The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 3

The sensor tech darted across the cleared area to the nearest directional mine, a lump against the inner fence. After a moment’s manipulation there, he moved ten meters down the line to another lump. He tossed something to the ground.

“All right, sir,” Daun said, this time using helmet intercom. “I’ve pulled the fuzes. I didn’t want somebody turning them on again at a bad time. It can happen by accident, even, lightning or a plasma discharge.”

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Coke agreed under his breath.

He was smiling. He remembered he’d had doubts about how the kid would perform after the experience which got him transferred to a survey team. Just fine, so long as Daun could be confident of his backup …and for that, so far, so good.

The warehouse was a huge hangar constructed primarily of structural plastic, but strengthened at the corners by pillars of reinforced concrete. A bank of lights on the roof was intended to flood the interval between the fencelines. Many of the bulbs had failed without being replaced.

It didn’t really matter. The guards didn’t patrol the exterior, and there were no windows in the building proper from which to observe their surroundings.

The gage syndicates had achieved parity of incompetence. That was fine until somebody arrived who knew his ass from a hole in the ground.

Daun set a small transducer close to the nearest of the inner fencepoles. He stepped swiftly toward the next support, holding a similar transducer and unreeling the thin cable which tied it to the box he’d set on the ground.

“Don’t touch the fence yet, sir,” the tech ordered; needlessly, because they’d gone over the plan in the lobby of Hathaway House, and Matthew Coke knew better than to jump the gun in an uncleared detector field anyway.

“Right,” Coke murmured. He preferred a subordinate who might irritate him with unnecessary warnings to one who let him walk into disaster because, I thought you knew!

Daun turned a switch on the control box. “There we go!” he said. “All right, sir. It’ll think the circuit’s complete even if you blow everything down between these two posts.”

“No need for that,” Coke said. He thumbed the cutting bar live and swept it up and down with his left hand in a nearly perfect catenary arc through the fencing. The blade whined and sparkled happily.

If L’Escorial’s builders had used beryllium monocrystal or some other refractory material for their defenses instead of steel wire, the Frisians’ task would have been more difficult. But if a frog didn’t jump, it wouldn’t hit its ass on the ceiling….

Coke crouched in the opening as Daun sprinted for the building forty meters away. If Coke had to supply covering fire—he carried a sub-machine gun, with holstered pistol and a 2-cm weapon slung just in case—he didn’t want to be so close to the warehouse that he couldn’t cover both ends of the building with his peripheral vision.

Daun wrenched up a lid on the ground outside the building. It wasn’t locked shut. The tech stretched on the concrete pad, holding a light down in the cavity with one hand and reaching in with the other. Bob Barbour claimed this fusion bottle was the sole power source for the warehouse.

Fusion bottles didn’t fail, and the output of one was more than sufficient to power the building’s lights, sensors, and motor-driven trackways. Coke still found it hard to believe that there wasn’t at least a battery-operated emergency radio, despite Barbour’s assurances. If Bob was wrong, well, he was also ready to jam the transmission within a microsecond.

Niko Daun ran back, bent halfway over and flushing with excitement. “Okay, sir!” he said quickly. “Okay, whenever you want it.”

Coke keyed his helmet to channel one. “Go,” he said. “Out.”

“Roger,” said Johann Vierziger’s voice, a whisper like tendons rustling on dry bones. “Out.”

Coke checked all his weapons. “Niko,” he said, “why don’t you wait here. I’m going to wait by the door in case they open it when they hear the trucks.”

“No sir,” said the sensor tech. “I’m part of this team.” He closed the case holding his equipment and unslung his sub-machine gun.

“Glad to have you along,” Coke said with a quirked smile. He started around to the front of the warehouse, walking just inside the inner fenceline.

It wasn’t really true. Daun’s combat skills were coming along, but firefights wouldn’t ever be the boy’s strong suit. On the other hand, he was probably better than most of the guards they’d be facing in a moment. And anyway, Coke wasn’t about to tell the kid who’d performed splendidly that he’d be a fifth wheel in what came next.

Coke expected the first of the vehicles coming up the road to be a flatbed truck configured as a ram with a sloped steel bow and extra weight in back to add momentum. Instead he heard the hum of a jitney, one of those Sten Moden’s mechanic friend had supplied to the Frisians.