Author's Note: Chapter seven. I'm sorry that this one isn't very funny. When I started this story, my intention was that it would be strictly humorous, but the plot that wound up developing is taking a slightly different route from that. The whole point is to showcase the Joes from an unusual perspective, but that means acknowledging all the kinds of things that the Joes have to deal with, including the nasty parts. Don't worry—this should be probably the angstiest chapter in the whole thing.
Rating: T for language (and in this chapter, violence)
Disclaimer: G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.
Chapter Seven: Raiding the Fridge
Annie was running on the track. Again. An Alabamese Rottweiler was behind her, yelping and growling through his green balaclava. She thought she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and it stank. She sucked in air and tried to speed up, but exhaustion had turned her muscles to jelly and she pitched forward onto the track.
The Rottweiler was on her in seconds—but Mutt was there, tugging on its leash and pulling it away from her. He was wearing his facemask and helmet, but there was a false beard stuck on over it. Annie stifled a laugh, and Mutt frowned, loosening his grip on the Rottweiler's leash. The dog barked and leapt for her again, drooling fiercely through the balaclava that was still haphazardly shoved on over its muzzle.
Something was wailing in the distance. Annie thought it sounded like a bit like an electric guitar, and Mutt appeared to agree: "I want my MTV," he observed, forcing the Rottweiler to heel.
Then the wailing intensified, the dream shattered, and Annie fell out of bed.
The bunkroom was mostly dark, but a glowing beam was flickering confusedly over the walls: flashlights, she realized belatedly. Eighty-Six was standing by her bunk with a Maglite in one hand, the light bobbing as she frantically tugged on one boot. The wailing sound was there too, but it sure wasn't a guitar solo. Annie resisted the urge to clamp her hands over her ears.
"Come on, get up!" Eighty-Six called. There was a thunder of feet in the corridor, and the door slammed open, revealing a Joe neither of them knew. Annie instinctively grabbed for her bedclothes before she remembered that she'd been sleeping in a tank top and shorts.
The Joe was carrying a flashlight as well: he'd clearly been on command-of-quarters duty. Annie guessed by the shrieking alarm that this wasn't routine, though, and his appearance confirmed it. Sweat dampened his white headband, and the strange red sash slung over one shoulder had a pair of nunchucks tucked into it.
"We're under attack," he said shortly. "Intruders on the first two levels. Move!"
Annie dropped the bedclothes and scrambled to her feet as best she could. All around her, the bunks were creaking as women tumbled out of them and grabbed the essentials they needed, falling into line and hurrying out the door towards their various assigned posts. She shoved her feet into her boots as she tried to think back on the briefings she'd been given.
If the Pit was under attack—and it was extremely unlikely, the commanding officers had said—there was no such thing as a quartermaster any more. All of the QMs reverted to their secondary specialties and fell in with the rest of the defensive corps. Eighty-Six, who'd had training as a medic, was already out the door; Annie knew she would be heading for the infirmary. But PFC Annie Gorshin was a qualified rifleman who'd narrowly missed making it into sniper school. She and the rest of the grunts would draw weapons from the armory and fan out to take up strategic defense points throughout the Pit. Enemies on the first two levels . . . she knotted her bootlaces haphazardly, grabbed her emergency bag from under her bunk, and dashed for the door. They had the training level and the motor pool. Probably heading for the war room. Her breath came fast as she raced down the corridor.
But enemies in the Pit? How did they even get in? General Hawk had said that those Cobra people knew where some of their installations were, including some of the multiple Pits that the team moved between, but security was thicker than Cross-Country's accent. A Cobra agent shouldn't have been able to get within firing distance of the Pit, let alone force a whole team of intruders past the motor pool.
Annie had been under fire before. She'd been posted on US bases in unfriendly territory—Guantanamo and Borovia came to mind—and cooked out of camps in Afghanistan where, despite the arms they were giving the mujahideen, nobody was ever really safe. But when the Pit was under attack, it was almost worse than that. It had an unreal quality that Borova couldn't top.
