Empire (Empire 1)

hen he signed off and turned off his transmitter.

Cat slid down the wall to a squatting position. “How long will it take a strike force to get here?”

“I don’t know,” said Cole. “If they come from Nevada or Montana, at least an hour.”

“Carrier off the coast—the Marines might get here fastest.”

“I don’t mind getting my ass saved by the Marines,” said Cole. “Long as they save my ass.”

“If the bad guys are evacuating—”

“In order to flood the whole place?”

“I’ve done enough swimming,” said Cat.

“So—before we move on, what’s our goal here?”

“Stay breathing,” said Cat.

“We could have stayed at the cabin,” said Cole.

Cat thought about that for a few seconds. “Well, we want higher ground if they’re going to flood the place. And my guess is, if we try to go out the front door, they’ll be waiting for us there. Why hunt us down if they know we’ve got to come to them?”

“So we want to go up. If there’s any place high enough in here to stay out of the water.”

“And I was thinking,” said Cat, “maybe Aloe Vera’s here somewhere. Course, he’d be crazy to be here where he couldn’t deny knowing about it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to deny it,” said Cole. “Maybe he’s proud of it.”

“Here’s where the ordnance is coming from,” said Cat. “Maybe the orders come from here, too. Guy builds this army, don’t you think he’d want to run it?”

“So we’re looking for Verus?”

“Hell no,” said Cat. “We’re looking for command and control. Wipe it out in advance of the main assault.”

It was elementary. Wipe out enemy command and control—it’s what Special Forces were supposed to do in advance of an attack. But he’d never been in an invasion. He’d always worked on hearts and-minds, recon, small-group assaults. Cat, however, had been there for Iraq in 2003. Different experience, so different stuff comes to mind in a crisis.

Still, thought Cole: I should have thought of it.

“If we do happen to find him,” said Cole, “we need him alive. For the cameras.”

“I think his dead body does the same job,” said Cat.

“Better to pull him out of a hole.”

“Like Saddam.”

“Meanwhile,” said Cole, “I wonder what’s waiting around this corner. You got any grenades left?”

“In my pack,” said Cat. “Floating in that tunnel.”

Cole dropped to the floor and rolled out into the corridor, keeping his weapon pointed down the hall.

There was nothing there. Just more ramp going up and another turn.

“Goes up,” said Cat behind him.

“Just the direction we wanted to go.” Cole got up and ran up the slope. Cat followed him.