Chapter 25

Ingmar and a substantially calmer Dr. Montoya listened to Raymond's description of the situation and his recommended plan to counter-attack as soon as the enemy gunners tried another approach. There was general agreement, and I was dispatched upstairs to tell Max and Roald. Aurora and Edward were sent up later, with instructions to maintain a lookout for three hours to allow Max and Roald to nap in place. Brenda went downstairs into the garage to relieve Umberto.

The day wore on and we all catnapped when we could.

I wondered whether the enemy had night-vision goggles, like ours. If not, we'd have a substantial advantage if they were waiting for nightfall to come at us again.

I wondered whether it was possible that we had just scared them off for good? We'd killed three of them, and they hadn't laid a glove on any of us, and they probably knew it.

No dice. They'd be back. They'd come back stronger, probably, and more cautiously.

Brooke Hospital -- our haven. Our Mecca. Big. Thick walls. Defensible.

But -- maybe coming here had been a big mistake.

Nothing happened all day. Everybody managed to grab two or three hours of fitful sleep, but nobody got much real rest. When nightfall came, Edward moved around the building, distributing night-vision goggles to everyone at a guard post. We'd heavily barricaded the interior of the building's main entrance and had made as certain as we could that all other ground-floor entrances were blocked. The garage doors were secured from inside, and although they were not made of heavy metal, they afforded some minimal protection against attack.

Raymond had traded off with Umberto on the Bradley. The plan was that, next time we left the building, Umberto would be their team's driver and Raymond would man the guns -- both the coax and the chain gun.

Umberto raised no objection. He knew -- we all knew -- that he had missed everything he'd shot at.

Brenda would shift over to my Bradley and serve as gunner. I would continue to drive.

Martin Kazner came down in the elevator at one point and looked over the array in the garage area. One of the generators was functioning by then, and we had power in the kitchen and on one elevator bank, as well as electric lights that we were mostly keeping turned off.

When the generator had first been turned on, scattered lights all over the building had come on, causing the generator to overload and go off line immediately. We all ran around turning off lights and machinery wherever we could find them. It was tricky, avoiding lights that had been turned on at the time power had failed the night of the Virus. Finally, we found the main breaker panel for the building and discovered -- wonder of wonders -- that it was clearly labeled. So we shut off the power centrally to all except the circuits we wanted to use. Even in areas with power, we had lights turned way down for security purposes.

Not for the first time, we all said a prayer of thanks that the Virus had come at night. If, as seemed clear, this had been a worldwide event, the true chaos must have occurred in Europe, Asia and Africa, where it would have come in daylight.

Our upstairs observers were instructed not to fire on any approaching enemy unless they were within 100 yards when first seen. If anyone was spotted farther away, the approach was supposed to be communicated to Martin Kazner at his fourth-floor communications post. Martin would then assure that anyone not on a walkie-talkie at that moment would get the word via Edward Wilson, his tireless runner/communicator.

Downstairs, we had cleared access to a third garage-entrance door, far on the opposite side of the building, in case it became necessary to launch a counter-attack in the opposite direction.

At three a.m., Max Coward called down from his machine gun post on the higher floor upstairs. "I saw some movement, way off," he said.

"Hear that?" Martin said into the walkie-talkie. He got acknowledgements from Roald -- in a different room upstairs, and from Umberto in the garage. Edward was sent to wake up all the others, and to tell them to man their positions.

"Max... Anything?"

"They're coming," Max said. "Maybe a quarter-mile. I can't tell how many. Maybe about six, but I can't really tell."

"Moving fast? Slow?"

"Slow. Trying to stay behind cover, but there isn't much. Slow."

"Can you see them, Roald?"

"No. Nothing."

"He couldn't, from where he is," Max said. They're out of his line of sight. The building's in his way. They're way off, left."

"Left of the entrance? Looking out?"

"Right," Max said. "I mean -- correct. They're closing. But slow."

"Can you tell about... what they got? Weapons?"

"No vehicles that I can see," Max said. "On foot. But what they're carrying? I can't tell."

By now, Brenda, Umberto, Raymond and I were in the Bradleys, ready to roll. The angle of attack the enemy had chosen didn't expose our garage exit points to direct fire. We could at least expect to roll out and up the ramp without being subjected to a direct hit.

I got back out and ran over to Raymond's position at the other Bradley's gun turret. "Hey, Raymond!... What if one of us went out the back? Around the hospital, and, y'know -- flanked 'em?"

"It's a good idea, Carter, except we've never been out there. Hell, I'm not even sure how easy it is to drive around this building, in the back. It's only a good idea if we had clear sailing, around the far side and toward the enemy."

"You think they could check it out for us -- from upstairs?"

"I think we're going to be ordered out of here in minutes," he said. "I think it's too late now for anything fancy."

"OK," I said, and went back to my post.

"What?" Brenda said, from her turret position on my Bradley.

"We were talking about, maybe going out the back, with one Bradley," I said. "But we don't know enough, yet, about what's back there, maybe blocking the way."

"You didn't look back there -- last time you were here?" she asked.

"Actually, I think I did," I told her, "but I don't remember, well enough to risk it."

Upstairs, Roald and Bridgett were moving their 50-caliber machine gun to a room closer to Max's wing of the building, so that they would have a field of fire from the direction the enemy was approaching.

Ingmar, Emily Kazner and Janice Pennington, armed with night-vision goggles and automatic rifles, were on the roof.

Dr. Montoya and Uncle Harry were with us in the garage, ready to open the doors so we could go out smokin' when the time came, and ready to close the doors behind us.

Geneva had the four little guys under her care, sheltered in a heavily fortified position on the fourth floor. Martin Kazner and Edward were our fourth-floor control center, with Edward peering out of a window, yards away from Martin but within earshot, where the boy could serve as Martin's view of the fight.

"Two hundred yards, now," Roald said into his walkie-talkie. "They've got the rocket launcher... Maybe two. I think they're setting up a mortar."

"How many?" It was Martin.

There was a pause. "I see eight -- no -- nine men," Roald said. "... Max? You see any more?"

"I can still only see six," Max said. "No! Wait... I see eight, also."

"What's the ground like, where they are?" Raymond asked from the garage. "Is it open? Can we buzz them where they are now?"

"It's mostly open," Roald said, but there's a fountain out there, and some little -- walls, like. Maybe two feet high. Decorative walls, like. But they look solid. It would slow you down, a lot, going over them."

"No open ground?"

"You could drive to where they are, yes," Roald clarified, "It just wouldn't be a straight shot. You'd have to do some zigzagging."

"They're not moving too fast," I hollered over at Umberto from my position inside the Bradley.

"Let's run upstairs and take a look." I didn't ask Raymond for permission, and neither did Umberto.

We just went. Fast.

"Make it quick!" Raymond hollered after us. "Two minutes! No more!"

We ran up three flights of stairs and found our way through a dark corridor to a window facing the correct direction. It was hard to see the bad guys, but we weren't looking at them, except to see the direction from which they were coming. We were looking at the array of pavement, and low-slung decorative structures like the fountain, and those little walls Roald had described. I gestured to Umberto, with hand-movements, how I thought we could traverse the space between us and them.