The emergency power had come on, bathing the corridors in their usual yellow-white fluorescent glow, but she was surrounded by other sleepy-eyed soldiers who were nevertheless ready to fight. A patrol rattled past, eight half-dressed privates with M16s, under the command of a glowering man that she dimly recognized as Sgt. Slaughter. Some, like Annie, were carrying emergency packs, and others had just donned riot gear. Their faces were drawn, their expressions serious, but something was bothering Annie about the scene and it took her a minute to realize what was wrong. Her fellow greenshirts were spooked, but the full Joes rattling past didn't seem scared: they seemed almost confident. Under attack by crazed terrorists, and they barely looked fazed. And in the Pit, with its tan carpeting and off-white walls . . . It was like being in a nice modern office complex while being invaded by robot soldiers in pajamas. None of it added up.
She fell in with the rest, though, drawing her equipment from the armory and heading for the snipers' designated rally point. Fast wasn't fast enough, though: by the time she arrived at the rally point, the group leader—a slender blonde man wearing night-vision goggles, whom Annie vaguely remembered as Low-Light—was quickly pairing them off.
"Two sharpshooters at every staircase access point," he was saying. Despite the commotion, he seemed as cool as a cucumber, and his voice was soft and calm. "You'll be reinforcing the posts there. Report to your posts for specific instructions, and remember to pick your targets." He turned to Annie, who was one of the last to join the group. "You're with Rabbi Lee. Third-floor stair junction, northeast side. There's already a group there. Move faster next time."
Nice and concise. It was almost as if they weren't under attack at all. Annie slung her M16A2 and pelted off after Rabbi Lee, who seemed entirely too eager to get shot at. He was part of the sniper class, and he carried a high-powered rifle instead of the M16, but he made up for the equipment change with twice as many sidearms as necessary. And was that a Bowie knife strapped to his belt?
Oh, right. He was a Marine. They were all insane anyway.
One step, then another. The junction was where the main corridor of the administrative level met the north-side emergency staircase—a good spot for people to break in, if they wanted to seriously cause trouble. Even if there was somebody already posted there, backup never hurt.
She shot a glance at Rabbi Lee, who was jogging along methodically with a determinedly calm expression on his face. That didn't do anything for her nerves: he'd probably been in a dozen firefights, and could afford to not get nervous. Hell, the whole Pit seemed cool as a cucumber. The only visibly panicky people Annie had seen had been her fellow greenshirts . . .
Sure, everyone did their best to keep calm. And it was expected that you kept your cool under fire, because freaking out would get someone killed. But there were ways to spot the fear that people were suppressing—a clenched muscle in the jaw, someone either too white or too red, that certain glint in the eye. It wasn't just the fear of death, but the fear of fucking up: of not doing your job, of getting someone else killed, of losing your shit and living with the knowledge of what you'd done. But she wasn't seeing much of it here.
When she'd arrived in the Pit only four days previously, she thought they were insane. Just half a minute ago, she'd thought they were confident. But as she watched the faces of the men that raced past in the corridors, hearing barked orders now mixed with dark jokes (and was that the snap of bubble gum she heard? Seriously?) she thought that maybe that wasn't quite right either. They were . . . competent. Frighteningly competent.
And maybe that thought scared her just a little more than anything else.
* * *
One corridor from their designated post, Rabbi Lee signaled for quiet. He slung his rifle, drew his Beretta, and checked the corner before giving the go-ahead. Annie followed him, keeping her M16 fixed at point and swinging to cover the corners and ducts just like the MOUT training had drilled into them.
There was a temporary barrier thrown up about twenty feet from the stairway, blocking the corridor and providing a clear shot at the stair door. Annie had wondered why all the desks in the Pit seemed to be made of reinforced steel, and now she knew: comfort, convenience, doesn't take a scratch, and provides impromptu defense in case of invasion. A greenshirt Annie didn't know was hunkered down behind the barrier, covering the door while Sgt. Scarlett helped another greenshirt tip one more desk on end a little farther away from the door. Papers were scattered across the floor, and the doors to the offices hung open, their carpets scarred and ragged where the desks had been dragged out.
"Cover us," Scarlett ordered tersely, and Annie and Rabbi Lee obeyed. Annie dropped into firing position, half-covered by the barrier. Rabbi Lee tried to move in front of Scarlett, putting himself between her and the door, but Scarlett jerked her head at him and he scurried to follow Annie's example. His face was bright red as he checked the safety on his rifle.
