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John retrieved his MA2B and covered her. Fred and Linda entered and slipped out of their coveralls,then donned their helmets.
“Nav marker is moving,” Linda reported. “Mark 270, elevation ten meters, twenty . . . thirty-five andholding. I’d say that’s the top floor.”
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Sam entered, pulled the door shut behind him, and then jammed the lock. “All clear out there.”
The inner door clicked. “Door’s open,” Kelly said.
John, Kelly, and Sam slipped out of their coveralls as Fred and Linda covered them. John activated themotion and thermal displays in his helmet. The target sight glowed as he raised his MA2B.
“Go,” John said.
Kelly pushed open the door. Linda stepped in and to the right. John entered and took the left.
Two guards were seated behind the lobby’s reception desk. Another man, without a uniform, stood infront of the desk, waiting to be helped; two more uniformed men stood by the elevator.
Linda shot the three near the desk. John eliminated the targets by the elevator.
Five rounds—five bodies hit the floor.
Fred entered and policed the bodies, dragging them behind the counter.
Kelly moved to the stairwell, opened the door, and gave the all-clear signal.
The elevator pinged and its doors opened. They all wheeled, rifles leveled . . . but the car was empty.
John exhaled, then motioned them to take the stairs; Kelly took point. Sam brought up the rear. Theysilently went up nine double flights of stairs.
Kelly halted on an upper landing. She pointed to the interior of the building, then pointed up.
John detected faint blurs of heat on the twelfth floor. They’d have to pick a better route, a way in that noone would expect.
John opened the door. There was an empty hallway. No targets.
He went to the elevator doors and pried them open. Then he turned on his black suit’s cooling elementsto mask his thermal signature. The others did the same . . . and faded from his thermal imaging display.
John and Sam climbed up the elevator cable. John glanced down: a thirty-meter plunge into darkness.He might survive that fall. His bones wouldn’t break, but there would be internal damage. And it wouldcertainly compromise their mission. He tightened his grip on the cable and didn’t look down again.
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When they had climbed up the last three floors, they braced themselves in the corners by the closedelevator door. Kelly and Fred snaked up the cable after them. They braced in the far corners to overlaptheir fields of fire. Linda came up last. She climbed as far as she could, hooked her foot on a cross brace,and hung upside down.
John held up three fingers, two, then one, and then he and Sam silently pulled open the elevator doors.
There were five guards standing in the room. They wore light body armor and helmets and carried older-model HMG-38 rifles. Two of them turned.
Kelly, Fred, and Linda opened fire. The walnut paneling behind the guards became pockmarked withbullet holes and was spattered with blood.