Path of the Tiger, стр. 436
At this point, Joao stepped in and interrupted.
‘This don’ matter now, samurai gal. What matter now’s gettin’ Gisborne, d’ Tiger, an’ killin’ him friends. An’ if your plans be right, him friends be comin’ up d’ stairs in a minute, maybe less. We gots t’ get into position for d’ ambush.’
Hrothgar grinned savagely.
‘Yes … and after we kill them and capture Gisborne, we’ll have all the time in the world for talk. But tonight is for blood, for battle! And that blood will be on our blades, and it will be that of the Rebels. Are you ready, Snow Leopard? Are you ready to fight alongside us and slaughter your former friends?’
Tears rimmed Kimiko’s eyes, and her hands trembled with the force of the overwhelming emotion that was gushing through her veins.
‘Yes,’ she whispered, choking on a knotty sob as she notched an armour-piercing arrow to her bow. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Good. We’ll start by killing their communications.’
Hrothgar walked over to a closet at the end of the room and opened it up. Inside there were no shelves, for the entire interior was taken up with the machinery and circuitry of an enormous electromagnetic pulse generator.
‘The Rebels are about to get complete and permanent radio silence, whether they want it or not, haha! This little treasure is about to fry every single electronic device in this building.’
With his lips twisted into a wicked grin, Hrothgar flipped the switch.
***
‘William! We have to change the plan slightly. Sigurd knew we were coming, and if we continue with the original plan we’ll be sticking our feet right into a very dangerous beartrap.’
William froze in his tracks as Zakaria’s voice crackled through his earpiece.
‘You’re certain, brother?’ he asked.
‘Positively. I’ve already told Awang to move to a different position to cover an alternate path of retreat. What I need you to do now is inform Sharaf that things are changing, and proceed to—’
Before Zakaria could finish, the radio fell abruptly silent.
‘Zakaria! Ahoy, Zakaria, come in!’
No matter what William tried, however, the walkie-talkie remained completely dead. A tide of fear, a liquid rush of alternating frigidity and searing heat, tore through his every vein, tingling its wintery chill on the end of every nerve ending in his body, with its frost shards cutting and biting with icy vehemence, even as invisible fire, like that of a branding iron, scorched his skin from the inside out. With a sinking feeling and the concentrated ponderousness of a cannonball materialising in the pit of his stomach, he knew that he should have expected something to go wrong; however well-thought out plans were, things always went awry. Yet here, in this case, everything had seemed so watertight, and with such meticulous attention paid to every detail, the likelihood of anything going wrong had seemed minimal. Now, however, that wispy sliver of a chance had materialised into a solid and immovable force.
Sharaf was striding up ahead, about to round the corner. His form, melded with the shadows and revealed in half-seconds in the ominous flashing of the red emergency lights, was as that of a phantom, a ghost pushing through the membrane of the present.
‘Sharaf! Wait!’ William hissed, all too conscious of how harsh and intrusive his voice sounded against the looming silence; an open wound billowing out clouds of blood in shark-infested waters.
Sharaf paused, hurling an annoyed glance over his shoulder, the angle of his raised left eyebrow within the eyeholes of the Batmask sharp with the volatile flash point of his temper.
‘Damn it Gisborne, what is it?’
‘We have to stop.’
Sharaf spun about on his heels, his fingers tightening on the grip of his weapon and the contours of his face becoming harder, taking on a geometry of sharpness.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ he growled. ‘You of all people know how important time is on this mission!’
‘We’ve been compromised. Sigurd knows we’re coming.’
The quiet wrath still burned like a subterranean fire in Sharaf’s eyes, but a subtle clenching of his jaw muscles revealed disquietude behind his façade of bravado.
‘What? How do you know that?!’
‘Zakaria’s just told me, mate. The problem is, the radio died before he could tell me where we’re supposed to go next, and I can’t for the life of me get it to turn back on.’
‘Fucking idiot, you probably forgot to charge the battery,’ Sharaf muttered. ‘Here, let me try mine.’ He unclipped his radio from his belt and fiddled with it for a few moments, the frown of anger on his face deepening when he realised that it was not merely a careless blunder on William’s part that had caused the radio to malfunction.
‘Well that’s just great, isn’t it?’ Sharaf growled, flinging his dead radio away in disgust. ‘Mine’s gone too. I’m guessing Sigurd and his fuckers have used some sort of EMP to disable every piece of tech in this building.’
‘There’s another plan?’ Sharaf spluttered, half astonished, half furious. ‘Why the hell wasn’t I told about it?’
‘Forget about that, brother. Look, I’m as surprised as you are about that, but all that matters now is that Sigurd knows that we’re on our way, and we have to assume that they know which way we’re coming, and where each of us is going to be. If we continue with the current plan, we’ll be walking headlong into a trap of Sigurd’s making … and both you and I know exactly what sort of odds are involved in making it out of that alive.’
Sharaf had obviously had his feathers ruffled and his pride stung, but at the same time he comprehended the urgency of the situation, and was an experienced enough soldier to