With the secondary barrier up, Scarlett ordered Rabbi Lee and one of the unknown greenshirts—an explosives specialist, by the looks of him—to man it. It was good strategy: staggered lines of defense, with the best sniper and the demo man behind the main defensive force so the enemy would concentrate on the grunts and get picked off by the secondary specialists. The problem was being one of the grunts. Annie sucked in a shallow breath and fought to keep herself from checking her M16 yet again. They assumed their positions and waited.
For a few moments, there was dead silence in the hall. Annie kept her eye trained on the door, weapon prepared, hands placed in the textbook fashion. For a moment, her fingers trembled on the metal, and she mentally ordered herself to stop. The sound of the others breathing seemed harsh in the enclosed corridor.
Five major posts in her quartermastering career. Afghanistan. Cuba. Germany. Korea. And a tiny, undermanned camp on the Austro-Borovian border. One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong . . . and oddly enough, the answer was Germany. The most peaceful post she'd ever been on. Big solid military base, well-established, with nary a 'tac vest in sight and a kitchen that bought fresh produce from the markets in Heidelberg. Beautiful city. Nice architecture. Afghanistan . . . not so much. There'd been a couple of "accidents."
Tensions were always high, and there had been combat. The Borovian posting had more than made up for all the rest. But she cooked, for God's sake, not manned the barricades! She remembered watching the streak of shells across the sky—the rocket's red glare, one of the idiot kitchen helpers had said—as the Borovian military shelled a rebel outpost. The US troops had strict orders not to intervene. And when there was that strange incident with the captured commandos, the camp had pulled up stakes as a gesture of pacification. Annie had been in for five years, but she had never been in a position where she had had to pull the trigger on somebody. And now, when she'd spent so long getting angry at people for looking down on her for not being a real soldier, she was almost going to pieces at the thought of doing what a real soldier was supposed to do. Oh for Christ's sake, the irony was killing her.
Then, distantly, there was a muffled thumping noise. Scarlett, Annie, and the demoman ducked instinctively, recognizing the sound of an explosion. The quartermaster's hand was trembling again. Any minute now, she was going to start humming, and then humiliation would be added to the nervous terror.
Another explosion, this one closer. The fluorescent panels overhead shivered slightly as the shockwave moved through them, making the plastic panes flex. That one had been on the floor right above them. Annie bit her lip and refocused on the door.
She could hear more, now: a clatter of feet. Heavy boots pounding on the concrete stairs, creating a chorus of thumps and rattles that blended together as they echoed in the confined space of the staircase. Annie's hands slipped on the stock of her M16, and she clumsily swiped one palm against her BDU pants, trying to scrape the clammy sweat off it. Sgt. Scarlett was crouched only a few feet away, her eyes fixed on the door, but she too was giving off that freakish air of confidence and there wasn't any tension or whiteness in her grip.
Calm. Calm. Calm
For a moment, there was a heart-stopping silence. Somebody was behind the door at the end of the hall, but they didn't know if there was an ambush waiting for them, and they would be wondering what to do next. A few cautious footsteps echoed from the stairwell, with what sounded like metal-plated soles making clicking sounds. Whoever was behind that door was . . . uncertain. It would do. Annie took a deep breath, shot a final glance around for confirmation of her position, and tried to focus. She knew the drill: eyes forward, watch the tension in your arms, weapon braced but not locked, keep it loose for recoil. It had been a long time since Basic, but not that long. No spray-and-pray: short bursts, check your targets.
There was a crash, and the door caved in. Annie had a vague impression of color—purple and blue-green, like the world's ugliest Hawaiian shirt—before the corridor exploded in a thunder of gunfire. The blue-and-purple men were bringing their weapons to bear, but the Joes had been just waiting for them to break cover and they had the advantage.
Scarlett was quicker than Annie had thought possible. One shot. Two, three, four, aimed in a fraction of a moment. All of them hit the same target: the first of the purple men, who recoiled and fell with a strangled yelp. The men behind him tried to fire back, but the first two had stumbled as well when their leader fell back against them, and the shots went wild. Barely three seconds had passed since the door broke.
Annie sucked in a breath and fired. The eye easily tracked the splashes of color against the yellow-white hall; the blue parts were body armor, but there was more than enough purple to aim at. She squeezed the trigger as gunfire erupted from behind the barricades. Blood stained the fallen man's suit indigo-black.
