younger boy creeped Mark out, with his monstrous bulging eyes and a tongue that kept striking the air like a frog searching for its meal. Strangely, Roy stared at the bug-eyed boy, his face unreadable and his eyes out of focus.
“Here to stop us, little girls and boys?” Oliver asked, cracking his eyes and spurting flames.
The one with ice blocks raised her fists, sipping from straws wrapped around her ears and connected to water bottles on her hips. “We’re gonna freeze you in your tracks!”
Oliver’s face lighted up, and he jumped a few steps ahead like a child himself. “You play with fire, you’re gonna get burned!” He jerked his head to Heather and Mark. “Come on. We got this. Three-on-three and a half.” Mark didn’t know if Oliver had seen the dogs, but there were at least a couple of dozen, all vicious and growling at them.
The girl in the dogs’ midst growled and barked at the hounds, her long floppy beagle ears flapping back and forth. “What did she just say?” Oliver asked.
The ice girl grinned. “Attack.” Five guards and personnel stepped out of rooms to the sides and fired on the mercenaries. The bug-eyed boy slapped his tongue to the ceiling, swung forward, and kicked Oliver square in the jaw. The older boy removed the metal cast, sneezed, and shot blue lasers into Mark’s group and the wall, slicing through guns and blowing apart fragments of sto
ne. The girls ran forward, yelling at the tops of their lungs, and the dogs barked, their sharp, vicious fangs ready to tear through the line.
The mercenaries fired, killing several dogs, but more jumped on them, biting and snapping at their armor. Oliver blasted flames at the swinging boy, but he danced around the fire, merrily kicking whomever he liked until a few mercenaries focused on him. He swung away, but the bullets chased him. Roy shoved the mercenaries and Oliver from behind, throwing off their focus.
Suddenly, a frazzled scientist stepped out of a room with a large piece of vinyl, stretching open the hole at its center. He snatched the swinging boy into the vinyl, catching him in his chest, and air hissed as the vinyl inflated around his body. The mercenaries had the boy dead to rights and shot him. “Wait, don’t!” Roy yelled. The boy held up his hands and a horde of bullets struck the vinyl.
But the vinyl held. The bullets pushed inward, until they were an inch from the boy’s nose and palms, but they never pierced the protective layer of vinyl all around him. “It works!” the scientist said. The bullets popped out and fell, and the scientist cheered and raised his lab coat, spinning it around in victory.
The bug-eyed boy laughed and snaked his tongue through the hole. “Thank you!” He waved to the scientist. The scientist waved back and hid while the boy returned to the fight, bowling over a few mercenaries with his new inflatable body.
Mark blocked one dog from biting Heather, and it sank its teeth into his forearm. He grabbed the dog’s snout and ripped it off in time to be decked by an ice block. The ice girl turned to Oliver and punched him, but he burned the ice off her hands. She threw the melted blocks at him, ducked under the rest of his flames, and ran back to the guards and personnel. They protected her, the other three BEPs, and the scientist as they retreated. Five mercenaries were left standing, the rest slain or too injured to move, with bullet wounds and deep dog-bite gashes.
One last dog jumped for Oliver’s neck, and he set it alight in the air and jumped aside. Mark couldn’t bear to watch the dog howl, yelp, and roll around on the ground, a small flaming mass of torture. “Come on,” Oliver said. “Let’s get them.”
“They want us to go after them,” Heather said.
“I know,” he said. “Should be fun!” He chased the retreating group and Heather and Mark cursed his foolhardy glee as they followed. Roy grimaced, trailing behind them with the surviving mercenaries.