Steel Gauntlet (41 page)

Under the cover of a battalion-size search mission, the men of Company L had infiltrated onto the mountain slopes the night before. When the battalion withdrew after dark, Company L was left behind.

Such missions had been conducted frequently over the last days as the Confederation ground forces mopped up small pockets of St. Cyr’s army that had refused to surrender. Now Conorado and his Marines crouched close to the solid rock walls fifty meters from where the explosive charges had been set. Third platoon, advancing by fire teams, would lead the way in once an opening had been made. They would go in firing and advance to their objective fifty meters down the main tunnel toward the branch leading up to headquarters area, where they would establish a position until the rest of the company was inside.

“You ready for this?” Captain Conorado said to Hard Rocks, crouching by his side. The old miner had become the company mascot in the brief time he’d been with them, but he was going along as their guide, if things got confusing next door.

“You know it, Captain. Boy, these rigs you got are really fantastic!” The old prospector had been given some instruction on how to use the infras and communications devices built into the issue helmet, and he was enjoying himself enormously. “Wisht I’d a had one of these things in my younger days,” he whispered. He made a mental note to ask for one when the operation was finally over.

From far above them came a sharp crack. “Heads up!” Conorado said over the company net. He started counting the seconds, his thumb on the detonator. When the detritus from the blown outcropping 4,500 meters above impacted on the launching pad, the ground under them shook violently. “Steady, steady,” Captain Conorado said over the net, foregoing communications procedures. “Platoon commanders, get ready. Charlie? You ready?”

“Aye, sir,” Bass answered. He was commanding third platoon now, since there’d been no time to replace Ensign Vanden Hoyt.

Three minutes ticked slowly by. “Fire in the hole!” Conorado shouted and pressed the detonator switch. A brilliant flash engulfed the waiting men—at the same time, there was a dull thump! as the shaped charges stove in the tunnel wall.

Bass was the first man up. The tunnel was full of dust, so thick he could hardly see. He fired plasma bolts to the left and the right as he came through the jagged hole and took up a position facing toward the headquarters complex. The first fire team came in right behind him, adding their weapons to his. Firing steadily, they advanced fifty meters into the choking dust and took up a defensive position. The second fire team proceeded directly to the launch pad, to secure whatever was left down there.

As the dust dissipated, St. Cyr’s men came running at the first fire team positioned just down the tunnel, evidently unaware the Marines were in their way. The team cut them down as they emerged out of the dusty gloom. The company radio net came alive with commands and reports. The launch pad was in ruins but unoccupied. Conorado ran to the first fire team, Hard Rocks by his side, and ordered the rest of first platoon up the tunnel after him.

They came to a branch. “This way!” Hard Rocks shouted.

With his infra screens down, Conorado clearly saw the symbol pointing its way toward the headquarters. A grenadier fired several explosive bolts down the tunnel. Second platoon, acting according to plan, continued on down the main tunnel. A hundred meters farther on they would take another branch and come into the headquarters area a different way, hopefully taking any defenders in the rear by surprise and cross fire. First platoon sent two fire teams after the second, and the rest joined Bass and their company commander.

Seventy-five meters into the branch tunnel they met heavy resistance. Plasma bolts cracked and hissed around in the confined space. The air danced with the concussions of explosive bolts that disintegrated solid rock and tore men to pieces. The platoon sergeant acting for the second platoon’s commander, who was wounded, reported he was fighting his way through a similar ambush. Lying in the narrow tunnels, the men could do little else but fire back at the defenders’ muzzle flashes and inch their way along on their bellies, relying on their deflective screens to protect them from the plasma bolts being fired in their direction. Marines crawled up over the bodies of dead and wounded men or fired over them, and when return fire became too intense, they used the dead as shields and kept on firing.

Each man knew he was there to rescue his comrades and put an end to Marston St. Cyr, and each was determined to do that or die trying. Many did.

The firing stopped suddenly. In the eerie quiet, broken only by the moans of the wounded, Captain Conorado ordered his men cautiously forward. St. Cyr’s guards had disappeared. Second platoon reported the same thing in the tunnel where they’d been ambushed. Conorado ordered them forward too. Moving slowly, looking for booby traps and ambushes, the Marines advanced along the tunnel to where it opened out into a huge gallery. A lightly wounded guard was dragooned into accompanying them.

