Odin took the camera from her and held it up to the light, then he ripped the antenna out. He looked around. “There’s no telling how many more of those things there are in here.”
Odin tossed the thing on the floor and crushed it under his boot. “This site is blown. We need to evac immediately. What’s down at the airstrip?”
Foxy answered. “MD500 chopper and a Cessna Grand Caravan.”
“In cover?”
“The Cessna’s in the hangar.”
“Fueled up?”
He nodded. “Wing tanks too.”
“All right. Hoov . . .”
Hoov swiveled on his chair. “Yeah?”
“Destroy the uplink equipment and prepare to move out.”
“You got—”
There was a series of deep thwacks as holes appeared in the heavy drapes and fist-sized divots blasted out of Hoov’s chest. Then half of his head blasted apart, spraying McKinney and the sofa with gore. Hoov’s body pitched forward, upending the coffee table.
“Sniper!”
CHAPTER 21
War Mask
McKinney was dimly aware of shouting and people hitting the floor around her as the world seemed to constrict to a tiny focal point on her shoes—which were covered in blood. Hoov’s quivering body lay at her feet. She stared at the interior of his skull, even now coursing with blood that pooled across the floor. Blood was also oozing from several other holes in Hoov’s chest, turning his entire blue Ancile polo shirt maroon.
That’s when someone grabbed her bodily by the shoulders and hauled her over the back of the sofa. She didn’t even feel the hard impact on the floor, but it must have brought her back to her senses. She looked up to see bullet holes systematically drilling into the foreheads of every human portrait and photograph on the wall that faced the covered window. Glass and splintered wood ricocheted around the room as bullet holes appeared with the speed and precision of a sewing machine. Two flat-panel monitors with the colonel’s face displayed on them also got hit dead center, blasting apart.
“Stay down!” Whoever had grabbed McKinney was dragging her. She felt Odin’s beard scratching her face as he pulled her behind the bar. His arm was as hard as a baseball bat, and he had a .45 tactical pistol in his other hand.
Someone shouted, “Sniper, Black, Alpha, Two!”
Odin responded in a booming voice. “Automated sniper station. Probably synth-app radar—stay away from perimeter walls!”
Foxy’s voice. “Hoov’s gone, Odin.”
“I know.”
A voice called out from the foyer. “Odin! Boomerang says the shots came from two locations near the center ridgeline. Plunging fire from six hundred and eighty-three meters and six hundred and twenty meters out.”
“What are we facing?”
“Hard to identify the station model at this angle—both acoustic signatures look like .338s. They’re in heavy cover and burning us with radar.”
Foxy pounded the floor with his fist from behind the sofa. “They must have been here all along—waiting for confirmation that the team was all present.”
Odin nodded. “Mark their location! And turn on a goddamned GPS jammer, Mooch! I don’t want a JDAM down on our heads.”
“On it!”
McKinney saw Ripper with her back to the bar next to them. The woman looked cool and focused as she pulled a metal canister from her harness.
Odin shouted, “Popping Mike Mike particle smoke!”
Ripper pulled the pin and tossed the now fiery canister over the bar into the room.
Odin talked over the hissing, expanding smoke cloud. “All right, listen up! We’ve drilled against this weapon system a hundred times. You all know what to do. Everyone to the foyer, in full AD gear, two minutes! On my mark!”
Looking down, McKinney realized she was completely spattered with gore. Chunks of what must have been brains came back on her fingers as she wiped her hands. The involuntary reaction was instant. She vomited onto the parquet floor behind the bar, sucking for air between retches. “Oh, my God . . .”
People talked to her rapidly from somewhere, but her body wouldn’t let her hear. She had the dry heaves, crawling on her elbows.
Someone pulled her up sharply. Odin. He smacked her painfully on the scalp with his open hand. “Get your shit, together, Professor. I need you on deck.”
The pain brought McKinney back to her senses but pissed her off. “Fuck you! I’m working it out.” She rose to a crouch.
The smoke had almost filled the room, and it was getting hard to breathe.
Odin shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”
The team leapt into action, calling out with repeated “Go! Go! Go!” as a form of echolocation as they moved quickly out of the room.