But the next ones were still on their feet again and firing back. Annie ducked her head, diving back behind the barrier like a startled turtle as bullets whined overhead and cracked into the overturned desks. Sgt. Scarlett was shouting something, and she thought she heard Rabbi Lee let out a yelp of pain, but the thunder of gunfire in the small hallway drowned them out. She hit the deck and crawled on her elbows back to the edge, bracing her M16 against her shoulder. Her fellow greenshirt was firing over the top of the barrier, his shots going wild as he flinched, and the sergeant was slamming a new magazine into her weapon. Annie clung to the tiny patch of shadow cast by the edge of the barrier, once again targeted the first of the purple men, and squeezed off a burst.
Not for nothing had she practiced. Shooting a man in the knees would make him collapse forwards, but high-impact lead in the shoulder or solar plexus would send him pitching backwards—into his friends. There wasn't any room to maneuver in the corridor, and with four dead purple men on the ground, the ones trying to charge forward were having a hard time of it. When the fifth flailed backwards, it created a pile-up of chaos in the hall.
"Boom Town! Light 'em up!" Scarlett shouted.
The greenshirt demo man rose up from behind the barrier and the defenders instinctively ducked. "Fire in the hole!" he yelled. A strange-shaped package sailed over Annie's head and vanished beyond the barrier. For a moment, there was only the whine and zip of the enemy gunfire. Then-
Muffled yelps of terror were drowned out almost instantly by a colossal explosion. Annie let out an involuntary whimper as she thought she felt her teeth rattle in her head. Boom Town was well named.
Within seconds, Sgt. Scarlett was on her feet again and vaulting over the barrier. The purple men had been annihilated: the ones that had got the furthest up the corridor were still relatively intact, but their followers had been boxed in at the door and there wasn't much left. The overhead light panels had been blown out, and shards of plastic littered the scene of the explosion. The red-haired woman stared down at the destruction, her face grim.
In the moment of silence, a radio crackled. Sgt. Scarlett turned her head away from the charred mess and unclipped it from her belt.
"What's the sit-rep?" a man's voice said. General Hawk.
"Hawk, we've got toxo-vipers down here," Sgt. Scarlett said tightly. "They're not carrying any NBCs, either. We've got them buttoned up, but there's probably more on the way."
"Read that, Scarlett. It looks like they're trying a diversion. Keep that junction nailed down; I'm sending backup your way. Hawk out."
Annie, Friend to the Support Divisions, knew that NBC stood for Nuclear/Biological/Chemical—either the dangerous substances themselves or the guys that dealt with preparing or disposing them and the associated equipment. The NBC division on most bases checked gas masks and biohazard suits, and were proverbially a bunch of pencil-necked geeks; NBC supposedly stood for Nobody Cares. But 'toxo-viper?' Shaking her head, Annie rose from her half-crouched position behind the barrier. It was almost two o'clock in the morning on her fifth day in the Pit. Today would've been her secondary briefing with General Hawk, too. These Cobra people couldn't have waited one more day?
But Sgt. Scarlett was already on the move, and there was no time for Annie to think. "Boom Town, there might be another wave coming," she said. "Make up some presents for them. Rabbi Lee, cover us. Kermit, Short Stack, help me get these masks off."
Kermit, the greenie who had been firing over the top of the barrier, was aptly named: when clambered to his feet, his gangly frame and green uniform made him look like a rather dispirited Muppet. He had been one of Annie's incoming group, and she guessed he was probably as confused as she was. "Uh, sergeant?" he said carefully as he approached the edge of the blast zone. "There's . . . some of them aren't, uh, bleeding, sarge."
Annie had been trying not to look at the aftermath of the explosion. She hadn't wanted to look. She'd seen men who'd been hit by IEDs in Afghanistan, and it was a horrible sight. But at Kermit's words, she turned to stare before she could stop herself—and he was right. The first five men, the ones who had been shot (don't look at that last one, Annie-girl, you did your job), were quietly bleeding. But only one of the blast-zone casualties had any blood on his uniform: the others were in pieces, but their strange purple costumes were clear of anything other than soot and burn marks.
"Masks off," Scarlett repeated, and Annie and Kermit obeyed. Annie viciously bit down on the nausea rising in her throat and moved to the bullet casualties. One, two, three masks off, and underneath they were all human, all dead. She heard Kermit let out a soft gasp, and saw him hold up a head. Wires were trailing out of the place where its neck should have been.
"Robots," the greenshirt breathed. Shock had turned into awe. "Sergeant Scarlett, these guys are . . . damn."