“They told us the general fled,” the man informed Captain Conorado, “so our sergeant said we should leave too. That was when I was wounded.”

“Where’d they go?” Conorado asked. The man pointed down a tunnel branching off from the gallery.

“There’s an escape route up there leading to the surface,” he said.

“The general?”

The man shrugged; he didn’t know where St. Cyr might have gone.

Captain Conorado motioned to Sergeant Hyakowa. “Take your squad and go up that way,” he said, pointing up the tunnel where the guards had gone. “Be careful. Meanwhile, we’ll look for the hostages.” He had little doubt they were already gone, but he had to be sure first. “How do we get into these rooms?” he asked the guard.

The guard held up a metal card. Bass snatched it from him. “I’ll handle this, Skipper,” he said.

Captain Conorado informed Brigadier Sturgeon that the hideout was secure but St. Cyr had apparently fled along with the remaining hostages. Company L had lost seven men killed and six wounded. He did not know how many of the guards had survived, but as soon as the headquarters area was searched, he would take the rest of Lima Company up the escape tunnel. Meanwhile, Mike Company was alerted to block any escape attempt at the surface.

A tremendous explosion roared down the tunnel into which Hyakowa and his men had just disappeared. Conorado swore and ran toward the billowing cloud of dust that rolled out into the gallery.

Before he could get there, the Marines began stumbling back out, covered with rock dust and coughing.

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” Hyakowa gasped as he staggered back into the gallery. “We’re okay! The goddamned thing went off too far down to get us. I don’t think we’re going very far down there, though.” He wiped dust off his face with the back of his hand.

Bass ran up to where they stood. “They were being kept in cells down that tunnel.” He pointed behind him. “I found this in one.” He held up a soiled and torn dress uniform blouse. “It belonged to MacIlargie.

There were two dead guards in the cell, all beat to hell, Skipper, and minus their own clothing.” Despite himself, Bass grinned.

For the first time that day, Captain Conorado smiled.

Then another explosion rumbled up from the tunnel where Bass had just emerged. This one came from much farther down in the mines, but still the passageway filled with dust. Cursing again, Captain Conorado muttered, “This is getting to be a bad habit with me,” and ran into the tunnel, followed by Bass and a dozen other Marines.

The light source inside was dim to begin with but worse now, with dust floating in the air. The tunnel sloped gradually downward. After a hundred meters the artificial light source that illuminated the rest of the complex ended and the party proceeded by the glimmer of glowballs. Warily, weapons at the ready, they went forward. Two hundred meters from the gallery they were stopped by a solid rockfall.

“Somebody doesn’t want us to go any farther. Hard Rocks?” The old miner had been by the captain’s side all the way.

“Captain, best I remember, this tunnel goes on for a long ways, but if you follow it down far enough, it ends in a geothermal pond just beside an underground river. I think it flows eventually into the Carnelian.”

“Can we get around this somehow?”

“I don’t know. Lemme see those charts again. I never spent much time down in that area.” They stood there in the semidarkness. Captain Conorado thought for a moment. His instincts told him this was the way St. Cyr had escaped. “Goddamn it to hell,” Conorado swore. “Get some goddamned men down here with the equipment to move this shit.” He gestured at the rock fall blocking the tunnel in front of them. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit on my ass while that bastard gets away.” The corridor outside their cell was empty when the two Marines emerged. MacIlargie carefully slid the door panel shut and it locked with a snap. He fingered the digitized metal card in the dead guard’s uniform pocket. “I wonder where else this thing can get us into?” They were just down a side tunnel from a huge, brightly lighted gallery. Large groups of guards were running through it toward the sound of a violent firefight going on somewhere ahead. Dean’s pulse began to race. “We’re behind them,” he whispered, meaning the defenders.

“Yeah, but no weapons!” MacIlargie whispered back.

“Then let’s get some.”

A door panel slammed open behind them. Not ten meters away, farther back down the corridor where they stood, was Marston St. Cyr himself with the Ambassador. One of her eyes was almost swollen shut and a thin rivulet of blood seeped out a corner of her mouth. Her hands were secured behind her with plasticuffs.

