Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [115]
The officer took a quick step closer, dropping the knife into his palm and pressing the tip against the guard’s solar plexus. “You’re coming with me or you’re dying right here, right now,” Jackson said grimly. “Make up your mind—quickly!”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Ruiz was confronting the second guard. The two Eluoi exchanged frightened looks as the SEALS put their hands on the weapons slung from each man’s shoulder. The outcome was predictable: Each guard gave up his gun and backed up to the wall right behind him.
“Open the door,” Jackson ordered as Teal and Baxter smoothly stepped up to take the weapons. The frightened guard punched in the code numbers, and the door to the prisoners’ compartment slid open. The SEALS officer prodded both Eluoi through the door while his two men, now armed and uniformed like the guards, took up position in the corridor outside. Ruiz drove the tractor in right behind them.
Once the door was closed, Jackson reached into the laundry cart and pulled out their two G15s with the suppressors attached. He handed one to Ruiz, who waved it menacingly toward the two guards. Jackson quickly bound the prisoners together, and the SEALS started jogging down the corridor he had explored cautiously several hours before. Now, however, he knew where he was going.
They halted at the first corner, the master chief and the LT silently making eye contact, remembering the guard station with the four soldiers that had been right around this bend. Both SEALS went around the corner together, their suppressed G15s set for fully automatic fire. The Eluoi sentries looked up in shock and died before they could reach for their weapons, much less raise an alarm.
Jackson took off at a run, and in less than a minute he came to halt outside Admiral Ballard’s room. He knocked sharply on the door.
“Come!” came the immediate reply. A push of the button slid the panel smoothly to the side, and Jackson found himself once again staring into the fearsome visage of Ball-Breaker Ballard.
“Jackson!” the admiral declared. “What’s the word?”
“We’re going to try to get you out of here, sir. I have enough coveralls to disguise all the prisoners, and there’s a shuttle arriving at the docking bay to fly us out of here—if we get that far.”
“What about the Pangaea?” the admiral asked, though he didn’t let the question stop him from moving toward the door.
“Recaptured, sir, by the SEALS and a complement of navy commandos. She’s standing by with the Pegasus, ready to get us out of here.”
“Nice work,” the admiral said gruffly. “Let’s spread the word.”
Ballard quickly roused the two generals in the neighboring cabins, and Jackson sprinted into the other wing of the prisoners’ compartments. Fortunately, their captors had left the humans pretty much to their own devices, so none of the individual quarters were locked. Each prisoner released passed the word, and in a matter of minutes the captives had filled the corridors of their prisoner compartment. They were men and women ranging in age from mature adults to the elderly, and they represented the spectrum of races and cultures of planet Earth. They were universally eager to catch a ride back home.
Ruiz tossed stacks of the coveralls to the prisoners, who quickly doffed their black, pajama-like attire in favor of the white workers’ uniforms. Jackson and Ruiz, in the meantime, donned their pressure suits. Before attaching the helmets, each of the two SEALS placed one of Baxter’s copper-weave handkerchiefs over his scalp, attaching the alligator clips to the power source of the suit’s battery pack. The LT felt a small tingle along his close-cropped hair, but the sensation was not unpleasant or distracting.
Although a group of a hundred service personnel might be a little unusual on the Bazaar’s avenue, Jackson had observed enough of the place’s laissez-faire attitude to feel fairly confident that no one would accost them on that basis.
He was more worried about officious Eluoi, but that was a chance they’d have to take.
He was beginning to worry