The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

The rest of the company was moving in a steady stream, lighted between the two fires of the trucks and the south front of the building they had abandoned.

"Take 'em across, take 'em across!" Tyl shouted as the Slammers plodded past. The noncoms would take the words as an order, and the rest of the troops would get the idea.

The first two squads squirmed as they waited, their guns now aimed toward both pincers of the mob. Fifty meters of the west frontage of the City Offices were clear of the rioters who would otherwise have lapped around it. It wasn't a formal standoff; just the tense waiting of male dogs growling as they sidled toward each other, not quite certain what the next seconds would bring.

The last man was Sergeant Major Scratchard, falling a further step behind his troops with every step he took.

"We're releasing the prisoners!" boomed the array of loudspeakers on the building roof. Simultaneous words from a dozen locations echoed themselves by the amount of time that sound from the mechanical diaphragms lagged behind the electronic pulses feeding them.

"Second Squad,withdraw,"Tylordered.He felt as if his load of gear had halved in weight when the eyes of the rioters, orange flecks lighted by the fires of their violence, turned away from him and his men to stare at the City Offices.

Tyl jumped back down the steps and put his left arm—the submachine-gun was under his right armpit—around the sergeant major's chest. Scratchard weighed over a hundred kilos, only a little of it in the gut that had expanded with his desk job. Tyl's blood jumped with so much adrenalin that he noticed only Scratchard's inertia—not his weight.

"Lemme go!" Scratchard rasped in a voice tight with the ache in his knees.

"Shut the hell up!" Tyl snarled back. The laser communicator was crushed between them,biting both men's thighs. If he'd had a hand free,he'd have thrown the cursed thing against the concrete levee.

The mob's chanted "Freedom!" gave way suddenly to a long bellow, loud and growing like a peal of thunder. Tyl's back was to the City Offices, and the rolling triumph had started on the far side anyway, where the jail entrance opened onto the parking area. He knew what was happening, though.

And he knew, even before the shouts turned to"Killthem!Killthem!"that this mob wasn't going to be satisfied with freeing their fellows.

Likely the police trapped inside the building had known that too; but they didn't have any better choices either.