"'Damn' is right." Scarlett clicked the radio again. "Scarlett on-line . . . Hawk, we have confirmation on that diversion on level three northeast. Twelve toxo-vipers, and only six of them were human. Cheap parts, too. They practically fell apart."
"I'm hearing the same thing from the rest of the perimeter. Something's going on here that we're not seeing--"
But Annie didn't hear the rest of it, because when she pulled the mask off the toxo-viper she had shot, he wheezed and grabbed at her arm.
It wasn't much of a grab, to be honest. Annie had absolutely no reason to yelp like a startled puppy and swat frantically at him with his own mask. Still, it worked: his grip loosened, and Annie scrambled backwards, covering him with her M16. "Sergeant!" she called out. "We've got a live one!"
Scarlett turned and hurried back up the corridor. She was carrying weapons stripped from the destroyed robots, and when she dropped them on the ground, Annie heard the distinct click of plastic. The robots had been carrying fake weapons? No time to think about that, though: Sgt. Scarlett was crouching down beside the wheezing toxo-viper and checking him over in a businesslike manner.
"Broken collarbone, shattered shoulder." The toxo-viper gave a faint whimper and tried to raise a hand again, but Scarlett pressed a finger into a seemingly random spot on his good arm and it went limp. "You've just made the transition from enemy combatant to prisoner," she told him coolly—and far less angrily than Annie would have managed at that hour of the morning. She opened a gauze pack from her small emergency kit and began to staunch the bleeding. "Contrary to what you might have heard from your so-called Commander, we don't torture prisoners. Certainly not ones who give us good information. So calm down and stop twitching. We'll get you fixed up. Short Stack, hold this in place." She rose to her feet and opened the communication channel once again as Annie queasily knelt by the gasping toxo-viper. "Hawk, add Lifeline to that backup if you've got him. We have an EPW. Crippled, but not critical. Maybe he can fill us in on what he's doing here."
Annie tried to think back to the emergency medical courses they'd all been put through. Nothing fancy—how to apply a pressure bandage, signs of a concussion, things like that. She remembered the medic on duty saying M16s left decently clean wounds (as bullet holes went, anyway) because they didn't shatter or fragment. He would have busted his collarbone when he hit the ground. Apply pressure to the wound, keep the patient conscious . . .
"Hey! Hey!" she said. The toxo-viper's face was pale, and his eyes were dragging shut. She couldn't blame him: he looked like a thousand miles of bad road, and falling unconscious probably seemed a lot easier than being an enemy prisoner of war. "You can't pass out now—you'll bleed to death." Not strictly true, but it got his attention. His eyes shot open.
"You shot me, you bitch," he croaked. Annie's lip curled.
"And you invaded a secret government installation with a troop of robots and an ugly purple jumpsuit. I don't think we can point fingers here. And since I'm the one currently keeping you from a very terminal case of anemia, maybe you could stand to be just a bit nicer."
Sarcasm helped. It helped a lot. The shock of combat and the relief at surviving were still taking the edge off her fear, but Annie had just survived the first up-close-and-personal firefight of her career, and some part of her knew that if she gave the terror even an inch she'd turn into a gibbering wreck. She had shot him, and there was no denying that. The frightening part had been how easy it was. It was those stupid jumpsuits: he hadn't looked like a man, he'd looked like something on a target range . . .
Five years after boot camp was a long time to be shooting your first man. But then, Annie had always been slow.
"Just kill me," the toxo-viper muttered. There were flecks of blood on his lips. "I'm not afraid."
"Whine, whine, whine," Annie said as she lifted the edge of the gauze to check the bleeding. It was still steady, but beginning to slow, and his breathing was good despite being shallow. Cold sweat was standing out on his skin, and she guessed that he was going into shock. The pain probably hadn't gotten through the adrenaline of the fight yet. "Complaining won't solve anything," she added briskly. Good God, she was turning into her mother.
The toxo-viper's eyes were closing again. "I said wake up!" she repeated. Keep the patient talking . . . "What's your name?"
A hoarse sound—it might have been a laugh, but it was hard to tell, because when his shoulder twitched he turned greenish-white. "Fuck off," he muttered.
"That's nice. You got a family, Off?" Annie said. He tried to growl at her, but there wasn't much he could do, and his breathing was shallower than ever. "Do you think your crazy group is going to tell them if you were killed in action? Give us your name, and if something goes wrong, we can tell them."
