Looking perfectly casual, Edilio slung his knapsack off his shoulder and began rummaging inside. He called over to a kid named Steve, one of his soldiers. “Hey, Steve, man, where’s my Snickers bar? I had it right here in my backpack.”
Steve frowned and headed over. The pockets of his cargo pants were bulging.
Edilio drew a gun—too big, too brightly colored, and too plastic to be real from his backpack. He pumped it once, leveled it at waist level, and fired.
A thin stream of watered-down yellow paint sprayed thirty feet.
At the same time Steve drew twin cans of spray paint from his pants, aimed, and fired.
Edilio and Steve both sprayed in a circle, twirling, hitting kids and cars and foliage.
“There!” Sam yelled.
Bug was almost completely invisible at night. But a lot less invisible with a spray of yellow paint across his chest.
Bug bolted, looking like nothing more than a dancing, racing streak of fluorescence. He pelted away, yelling, “Open the door! Open the door!”
Dekka took a stance. “Make it look good, but not too good,” Sam whispered.
Suddenly Bug tripped. Gravity had ceased to exist, but he stumbled out of Dekka’s range, regained his feet, and hit the door.
“Nice,” Sam said.
The door opened, and Bug fell into the darkness beyond.
“You think he heard?” Edilio asked.
“Yeah. He’ll be blurting it to Caine right about now. So we go in hard and fast.”
“How?” Edilio asked.
“Right through the wall,” Sam said grimly. “Howard! Orc!” he yelled. He pointed at the turbine room door, which had slammed shut behind Bug. “Take out that door. Edilio, grab your best guy and go with them. Make lots of noise. Make it look good. Everyone else with me.”
“Lots of noise,” Edilio echoed in a worried voice.
Sam tightened his grip on Edilio’s shoulder. “If I were ever going to have a Mexican sidekick, you’d be the guy.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Ready?”
“Nope.”
“So let’s go,” Sam said. Then, louder, “Let’s go!”
They raced for the door that Bug had taken. Across the parking lot at a crazy run. Edilio, Steve, and one other soldier, half pushing Orc ahead of them as Howard drifted strategically slower and fell behind in relative safety.
Sam, Dekka, and the remaining soldiers kept pace, then peeled off, dodging left and racing along the building.
Taylor stayed behind with two guys guarding the rear.
Orc ran straight for the door. He plowed into it like a bull, full-speed, heedless. The sound of the impact echoed around the parking lot.
The metal door crumpled but did not give. Orc reared back and kicked it with his stone foot. He fell on his back, but the door flew open.
Gunfire erupted from inside.
Orc stayed flat. The others dodged aside.
Edilio began firing through the doorway, an earsplitting din. The muzzle flash was like a strobe light.
Sam and Dekka raced away, hugging the wall.
“About here, I think,” Sam said, panting.
The two of them stepped away from the wall, and Sam raised his hands.
Blistering green fire exploded from Sam’s upraised palms. The brick wall glowed red. Almost immediately the masonry began to crack, and then Dekka made her own move. Gravity beneath the wall ceased to exist.
The wall began to crack. Flakes of mortar and stone flew straight up in the air. Some of the smaller chunks caught fire and burned as they rose. The wall was coming apart, but too slowly.
“Orc!” Sam yelled.
The boy-monster rolled to his feet and came at a rush.
“Dekka, off!” Sam yelled.
The green fire died, gravity returned with a rain of dirt and gravel, and through it ran Orc. He hit the weakened wall with one massive shoulder. The cinder block collapsed in like a fallen pie crust.
Orc backed up, then hit it again and he was through. Sam dashed after him, but unlike Orc he was not immune to the heat he had himself created. It was like rushing into an oven. He brushed against a bit of red-hot brick and yelped in pain.
Sam froze.
Inside, beyond the cinderblock wall, was not the control room. Instead of breaking through to the control room and catching Caine off guard, he was in an outer room filled with old-style metal filing cabinets.
The whole plan had just fallen apart. The diversion was now pointless.
Dekka was right behind Sam. “So much for the element of surprise,” she said.
No time for regrets, Sam told himself, but it was a bitter moment. Surprise might have saved lives. Surprise might have allowed them to rescue the hostages.
“The next wall should be easier,” Sam said. “Take cover!”
Dekka jumped behind a row of filing cabinets as Sam attacked the inner wall. The temperature in the filing room went from stifling to dangerous in seconds.
Sam’s light burned away paint and wallboard in a few seconds, but beyond it, inside the wall, was a barrier of dull, gray metal.
“It’s a radiation shield,” Sam yelled to Dekka. “Lead.”
The lead melted quickly at the touch of Sam’s probing fire. Liquid lead dribbled down the wall and pooled, instantly igniting anything it touched.
But now the file room was too hot for anyone. The air was gone, and Sam was woozy, unfocused, forgetting what he was doing.
“Orc! Grab him!” Dekka yelled as she dove back outside, gasping for breath.
Sam felt himself lifted off his feet. It was curiously pleasant. Outside, the shock of cold air on his face snapped him back to reality.