Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

Which was unsurprising, and not good. Not if the elevator was going to bring them straight up into it.

He was about to ask Sparrow to raise Rover Two when the steel door slid open. There was no time to wait.

“What do we do?” Begai said.

Wheeler looked into the car.

“We get in, press Up, then worry about it,” he said.

Behind the castle in Rover Two’s forward cabin, Ray Long got some of it figured out for them.

His IPS receiver had tracked Wheeler’s group to within ten feet of their physical location. He could see their avatars, and he could see his video-game recreation of the castle, and he could see they were rising from directly beneath it. Because there had been no existing references from which to simulate the castle’s underground passages, the team seemed to be moving against a blank space on his dashboard screen. That was a shortfall of the model.

On the other hand, Long had been able to input some highly valuable coordinates from data that was gathered and shared by the Sentinel drone and Raven before she flew off.

Such as the exact position of the hidden lift Carmody and Schultz had used to exit the garage. And the lift Gustav Zolcu used to exit. And the separate lifts used by the two Rezvanis.

Which made four exits from the subterranean labyrinth that Long not only knew were outside Castle Graguscu, but whose exact geographic coordinates could be transmitted to Wheeler’s team.

He turned to Reggie Fults in the passenger seat. The explosions from the drones smashing into the castle were so loud he had to raise his voice.

“The castle’s getting blown apart,” he said. “We can’t let them head straight up into it.”

Fults looked at him. “And you’re thinking what, exactly?”

Long had already pulled up the coordinates of the lift exits. He pointed to the screen. “I’m thinking we can guide them to one of those exits, extract them, and move out.”

Fults stared at the display a moment.

“I’ll comm them now,” he said.

Wheeler was stepping aboard the elevator, Begai and Sparrow piling in after him, when he heard Fults over the RoIP: “Whiskey, it’s Rover Two. Do you read?”

“Loud and clear.”

“Can you tell me where you are?”

Wheeler told him as the elevator door slid shut.

“That’s perfect,” Fults said. “Now what do you see on the control panel?”

Wheeler told him. There were four numbered buttons and an LED display. His team had entered on One, the lowermost level.

“And the castle’s got two floors, right? Not counting the basement.”

“Or the tower room,” Wheeler said. “Right.”

“Okay, got it.”

RMMMMMMMMMBBBBBBBBRRRRRMMM...

Wheeler inhaled. The elevator was amplifying the sound like a tin can. He felt the car quiver and rock.

“Rover Two, we have to—”

“Take it one level up and get out. That should be the basement—where you first split off from Preacher. We’ll direct you from there.”

Wheeler and his team took the vehicle lift at the base of the underground garage’s Y, outside the rear gate.

Long guided them to it using data gathered from tracking the earlier movements of Carmody’s group. Of the three garage exits, it was farthest from the castle and therefore least likely to be pounded by drones and falling rubble. It was also the one Long could reach the fastest from his position at the road fork.

The group hurried onto the lift and felt it activate with a jolt, the walls of the shaft trembling around them, the platform swaying and shaking underfoot. They struggled for balance and grabbed onto each other as they rose, steadying themselves, staring up at the camouflaged mechanical door above them, breathing a collective sigh of relief as it began sliding open, retracting, the cold of the night rushing down into the shaft.

The BearCat was waiting—hatch up, platform lowered—when they reached the surface.

They climbed into the troop compartment with the rest of the men, whooping and howling at the top of their lungs.

“So, what’ve you three done this evening?” Long said, glancing around from the front seat.

Wheeler looked at him.

“Har!” he said.

Long grinned and lowered the hatch. “Strap in,” he said. “Next pickup on this share’s Banik and the furball.”

He hit the gas, and the Cat jounced forward.

Joe Banik heard the vehicle speeding down from the castle grounds and assumed it was Rover Two. Long had just radioed that he’d extracted Wheeler’s team and was on his way to the gate. He’d anticipated it would take him three or four minutes.

Banik was ready. The hardest part of standing watch out here hadn’t been the cold and the snow, the sounds in the sky, or even the thudding, rumbling explosions of the past few minutes. It definitely wasn’t fending off an old man and his wife who’d come snooping around in a rickety, sputtering pickup. And it very definitely wasn’t Ellie. Ellie was a good girl. Belgian Mals were field dogs, and watching the flock was baked into her DNA. If anything, he took his cues from her.

What was it the Bible said? Blessed is he who stands watch . Nice words, but he didn’t know about it. He didn’t think he deserved a special blessing. Someone had to do the job. Stand post. Be the eyes and ears. Watch and wait at the lonely gate. He’d reminded himself of this more than once, waiting here on the outside while his teammates were inside risking their lives. Feeling extraneous and unconnected and useless to them as he heard the explosions roaring over the castle grounds.

For Banik, that was the hardest part. The waiting. Like in the old Tom Petty song. Just the waiting.

He was ready all right.

He watched the gate. He could hear the vehicle coming up to it, approaching from the castle grounds. Its headlights shone through the hedges bordering the access road, the beams broken to splintery dashes by the low branches. Then the car reached the gate, and they fanned out over the snow on the two-lane.

He reached out to stroke the dog’s massive neck.

“Our ride’s here,” he said.

But it wasn’t.

His hand tensed on the Mal’s fur.

It wasn’t the BearCat.

Banik watched the vehicle swing in his direction. It was no more than twenty feet away. If he’d been standing directly in front of it, the lights would have blinded him. But he was on the gravel shoulder, and they struck at a glancing angle.

The vehicle was dark. A bulking SUV.

Banik had been told there were two Rezvanis. One was down.

He was looking at the other.

“Bashim lol,” he commanded, calling Ellie to high attention.

Banik stood on the shoulder, his right hand going for the MP7 slung against his side. It would do no good if they opened fire or tried to run him down. The damn vehicle was armored. But he wasn’t going to stand there like easy roadkill.

He brought the gun to its ready position. Ellie had taken her guard stance in front of him and was also ready. High and wide on her legs, back straight, head slightly raised. Her ears pointed straight up. She growled, a serious, assertive belly growl.

The Rezvani sped toward them.

The Rezvani shot out the blown, crookedly leaning front gate and turned left on the two-lane. As it sped past the American with the monstrous canine, Matei glared out his window and saw the beast move into an aggressive posture.

Beside him in the back seat, one of the men had pushed the nose of his Kalashnikov into the gun port.

“Comenzile tale?”

He was awaiting his orders. Fire or pass.

Matei felt the sudden, white-hot urge to cut both of them down with a spray of bullets. A drive-by, like he might have done back in the day, working his way up the Obshchina ladder.