Duncan rolled on the floor and stepped away in a crouch, with his M11 at the ready. Damien had landed on the hangar floor on all fours, but was already picking himself up. The man rolled his neck, freeing up his cervical vertebrae with loud clacking and popping noises. “That was a good one, Tommy. Very slick. Didn’t know you went in for the chop-socky action, but I suppose I should have guessed.”
Duncan stayed silent in the dark, watching Damien search for him. The man was going the wrong way. Duncan could sneak out of the room and escape, but he wanted to end this fight with Damien dead, or at least in severe pain. He crept up the side of the nearest pallet and squatted down on the top of the crates stacked on it. In a crouch, he moved to the next pallet that was also stacked with wooden crates. He would have to be careful. He knew that some of the pallets contained cardboard boxes that wouldn’t likely support his weight. Damien had moved further toward the front of the hangar. At least the Irishman had the good sense now to stop talking and giving his position away in the dark, while he searched for Duncan.
Duncan lost sight of the Irish Gen Y man in the dark, but he continued to make his way across the floor of the hangar by taking the high road on top of the piles of stacked equipment. Duncan was about to delicately test the surface of the next pallet with his toes to determine whether it contained more crates or softer cardboard boxes, when Damien popped up right next to him and slashed out at Duncan’s ankles. Duncan leapt forward over the man, slicing out at the man, from an upside down position in the air and scoring a long slash across Damien’s back. They both dropped their knives—Duncan from the impact and Damien from the pain—and Duncan completed his flip, landing off balance on his feet and stumbling forward into the dark. He stopped himself from falling with his hands touching down on the slick concrete, and he continued running into the deeper recesses the shadows. His ankle was screaming at him from the abuse.
Damien shouted in pain from the long diagonal gash on his back. “That’s it, you fookin tosser. I’m going to make you cry before I’m done with you.” He squatted down and picked up his knife, and then he stalked into the hangar again, looking for Duncan.
Duncan stayed where he was, his hand on the piece of machinery behind him, watching the Irishman hunting him before disappearing—in the wrong direction—into the dark again. Duncan turned to look at the thing he was touching and smiled in the dark. One of us is going to be crying.
25.
Post 3, Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH
Outside the massive steel door, the M1A3 Abrams tank was rolling to a stop. Still classified as in design, the experimental tank weighed and looked like a regular M1A2 Abrams tank, but it had been fitted the latest technology and experimental weapons, as well as a remote-controlled .50 caliber machine gun mounted on the top of the turret. The vehicle had been driven up to New Hampshire on the back of a speeding flatbed truck with an Army escort of Humvees.
At the end of the short paved road leading to the hangar door of the Central section of the former Manifold base, the soldiers had stopped the flatbed and backed the tank down its folding ramp. Then the vehicle had raced at its top speed of 45 mph down the short private road to the massive steel security door they had been told to expect. The escort soldiers remained on the main road, while only the skeleton tank crew of two men (where the Abrams normally took four) traveled to the hangar door. General Keasling had been extremely specific when giving them his orders. They were to take just the two men in the tank to the steel security door and then blow the thing sky high with the tank’s main gun and its 120 mm shells. One shot would do it. Then they were to sit tight in the tank and wait for further orders.
It was the weirdest mission either man had ever been on, but Sergeant David Wallace and Captain Peter Jesse were both Army men through and through. Both the enlisted man and the officer were used to bizarre orders and sequences of events that made little to no sense. That was the Army. Being ordered to blow up giant steel doors in the wilds of New Hampshire would have only started to surprise them if they had been asked to do it while wearing clown outfits.
Captain Jesse sighted in on the door. He checked his scopes for motion and infrared. They couldn’t see through the thick security door, but they could scan the trees around the tank to search for hostiles. Keasling had stressed that this was a full on terrorist incident and good men were trapped inside the facility, with the possibility of multiple hostiles both inside and outside the base. With no movement and no heat signatures on the infrared larger than a ground squirrel, Captain Jesse determined they were good to go.
“Wallace, sit tight. I’m about to fire main gun on my mark.”