The man's lips worked for a moment. Then: "Carter," he said finally. "Carter Hall."
"Good name," Annie said briskly. "Sounds like a superhero."
There was another sound, and this one was definitely a laugh. "It is. Hawkman."
"The general will appreciate that. Sorry I shot you."
There was a clatter of feet, and she turned to see the skinny Infirmary medic come hurrying towards her. This time, though, he was wearing an eye-catchingly red uniform (camouflage apparently wasn't an issue—unless he was trying to blend into an abattoir, and she stopped that thought before it could go any further) and accompanied by several greenies and a skinny man Annie didn't know very well—Airtight, she thought. Lifeline dropped to his knees and began unpacking his kit quickly, running a businesslike eye over the heroically-named toxo-viper.
"You did a number on this one," he said to the world at large. "Need to get that shoulder immobilized before we go anywhere."
"Make it fast, Lifeline," Scarlett said. "We still don't know what they're playing at here. Airtight—what's happening on the other floors?"
"More toxo-vipers," Airtight reported. His words were a bit muffled by his mask and biohazard suit. "Most of them are robots. Hawk thinks it's because the guys who get put on toxo-viper duty are expendable anyway. There are vipers and siegies trying to hold the motor pool, but only these guys went below."
Scarlett's voice was grim. "I'd bet anything that we already have intruders in the ceiling. Snake was telling me how useful it is that this base has such broad air vents—perfect for crawling."
"And none of these guys were carrying any NBCs?"
"None."
Lifeline, working so fast that Annie could barely see what he was doing, had strapped the injured arm into place and done his best to immobilize the shoulder. The pain of the injury was beginning to get through the shock, and the toxo-viper almost passed out from the pain before Lifeline gave him a shot of morphine. Then he wasn't feeling much of anything, and burbled happily as the stretcher team came to haul him away.
Reports were coming in from the perimeter. No more attacks were being launched against the lower levels of the Pit, and the Cobra teams that were holding the motor pool and the training floors were trying to pull back. The notion of vents sounded ridiculous to Annie, but the team was taking it seriously: she could hear distantly echoing grunts and banging noises as men clambered through the ducts, sweeping them for enemy combatants. Scarlett was clearly itching to get in there and help them, but Hawk had ordered her and the rest of the perimeter teams to hold position.
With Rabbi Lee and Boom Town covering them, Annie helped Kermit gather up the remains of the robots and pile them against the stair door. Then, biting her lip, she and Kermit helped Airtight in moving the dead toxo-vipers. She tried not to look at them, but the strange soft weight of each of them . . . she wished they'd left their masks on. Cold sweat was running down the back of her neck, and her hands were shaking by the time they'd finished. She resumed her guard post at the edge of the first barrier and tried not to make eye contact with anybody. Scarlett was already there, methodically checking over her arms and occasionally throwing careful glances at the vent over their heads; Annie did the same, hoping the task would take some of the shake out of her limbs.
It wasn't really working.
"Are you okay, greenie?" Scarlett said. The words surprised Annie: she jumped a little, clutching at her M16 instinctively. Scarlett grinned a little wryly at that, and Annie shook her head.
"They looked like clowns," she replied. It wasn't what she'd meant to say. Preferably, she would have shown courage and bravado under fire, inspiring the higher-ups and earning her a . . . hell, who was she kidding? Scarlett raised an eyebrow. She had been narrowly clipped by one of the toxo-viper's bullets while ducking, and the white patch on her cheek flexed as she frowned a little. A thin red stain was seeping through. Bright red, not the indigo it had shown on the enemy uniforms. It didn't look any better that way.
Annie bit her lip, trying to think about how to clarify her impulsive words. "You know," she began intelligently. "All brightly-colored." She tried not to think about the toxo-vipers, who had had their color schemes terminally altered. "I thought they'd look like Storm Troopers."
"Cobra Commander believes in making a daring fashion statement as well as a political one," Airtight put in dryly from his place on Annie's other side. "It's nice of him to color-code them for everyone's convenience, though. Those mirrored visors make spotting them easy. Just go find Low-Light and ask him. Or don't. He'll find you."
Scarlett snorted and pressed her fingertips to the patch on her head. "You don't need to be Low-Light to spot them. Just listen for the 'Hail Cobra!' Or if the Commander's around, the 'run away!'"
