Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [76]
Falco and Ruiz returned a few seconds later.
“Looks like a shower room and a lavatory, LT,” the master chief reported. “There’s an office, too, nobody in it, and a door connecting to another stairwell. I looked in, just to be sure.”
“Are you all right?” Jackson asked Char-Kane, kneeling to look into her disturbingly crimson eyes. Her face was pallid, and she was shaking and leaning into Harris, who didn’t seem to mind the contact at all.
“Yes. I—I think so.”
“Where are the others?” the lieutenant asked, sitting next to the Shamani woman on the bench. “Are they still alive?”
“Yes, they were taken off the jet and brought in here with me. The two of your SEALS and the doctor and Mr. Parker. Then Zaro came in. He was very angry, and he cuffed your ensign in the face. And he kicked the man, Mate Dobson, I think you called him, who used the turret gun to kill so many Eluoi.”
Jackson’s jaw tightened in cold anger, but he pressed on with the questions. “Where did they go then?”
“Zaro took them through the door in the back of this room. They were starting to go down into the building when there was a large explosion. They came back up here in a hurry.”
“Sounds like you flushed the game, Master Chief,” Jackson said approvingly before returning his attention to Char-Kane. “But they didn’t take you with them? Why not?”
She shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps they do not need to study the Shamani as much as they wish to examine you humans. After all, they have known about us for many millennia, and your people are brand-new to them.”
The idea made sense, but Jackson was still suspicious. Ignoring Harris’s look of reproach, he queried her harshly. “Where did they go after they came up here?”
The consul de campe met his glare coldly. “They proceeded back into the hangar, but the door was closed, so I could not see where they went after that.”
“But no aircraft landed or took off since we arrived, did they?” Jackson was pretty sure that the disabled transport in the middle of the landing circle would have prevented flight ops, but he still watched the Shamani woman carefully as she answered.
“None,” she replied.
“All right.” The options were few, the LT realized. Either the captives had been taken down a different route into the building, or they were still up in one of the buildings surrounding the landing zone. He trotted back into the hangar, where LaRue was still watching the prisoners with his G15 held casually in his lap. The large doors were open, and he could see two more structures atop the building. One was the shed where the gun that had ambushed them had been hidden, and it was perforated like Swiss cheese, the two metal doors hanging loosely from their hinges. The other was another hangar similar to the one the SEALS now occupied. The large door to that one was closed, as were the two smaller doors to either side of the main entry.
“We’re going to take that building in a hurry,” he said to his Teammates. Char-Kane, her tunic cleaned of blood finally, had joined them, and he looked at her seriously. “Do you want to come with us? We’re getting out of here.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” she said. “I do not want to be a prisoner of the Eluoi.”
“Okay.” Jackson gestured to the transport aircraft in the hangar. “Take a seat in the pilot’s chair and get the engines warmed up.”
Jackson cradled the plasma gun in his hands but decided he wanted to make an even faster entrance than the cutting tool would allow. “Harry, Derek, each of you get a C-6 charge ready. I want each of you to blow open those small doors. The rest of you, spread out, and let’s go.”
The Team emerged from the hangar at a run, splitting into shooter pairs and sprinting across the LZ toward the opposite hangar. The two men with explosives ran ahead, each choosing one of the doors. They were only halfway across the circle when the large hangar door before them slid upward with remarkable speed.