“What are you two doing there?” St. Cyr shouted.

“We-we’re here to, uh, get the two enlisted Marines, sir,” MacIlargie said, suddenly inspired.

St. Cyr nodded. “Drag them out and kill them. Then join the others. I have business with this woman here.” Yanking her roughly by one arm, he started down the corridor, away from the gallery and into the shadows. As Ambassador Wellington-Humphreys turned to stagger after her captor she took in the Marines at a glance and an expression of recognition came over her face, but she said nothing. The pair disappeared rapidly out of sight down the tunnel.

“What the hell are you two doing down there?” a voice yelled suddenly from the gallery. A big man stood at the tunnel entrance framed in the light from the gallery, one arm akimbo on his right hip, the other cradling his weapon.

“We’re escorting General St. Cyr and his prisoner, sir!” Dean answered.

“What?” the figure’s arm fell to his side and he lowered his weapon.

“We’re going after the general,” MacIlargie said, pointing on down the corridor into the dark shadows. MacIlargie thought to himself, If the bastard comes five meters closer, I can get that weapon away from him.

“What!” the man shouted again. He swore violently and looked over his shoulder. Then he muttered something that sounded like “running out on us,” turned and ran out into the gallery.

“Now what?” Dean asked. MacIlargie didn’t answer. They were fugitives surrounded by heavily armed soldiers who would not hesitate to shoot them. And those soldiers stood between them and the Marines who were coming to their rescue. If they stayed right where they were, they would survive.

“Well...” MacIlargie shrugged and nodded down the dark corridor in the direction St. Cyr had disappeared. “We were told to be her shadow.”

“Right,” Dean replied, and unarmed, with no idea where they were headed, the two started off after St. Cyr and Ambassador Wellington-Humphreys.

CHAPTER 32

Holding a glowball in his left hand, St. Cyr shoved Wellington-Humphreys, her wrists bound tightly behind her back, along with his right, catching her every few steps as she stumbled in the near darkness.

“Pick up your feet,” he ordered. Then, abruptly, he stopped. Wellington-Humphreys gasped for breath, grateful for the chance to rest. She was also grateful now that one of the guards had given her a battle dress uniform to replace the formal dinner dress she’d had on when abducted. “Quiet,” St. Cyr ordered. “Breathe through your goddamned nose.” He shook her violently, then stood there listening.

Aside from their own breathing, total silence enveloped the tunnel around them. “Good, good,” he whispered. “Now to make sure we’re not being followed.” He let go of her for a moment, fished in a cargo pocket and took out a tiny black object. “Detonator,” he said with pride, holding up the little black square.

Wellington-Humphreys gasped. Those two Marines! Somehow they’d managed to escape, and she felt sure they must be following. She couldn’t let St. Cyr detonate that charge. Suddenly energized, she lunged at him. Caught off guard, St. Cyr lost his balance when the woman smashed into him, and they both fell to the floor with a crash. The detonator flew out of his hand and skidded off into the darkness.

Recovering quickly, St. Cyr delivered several hard blows to the side of the Ambassador’s head. Hands fastened behind her, she could not defend herself. She lay on the floor, dazed, as St. Cyr scrambled on his knees after the detonator. He retrieved it and pressed the firing switch. A dull thud sounded up the tunnel from where they’d just come, and then the concussion buffeted them as it passed down the tunnel.

A thick cloud of pulverized rock dust engulfed them, temporarily reducing the light from the glowball to a tiny dull spark. They both coughed in the dust.

“You bitch!” St. Cyr gasped. Wellington-Humphreys lay on the floor, all hope gone now, the fight completely taken out of her. In her long and successful career as a diplomat, she had never really cared about the people she represented in her negotiations. Now she could only think of those two Marines, buried under the tons of rock behind them. They had sacrificed their lives for her.

Gradually the dust settled. “That, my dear, is insurance we won’t be followed.” St. Cyr tossed the tiny black box aside. He held the glowball close to Wellington-Humphreys’s face. It was streaked with tears.

“You are not a bad specimen,” he said, bending close and running his tongue along her jawline. A terrible rage suddenly welled up inside her and she turned and bit him on the neck.