he would be trapped on the wrong side of them, and the grenade in the control room would make sure that he remained trapped.
Monster was already ducking through the rapidly diminishing gap. Chisnall ran a few meters along the upper level and then hurdled the guardrail. He landed on his back on top of the wreckage and twisted around, sliding down the crumpled top of the car.
At the bottom of the car, a jagged piece of metal snagged his body armor at the elbow, jolting him to a stop. He wrenched it free and hurled himself at the gap in the doors. He managed to get his upper body through the opening and then snatched his legs inside as the gates clanged shut. A clamor of rounds struck the doors with staccato metallic clangs. Then came a dull, distant thump that was almost certainly the frag grenade in the control room.
The Bzadians would have to blow these doors open now.
“What kept you?” Price asked.
“I had to check my e-mail,” Chisnall managed, sucking in air. “Status updates, that kind of thing.”
Price smiled.
They were inside, Chisnall realized. Inside Uluru. As far as he knew, they were the only humans ever to go there.
A circular tunnel stretched away inside the rock. The tunnel was perfectly round and perfectly straight. Whatever tools the Pukes had used for their tunnel digging, they were very powerful and very accurate. Strip lighting ran the length of the tunnel, fixed to the ceiling at the highest point. It was bright but faded as the tunnel disappeared around a corner. He looked at the walls. Not just perfectly round, but perfectly polished as well. They gleamed like marble.
“It’s all gray in here,” Wilton said. “Why isn’t it red?”
“Uluru is only red on the outside,” Chisnall said. “It’s rusty.”
Wilton clearly didn’t believe him, but Chisnall couldn’t be bothered explaining.
The monorail line extended out along the floor of the tunnel in front of them. There was no time to wait and admire the view. A banging on the big metal doors sounded behind them.
“Let’s go,” Chisnall said.
Fleming and Bennett each had one end of the warhead. It was a cylindrical object that, to Chisnall, looked like an oversized waste-disposal unit. Thick black wires emerged from dark gray rectangular boxes on the underside of the device and plugged into the end of it. At the top were two silver tubes, protected by thick metal plates. Metal handles attached to the plates allowed the two of them to share the weight of the warhead, although Bennett was clearly struggling.
“Monster, give them a hand with that,” Chisnall said, and Monster took Bennett’s side.
“Blow the C4,” Wilton said. “Blow it now.”
“I can’t risk it,” Chisnall said. “There’s enough explosive up there to bring down the whole tunnel.”
Even as he spoke, a series of explosions sounded behind them and a lip of smoke curled through the narrow gap between the doors.
“Sounds like grenades,” Price said. “They haven’t had time to bring up any demo charges.”
“Let’s move it,” Chisnall said.
The curve in the tunnel was about a hundred meters away. If they could reach that, he would feel safer about blowing the tunnel entrance. They had plenty of time before the aliens could bring up some heavy demo and blow the doors.
He was wrong.
They were barely fifty meters into the tunnel when a booming crash sounded behind them and the big metal doors shuddered.
Chisnall had just enough time to look back in a state of shocked confusion when a second explosion shattered the doors, sending them flying off their hinges into the walls of the tunnel. With the team trapped in the narrow confines of the smooth tunnel walls, the shock wave blasted them off their feet, and Chisnall saw the other Angels go flying, scattered like tenpins.
The rotorcraft. They must have evacuated the area, then used the gunship, hovering outside to blow the outer doors, to fire right through the opening into the bay. There was no need to wait for demo charges when you had a gunship to use instead.
“Blow the entrance!” Price yelled.
Chisnall, in a daze, reached for the detonator at his waist.
It wasn’t there.
Shadowy figures were emerging through the smoke and haze behind them, and the air was alive with the crackle of bullets. The walls were exploding in puffs of rock around them.
He saw Bennett go down, hands clutched to his neck, a dark liquid bubbling up between his fingers. He saw Monster start to rise and get hit, flung forward on