At that, Annie laughed—or close to a laugh, though her dry throat made it more of a cough. Suddenly mindful of herself, she fished in her emergency pack for her bottle of water. It was half-empty, but that was something. The kit also carried a couple of MREs, and she broke open the heavy plastic and retrieved a packet of Fig Newtons. Aware that Kermit's eyes were fixed on the water bottle, and always conscious of the Quartermaster's Creed ("Sustainer of armies . . . Scant rations for the cold and starving troops, gunpowder, salt, and lead") she offered around both the bottle and the open pack. Few people accepted the pieces of MRE, but the water bottle was empty by the time it made its way back to her. Her throat ached as she forced down the crumbling pieces of cookie.
The crackle of the radio and the sound of loud footsteps jolted her out of her momentary daze. Snake-Eyes was coming up behind the barrier, his stance tense and alert. Scarlett didn't stand, but she looked him up and down quickly—checking for injuries, Annie thought. She must have spotted something Annie didn't, because her mouth tightened into a line.
"What's the situation, Snakes?" she said. The ninja shrugged and raised a hand, waggling it in midair to indicate "so-so."
"I was afraid of that," Scarlett said. She handed the communicator to Annie, the closest person behind the barrier, and stood. Snake-Eyes tensed a little as she walked over to him, but he relaxed as she wrapped her arms around his neck. If Annie didn't know better, she would have thought he was grinning under the mask. "I was worried," she murmured into his neck. "All these vipers, and the problems in the vents . . . I thought they'd managed to sneak someone past our guard."
Then she kneed him in the groin.
It was the cleanest, quickest crotch hit that Annie had ever seen. If a lethally disabling, future-children-preventing underhanded move could be considered poetry, then that was it. Byron would have written a sonnet about how elegantly Scarlett drove her kneecap into Snake-Eyes' . . . ninja weapon. Shakespeare would have rhymed for hours about the way she used the advantage of her arms around her neck to wrench him down and into the strike with lethal grace. The Ryghte Welle Songe of Scarlett, who haf Stricken her Beau yn hys mofte perfonal placef.
The black-clad man let out a very audible shriek and collapsed, his weight driving Scarlett onto her knees. He grappled weakly for her neck, but she knocked his hands aside and drove her shoulder into the hollow of his throat. "Call Hawk!" she barked, jerking her head to the side as Snake-Eyes aimed a potentially disabling blow at her temple. "Call Hawk now!"
Annie fumbled with the communicator, unable to believe what she was seeing. "General Hawk, we have an emergency!" she managed to say. Snake-Eyes was recovering his balance quickly—what the hell? Did they mean it when they said he had balls of steel?--and Scarlett, definitely no slouch at hand-to-hand, was still being pressed. "Northeast junction three! Sir, Sgt. Scarlett is fighting Sgt. Snake-Eyes! She kneed him in the balls, sir!"
"What?" another voice cut in. Someone else was on the channel. She thought she recognized Storm Shadow, but it was hard to tell without the sarcastic tone. "Snake-Eyes is with me!"
"Storm Shadow-" Hawk began.
"ZARTAN," Storm Shadow breathed out, and the line went dead. General Hawk said a word that Annie didn't even know generals knew.
The fight was escalating, fast. The impostor Snake-Eyes wasn't as skilled as Scarlett, but he was using the close hallway to his advantage and the redhead had taken a few hard hits. He was trying to barrel past her to get to the door, but if Scarlett pressed him back down the corridor, he would be within distance to use the others as human shields. Rabbi Lee was trying to draw a bead, but the whirling figures were moving too fast: if it hadn't been for the colors, Annie couldn't have told one from the other. Kick turned into block turned into throw as the two fought, and Annie didn't have the faintest idea of what to do.
Then something went soaring past, and a white-clad figure crashed into warring pair. Storm Shadow had completely given up subtlety: he tackled the fake Snake-Eyes like a linebacker, jamming his thumbs into the pit of the man's throat and making him gasp and thrash. The pair toppled to the floor, narrowly avoiding taking Scarlett down with them. The real Snake-Eyes arrived only a second later, with half-a-dozen senior Joes—including a bruised-looking General Hawk—hot on his heels.
