Empire (Empire 1)

“So you couldn’t shoot us in the back, idiot. Use your brain. Or have you turned that over to Aldo Verus, too?”

“I think for myself.”

That was twice that Cole had mentioned Aldo Verus’s name, and neither time had the rebel denied knowing anything about him. But he had denied having anything to do with the assassination. So Verus was his boss of this army and the soldiers knew it.

“Guys like you are so angry that they can lie to you about guys like me and you believe it,” said Cole. “You can’t even conceive of the idea that maybe a guy becomes a soldier because he loves his country and is willing to die to keep it safe. No, you have to believe that guys like me are murderers looking for an excuse to kill. And yet you put on a uniform and you took up arms.”

“I’m nothing like you,” said the rebel.

“Right,” said Cole. “Because I trained to do my job right. And because I recognize that even my enemies are still human beings. Assholes, but human ones.”

Cat came back into the cabin. “Nothing else on this island. Nobody even bothered to shoot at me. I think they think we can’t get through their door.”

“Maybe we can’t,” said Cole.

“You can’t,” said the rebel.

Cole pushed on the crowbar. The wood splintered a little, but it also moved. The trap door had slid about a half inch.

Which meant it would probably slide farther. Far enough for the door to open.

“The question,” said Cole, “is this. Do we open it enough to toss a grenade down and kill anybody waiting for us? Or do we hope they trusted their mechanism here so much that they aren’t even bothering to defend it?”

“We throw a grenade and they aren’t there,” said Cat, “the grenade tells them we made it through and they come running.”

“On the other hand, we open this and they are there, they just toss a grenade up here and we’re dead.”

Cat pointed his thumb at the rebel. “One consolation is, he’s dead, too.”

“Collateral damage,” said Cole. To the rebel he said, “But your team doesn’t believe armies should ever cause collateral damage, don’t you?”

The rebel just glared at him.

“Safety first,” said Cole. “I’ll shove, you toss.”

Cat got out a grenade.

“Of course, I’ll be right here where the blast will still hit me,” said Cole.

“Well, don’t be there,” said Cat.

“I can’t open the trap door if I’m standing on it,” said Cole.

“You could try,” said Cat.

Cole went over to one of the dead rebels and dragged his body over to the set of slight gaps marking the end of the trap door. Cole shoved the crowbar under the body and lodged the angled end of the crowbar into the gap. Then he stepped over the body and started pushing on the other end of the crowbar. “Is it moving?” he asked.

“Are you pushing?” asked Cat.

Cole pushed hard enough that his feet slid on the floor.

So he tipped over a table and ran it up against the far wall. By bracing his feet against the end of the table, he kept himself from sliding. And now the trap door started to move.

“Anytime you feel like it,” said Cole.

He pushed farther. The trap door began to move smoothly.

A burst of machine-gun fire from inside the trap door shuddered the dead body in front of him and shoved it back into Cole’s face.