The whistle-crash of the first shell ended the respite. The 155s came down with a terrifying noise-not as bad as the monster shells of the Crocodile, but unnerving all the same. He let five land to give the Quislings time to take cover, then nodded to Styachowski. They left their hideout.
They wriggled their way to a good view of the Kurian Tower, its white sides already smudged by the explosions. Valentine counted each shell burst; they arrived almost on the minute. After twenty had been fired, he grabbed Styachowski by the shoulder and they ran toward the tower, dodging their way through construction equipment and supplies. He heard one distant alarm whistle but ignored it. They made for the concrete bunker flanking the construction entrance to the tower. A scaffold with an electric elevator stood next to the entrance, on the other side of the bunker. Styachowski tore the colored tabs off a thick cylinder of a grenade, squatted listening to the fuse hiss-and threw it in the firing slit of the bunker.
"Hey!" someone inside shouted.
It would have been ideal if the next shell had landed at the same time as the grenade exploded, but they were seconds apart. The grenade went off first, followed by the louder, but farther off, explosion of the artillery shell.
Valentine had his own grenade to deal with. It was a green smoker. He pulled the pin and rolled it under a sluice on the steel curtain door of the construction entrance. It went off like two cats spitting at each other, and green smoke began to billow out from around the edges of the door. Valentine threw two more green smokers around the edges of the buildings. When the grenades were spewing he pulled the dinner bell from his bag and pulled out the sock he'd used to silence it. He rang it, loud and long.
"Gas! Gas! Gas!" he shouted. He rang the bell again.
"Gas! Gas! Gas!" Styachowski added, deepening her voice. She pulled out a pair of crowbars.
Valentine clanged the dinner bell for all he was worth, then tried the electric lift. No juice.
"We climb," he said.
Valentine went up first while Styachowski covered him, shrouded with green smoke. The gas warning had been taken up by men inside the building. Valentine heard a klaxon go off, three angry buzzes, followed by the triple "gas" call over the PA system within. He took the crowbars from Styachowski and pulled her up.
Valentine went up the scaffold to the platform on the first level. Styachowski joined him and they put their crowbars to work, pulling at a metal screen blocking a window. It was more of an iron grate than true bars, designed to explode an RPG aimed at the window. Nothing but cardboard stuck in a fitting for thick glass closed the window beyond, but the bars blocked them out.
Styachowski roared in frustration.
Valentine tucked his crowbar nearer hers. Together they pulled, shoulder to shoulder. Styachowski's muscles felt like machine-tool steel against his.
"Graaaaaa!" Styachowski heaved. She set her leg against the tower face. They pulled again-
The grate gave way, pulling the masonry at the top and bottom of the narrow window with it. Styachowski pulled an opening big enough for them to climb through.
Eyes wild and burning, Styachowski swung through, knocking the cardboard away. Wisps of green smoke could be seen within, and the gas alarm was still bleating its triple call every ten seconds. The tower's interior was still being worked on; the walls were nothing but cinder block coated with primer paint.
Valentine felt something crackling inside his mind, like a man running a sparkler firework across the field of an empty stadium. Or maybe two or three, waving and parting and separating like schooling fish. With them were the colder, darker impressions of Reapers.
"Downstairs! They're down, in the basement, heading north."
"How can you tell? I don't hear anything but that friggin' alarm," Styachowski asked from the other side of the room, covering the hall with her gun.
"I just do. Find the stairs."
The tower appealed to some kind of Kurian sensibility for architecture; the "stairs" were a tight ramp-spiral in a corner under the tallest part of the tower. Valentine could hear footsteps climbing the stairs above in between the klaxon bursts; the Quislings or construction workers or whoever were sensibly getting as high as they could above what they thought to be lethal fumes.
There was a change in the air as soon as they got underground. They came to a corridor; the lighting fixtures and flooring told Valentine it was pre-2022 construction. A man in a uniform with a gas mask over his face was leading another toward the stairs, the one behind had his hand on his leader. Neither could see much through the eyeholes in the dusty old masks, and they were going down the corridor like they were playing blind man's bluff. One had a radio bumping against his chest.
The Kurians were still below and moving away somewhere. Where was that rathole to Xray-Tango's old headquarters?
Valentine and the Bear hurried down the corridor, catching up to the men. Valentine heard the radio crackle.
"Townshend, Townshend, what's the situation? Is there gas in the tower?"
As Valentine passed him he lashed out with his fist, landing a solid jab in the radio-wearer's breadbasket. The man went to his knees, gasping. Valentine caught the other under the jaw with the butt of his machine pistol.
"Help-haaaaaaaaaaa-help," the radio man on his knees gasped into the mike. His battle for air sounded authentic enough. Valentine kicked out sideways, catching him in the back of the head. The Quisling's head made a sound like a spiked volleyball as it bounced off the wall, and he went face-first on top of the radio, unconscious or dead.
"Val, here," Styachowski said, checking a room at the end of the corridor.
It was a utility room. Snakes of cable conduit ran up from the floor and across the ceiling; boxes and circuit breakers lined the wall. Another stairway descended from a room beyond. The steel door had been torn off its hinges. Valentine recognized the nail marks of a Reaper. He picked up the mental signature of the fleeing Kurians again, mis time clearer.
"You ready for this?" he asked Styachowski.