The impostor was pinned to the ground, with Storm Shadow crouched over him like a nightmarish spider. Storm was saying something, murmuring almost happily in muted Japanese, and Annie could see the fake's muscles tensing as he tried frantically to free himself from the ninja pinning him down. Snake-Eyes stood over both of them. Then, with a long look at Storm Shadow, he drew his trench knife. The fake let out a strangled yelp.
"Snake-Eyes!" General Hawk shouted. "Storm Shadow!"
The ninjas ignored him. Storm Shadow's hands were bare, and his grip on the fake's throat was so tight that his knuckles were bloodlessly white. Snake-Eyes tensed at the sound of the general's voice, but he knelt down next to the thrashing fake and pressed the trench knife against his throat. Asking if he should make it clean.
"Stand down!" General Hawk bellowed. He charged past the barrier, Duke and Flint hot on his heels. "Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, you will stand down! Zartan is a prisoner of the United States government-"
There was a hiss from Storm Shadow. "I swore an oath, General," he said slowly. The fake—Zartan—was beginning to twitch as the last of his air was cut off.
"You did. To obey my orders." The general's voice was sharp. "Both of you, stand down."
Snake-Eyes put a hand on Storm Shadow's shoulder. The white-clad ninja tensed, but reluctantly released his grip on Zartan's throat.
As soon as the hands loosened, Zartan's head shot up. He gasped for air, his mouth working silently under the mask. But as Annie watched, wide-eyed, the mask began to flex and warp. A strange glow appeared around him. Colors changed, patterns shifted, and what had looked like black cloth melted away. The mask vanished, revealing a skewed red cowl and strange diamond-shaped designs around the eyes. Revealed, Zartan glared weakly up at the ninjas, his teeth bared in a scowl.
Annie needed a drink. A big one.
And if she knew anything about people, Hawk did too. The general's shoulders were sagging a little, and neither Snake-Eyes nor Storm Shadow were looking at him. What would he have done if the ninjas hadn't obeyed his orders? Annie didn't know. But now she knew that sometimes they didn't . . . and suddenly, things like breaking frag regs and uniform codes didn't look so bad. Just how many things would the word ninja excuse, anyway?
Sighing, General Hawk clicked on his own radio and pressed a code sequence. His voice was keyed into the PA, and the corridor echoed as his voice was transmitted throughout the lower levels of the Pit. "Hawk here," he said. "The intruder has been captured. Proceed with the mopping-up in the upper levels."
He paused for a moment, shooting a glance over to where Duke and Flint were tying up the barely-conscious Zartan. Storm Shadow stood facing the wall, his hands braced against it, staring down at the floor: the muscles of his arms stood out like ropes as he visibly strained to keep himself from doing anything. Snake-Eyes was standing where Zartan had gone to ground. Scarlett's hand was on his shoulder, but he didn't seem to realize she was there. Hawk sighed a little and returned to the radio. "Good job, Joes," he continued.
"But I don't have to tell you what this means. Cobra's found a way to get into this base. All personnel make ready for quick shutdown and evac: we have at best a forty-eight-hour window, so make the most of it." Annie thought she could hear distant groans echoing from the levels below, and apparently, Hawk could hear it too. He cracked a tired grin. "If anybody's complaining right now, they can ask Sgt. Major Beach Head to explain to them what the definition of a 'nomad unit' is. That is all. Hawk signing off."
Duke approached the barrier. Between them, he and Flint were supporting a barely-conscious Zartan, who was ziptied and wearing an absolutely murderous expression. "What shall we do with this one, sir?" Duke said, saluting with his free hand. Nobody's salute should be that clean after two o'clock in the morning, Annie thought.
"Detention cell," Hawk said. "Under heavily armed guard. Nobody, Joe or otherwise, gets in to see him without my express authorization. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Duke said. He and the warrant officer hauled Zartan past the barricade. Hawk, letting out another quiet sigh, turned to check on the ninjas again. Snake-Eyes seemed to have calmed a little, but Storm Shadow was still braced against the wall like a statue.
"My office," Hawk said. "Both of you. Now."
Storm-Shadow visibly twitched. Scarlett moved to follow Snake-Eyes, but he put a hand on hers and indicated that she should stay with her group. Annie didn't want to, but she flinched as the two ninjas passed the barrier.
Four days. Four days in the goddamn Pit.
"And today would've been my briefing, too," she mumbled to herself.