Chapter 3
The 6.5 Creedmoor round went through the gun slit and ended the DShK problem.
Hayes's comms went quiet for three seconds, which was three seconds longer than it normally took him to have something to say.
"Bunker's clear," I said. "You have a window. Move Miller."
They moved Miller.
The breach continued into the bunker complex itself — a tunnel system that the original intelligence package had documented partially and that turned out to extend further than the partial documentation suggested. Hayes led his element through the first two chambers and lost contact with my overwatch position as the tunnel turned east. I moved down from the ridge to the bunker entrance and followed, because the rifle that was useless in tight quarters had just saved the team's ability to function, and because Jonathan Cole was somewhere in the eastern section of a tunnel system that had not been fully mapped, and because I was the reason the mission was still operational.
The third chamber was where it ended and also where it did not end.
Hayes was pressed against the left wall, two operators against the right, and in the far doorway a man had Jonathan Cole by the collar with a weapon against his head and the specific expression of someone who has decided that his situation has narrowed to one remaining option.
"Drop the weapon," the captor shouted, his voice carrying the compression of a man in a confined space who has run out of alternatives. "Drop it or he dies."
Jonathan Cole was alive. He was frightened and he had been held for nine days and one side of his face showed the evidence of those nine days, but he was alive and standing and his eyes were tracking the room with the alertness of a man who had been a field officer long enough to understand that the next several seconds were going to matter more than the preceding nine days.
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Hayes had his weapon on the doorway. His two operators had weapons on the doorway. The geometry of the chamber meant that none of them had an angle that resolved cleanly without risk to Cole, and the captor understood this, which was why he was still standing.
I was at the back of the chamber with the rifle.
