Jack Du Brul - Deep Fire Rising

“Clear,” he said as he crawled forward.

The men followed him in, with Grumpy taking the drag slot. The room was twenty feet square, lit by oil lamps, and had no discernible purpose. The walls were paneled in dark wood while the floor was dressed stone. Other than the lamps, the space was empty. A door on the far side was the only way out.

This time Sykes made the first visual reconnaissance. “This is it,” he whispered. “The next area is open, lots of doors and hallways and a big staircase.”

He shouldered his assault rifle and pulled a silenced pistol. “Mercer, keep on the M-4. You’re my cover. Let’s go.”

Pouring out of the antechamber, the men rushed into the monastery’s central mezzanine, the sound of their advance deadened by the rich carpets on the floor. Grumpy peeled off to the right to begin searching independently while the rest moved to the stairs, climbing hard because of their exposure. Sykes motioned Bashful and Happy to check the second floor as he raced past the landing and continued upward. They skipped the third floor and Dopey and Sleepy were ordered to investigate the fourth. Mercer and Sykes reached the top landing. Halls ran off in three directions. Sykes arbitrarily went left with Mercer at his heels. The hallway was lined with small empty rooms and twisted crazily. Narrow staircases ran down to the floor below, creating a dark three-dimensional maze.

“This is going to take forever,” Sykes said after five minutes of opening doors on empty rooms. He opened yet another. The room was bare but inexplicably had its own set of steps leading down to the fourth floor. “And with all these staircases, someone can easily outflank us once we make contact.”

“Let’s hope there aren’t that many of them.”

Sykes looked at him hard. “Do you believe that?”

“Not for a second.”

Backing out of the room, Mercer bumped into someone. He whirled, bringing the rifle around in a blur. The stock caught the figure on the side of the jaw and dropped him to the floor. Sykes pushed past, his pistol held an inch from the unconscious man’s head as he patted him down with his free hand. His search turned up nothing.

The man was in his sixties, painfully thin and deeply wrinkled. He wore the robes of a monk. His breathing was even, though blood dribbled from a gash on his cheek.

“Jesus!” Sykes hissed. “You didn’t say anything about noncombatants here.”

“I didn’t know.” Mercer’s heart still hammered from the shock of the unexpected confrontation.

Sykes keyed his throat mike. “Dwarfs, this is Doc. We just ran into an unarmed monk. This place may be crawling with civilians. Be on the lookout.” He gestured to Mercer. “Let’s go.”

He hadn’t taken more than three steps when another monk rounded a corner. Sykes raised his Beretta. The monk, who was younger than the first, froze, his dark eyes widening at the sight of two black-clad soldiers inside the monastery, one of them holding a pistol on him, the other an automatic rifle. He dropped to his knees and cried out in Tibetan.

Sykes put his finger over his lips to silence the frightened man, but the gesture did no good. His cries grew louder and sharper. Sykes glanced back to mutter a disgusted oath at Mercer. The monk dropped his hands toward his waist. Mercer saw the movement. He held his fire for an instant, hoping Sykes would turn to see what was happening. There was no time for a warning.

As soon as he saw the gun coming from under the monk’s robe, Mercer fired a single shot. The rifle’s crack echoed down the hall as the man was blown back, scarlet drops spraying from the bullet hole in his forehead.

Sykes turned to see the gunman fall flat. His pistol lay on the floor next to him. “Contact,” he said coolly into the radio on the off chance his men hadn’t heard the M-4’s sharp bark in the otherwise silent monastery. “Shot fired. If they didn’t know we’re here before, they sure know now.” He unscrewed the long silencer from his pistol and tossed it aside before holstering the weapon and reaching for his M-4. “Nice shot,” he said to Mercer. “Thanks. I screwed up.”

He looked down the long corridor, trying to hear if anyone was coming for them. “This is going to get real ugly, real fast. There are seven of us on unfamiliar ground facing an unknown number of enemies. Situations don’t get much worse.”

“Look on the bright side,” Mercer said softly.

“What bright side?”

“I was hoping you’d think of one.”

Sykes took point again as they continued their search for Tisa. Every minute or so one of the other teams would report their progress. So far Grumpy was the only other person to make contact. He’d left an elderly woman bound and gagged in a temple room.

They’d covered no more than a quarter of the top floor in fifteen minutes. Sykes was becoming agitated. Someone must have heard the shot and yet no one was coming to investigate. It meant either no one else was here or they were laying an ambush.

A long burst of automatic fire from downstairs tore the silence. It was countered by the familiar crackle from a pair of M-4s.

“Sit rep?” Sykes shouted into the radio.

There was no immediate reply, and with his concentration split between his men and his own surroundings, he didn’t hear the whispers from around a corner. Mercer did and dove flat, knocking Sykes to the floor as three men charged around the hallway firing Chinese knockoffs of AK-47s. The jagged fire spitting from the barrels gave the dim corridor a hellish cast.

The barrage flew over their heads as Mercer and Sykes lay prone. Mercer fired off a quick burst that raked one attacker across the torso and punched through the shoulder of another. Sykes added his own shots, dropping the uninjured man with a head shot and finishing off the wounded one with a double tap to the chest. The hall vanished behind a swirling veil of smoke as an oil lamp’s contents dribbled like a flaming waterfall onto the carpet. Sykes stayed low as he moved ahead to check around the corner. “Clear.”

Mercer followed, taking the opportunity to change out his magazine for a fresh one even though he’d only fired a half dozen rounds. Before the next bend in the corridor they came across an open door. The room beyond was simply furnished, a bed, a small table and a bureau. A smoky lamp gave the spartan room a funereal cast. A window shutter rattled in its frame. Below the stench of cordite and the growing smell of burning wood from the hallway, Mercer detected a familiar scent. Not a perfume, but something more subtle. He moved to the bed. The blankets were still warm. He drew them to his nose and inhaled. The familiar scent drove a current through his heart.

“Tisa was just here,” he said. “Those men must have been a rear guard to delay us.” He realized bitterly that had he not fired that first unsilenced shot, they might have taken her guards unaware.

“Dwarfs, this is Doc. We just missed the target. We’re still on the fifth floor, west side. Grumpy, cover the main staircase on one — everyone else move west and keep sharp.”

The fire from the spilled lamp was growing as the ancient carpets on the floors began to burn. Flame licked at the walls, burning through the dried timber as if they’d been doused with gasoline. The pitch that had been used to caulk the joints in the wooden ceiling ignited like fuses when the flame touched it. In a few minutes the fire would eat its way into the roof, and once it opened a hole to feed its growing appetite for oxygen, it would burst into a raging inferno. The air was already becoming unbreathable.

Sykes and Mercer slipped on the gas masks they carried. Mercer had to use the flashlight attached to his rifle to cut through the thickening smoke.