Path of the Tiger, стр. 437
‘Shit,’ Sharaf muttered. ‘I knew I should never have gone along with this madness. I knew it, I fuckin’ knew it!’
‘Look, this doesn’t mean we’re completely screwed,’ William said. ‘We may be up shit creek, but we’ve got a paddle or two, at least.’
‘How so?’
‘You did memorise the blueprint of the building like Zakaria told us to, yeah?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘Since Sigurd and his thugs likely know our plan, well, they’re expecting you on the floor above this one, and me on the floor above that. The thing is, I’m willing to bet that they don’t know that we know that they know our plan. Sorry if that started to sound a little convoluted, but you get what I’m saying, yeah?’
Sharaf nodded slowly, stroking his chin with his thumb and forefinger.
‘I believe I do, yes…’
‘So we can still take ‘em by surprise,’ William said, ‘if we move to a section they’re not expecting us to be in. Sure, it won’t be quite as much of a surprise as our planned Pearl Harbour-style attack out of the blue, but it’ll catch ‘em on their back feet nonetheless. We can turn the tables on our enemies if we act quickly and do the opposite of what they’re expecting us to do.’
Sharaf narrowed his eyes with focus, the corner of his mouth curving upwards as the cogs and gears of his brain whirred with well-oiled speed. After a few moments, he whipped a small dagger out of an ankle sheath and used it to hastily scratch a rough depiction of the few floors above and below them into the drywall.
‘We’re here, and you’re supposed to go here, and I’m meant to head this way,’ he said, tapping the crude architectural drawing with the point of his dagger. ‘But if I head down here, I should be able to rappel out of this window and get down two floors, and then come up behind whoever’s waiting in ambush for me here.’
‘Aye, that’ll work,’ William said. ‘And knowing Zakaria, I imagine that that’s what he’s planned. As for me, I’m thinking I could head up these stairs, and go two floors up. That way I’ll evade the Huntsmen or Alliance fighters who might be waiting for me in my former position. The only problem is the Huntsmen Board Members; without me waiting at my old spot to ambush them, they’ll have a much better chance of escaping.’
‘Not if we create a bottleneck that forces them to go your way,’ Sharaf said.
‘And how do we do that?’
‘You’ve got a couple of grenades, as do I. We just need to collapse some internal walls, which should be easy enough if we place our grenades properly and detonate them simultaneously. Remember, the elevator is down and will be down for a while. They have to take the stairs, and if we blow out the door here and create a blockage, they’ll have to go up your way.’
‘Excellent, let’s do it,’ William said, his heart drumming adrenalin-laced thunder through his chest.
They raced down the corridor, a sense of purpose adding drive and pace to their steps. After turning a few corners, their senses keenly attuned to their surroundings to detect the potential presence of enemies, they reached the doorway that they intended to demolish.
‘This is where we part ways,’ Sharaf said. ‘You know where you’re heading, right?’
‘I do.’
‘Put your grenade in this corner, and I’ll put mine in this one. The combined force of their explosion should be enough to cause the door to collapse, at least partially. On three you pull the pin, got it?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘One, two, three.’
As soon as Sharaf said the word ‘three’ they pulled the pins out of their grenades and stuffed them into their respective corners.
‘You’re on your own now, Gisborne.’
‘As are you, brother. Take care, and I’ll see you the other side,’ William said, a trace of hoarseness in his voice betraying the undiluted emotions swirling through his bloodstream.
The men briefly embraced and then they both sprinted off in opposite directions, their bodies dissolving into the undulating pools of red light and black shadows, leaving behind only an ominous silence, streaked with the faintest traces of echoed footsteps and sucked-in wisps of quickened breath … and then, in the dark, two grenades exploded as one.
68
BATTLE PART I
Hrothgar held his battle-axe loosely in his dominant hand – his left – and curled the fingers of his right around the pistol-grip of his sawed-off shotgun, keeping it extended in front of him, its twin barrels punctuating his vision as acutely as cataracts melded to his eyeballs. His forefinger rested lightly on the trigger, his tendons eager to release the fury of the buckshot-filled shells. The other shotgun was tucked into his belt, loaded and ready. Next to him walked the assassin, CC-105, armed with an MP5 submachine gun and clad in a torn business suit taken from the corpse of one of the dead board members. In front of them walked a row of Joao’s troops, each of whom was armed with an M-16 assault rifle.
Because of his towering seven-foot stature, Hrothgar was able to keep his shotgun raised above the heads of Joao’s troops, most of whom were of average height, and he would be able to fire over their heads in the event of a sudden gunfight.
Joao, armed with his gold-plated, diamond-studded Desert Eagle pistols, brought up the rear with two of his men, both of whom were walking backwards to maintain complete vigilance and cover.
On another floor, using her ninjutsu expertise to dart with swift silence through the shadows, and moving only when the red lights dimmed in their rhythmic ebb and flow of luminescence, was Kimiko. Her katana, forged by the great seventeenth-century master swordsmith Fujiwara Kanenaga, rested loose in her scabbard, while in her hands her bow – a modern composite, rather than a traditional bow – was ready to fire, with