Earthblood

The same thing happened, but with the additional warning that they had only two more attempts to get the security code right.

“We’re like hogs on ice here,” said Mac, fists clenched. “Don’t even have a pocket knife between us. If it’s the ones took out the guards, we’re all dead meat.”

“Numbers,” said Kyle suddenly. “The letters are too obvious. Too obvious for a devious bastard like Zelig.”

“Numbers?” said Jim. “Number for each letter, starting from the top of the alphabet. So J is ten. That one or zero? Then nine, then thirteen and then eight. Ten, nine, thirteen and eight. That’s six different digits.”

“Try them, for fuck’s sake!” hissed Jeff Thomas. “They’re getting nearer.”

The voices had stopped, but the boots were closing in.

Jim pressed one and zero and nine and one again, watching the screen above the keys.

“Incorrect! Warning, you have only one more attempt to enter the code correctly.”

“This way!” The voice was distinct, putting the speaker only a couple of doors away from them, along the corridor.

It didn’t sound like a friendly voice, and Jim Hilton wasn’t about to take a chance on it.

“No,” he said quietly. “The last digits. Must be. Zelig wouldn’t have given all four letters otherwise. Must be the last digits of the four number equivalents. Here we go.”

It was a dead-end corridor.

No place to hide.

No place to run.

“Do it,” urged Mac.

“Zero, nine, three, eight.”

For a dozen heartbeats, nothing happened. The screen went blank, then two words appeared on it: “Code accepted.”

Then there was a hissing of powerful hydraulic gears, behind the reinforced walls of concrete and steel, and the heavy door slid sideways.

“Quick,” said Jim.

They rushed and jostled inside the familiar lobby to their quarters. Mac was last, though, turning and stabbing a finger onto the red emergency button that closed the door again. After a moment’s hesitation, it began to move shut, agonizingly slowly.

Jim stood near the shrinking gap, peering into the passage outside. He saw a flicker of movement and heard shouting.

“Come on,” he urged in a whisper, but the door still stood seven or eight feet open.

A rough, strident voice called out. “Hold it!”

A man appeared around the bend of the corridor, with a sawed-down scattergun cradled in his arms. He wore casual clothes, looking like a weekend hunter. Jim had time to notice a plaid shirt with a thermal vest underneath it and that the stranger was heavily bearded and long-haired.

“Hold the bastard door!”

The gun was leveled, barely fifty feet away.

Jim Hilton was frozen, aware that the gap was still five feet, and that an ominous grinding sound came from the door’s gearing.

It was moving more slowly.

There were half a dozen men now in the passage, all holding firearms, yelling menacingly.

Then the door stopped, jammed open.

Chapter Thirteen

The gap was about the width of a man’s shoulders, but to Jim’s horrified eyes it looked as though a truck could be driven through it.

There was the boom of a gun, and he ducked away as lead starred out, mostly hitting the steel door with a crunching blow.

“Get the bastards!” The voice from the corridor had a chilling, murderous quality.

Mac, at Jim’s elbow, jabbed again and again at the button to close the door. “Close, you son of a bitch!” he screamed.

There was the crackle of small arms, underlaid with the deeper sound of shotguns. Several rounds sliced through the gap, exploding against one of the walls of the lobby, over the heads of the Aquila’s crew.

A number of high-velocity bullets struck the door, ringing like a gong. Their collective impact made the whole structure shudder, jarring the jammed gears and freeing the powerful hydraulic mechanism so that it began to close again.

“Keep down!” yelled Jim Hilton, seeing that Pete and Jed were about to get up.

The indecision had gone, and he could feel the adrenaline surging through his body. His hand ached with the desire to hold a pistol and return fire at the butchers gathered outside the door.

The gap shrank to a few inches, and then vanished to nothing.

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