On the other hand, she and Kerry were already there. Wouldn’t it be good to know if they were magical installations? What if they were more of Sakal’s multi-layered traps, like the one he’d used against Xavier in Barcelona, but this time, designed to isolate large numbers of Xavier’s fighters?
She’d already decided to do it, but spent several minutes arguing with herself, trying to find a flaw in her logic. Nothing came to her, however, so she signaled Kerry to move higher, under better cover. She wanted to reach out via comm to make Brian and the others aware of the situation, so they’d know where to look if something untoward happened to them.
She first signaled to Brian using mic clicks that they needed to talk and she was in a secure location—secure being relative in the situation. It took more than a few minutes, but Brian eventually voice-commed back.
“Problem?” he said before Layla had a chance to speak.
“Negative. A tactical adjustment. We need to take a closer look. Security status is doable.”
“Is it worth it?”
“That’s a roger.”
“Shit,” he said so softly that all she heard was the hissed “sh.” “Time?”
“Now. One hour estimated, start to finish,” she said. She considered that to be the high end of what they’d need to complete the task, but didn’t want the rest of the team to worry if they were late coming in.
“We’re two zero mikes from your position,” he said, indicating they were twenty minutes away. “I’m coming to you. Send Kerry in exchange.”
“Negative. I need Kerry.”
“Then you make the exchange.”
“Negative.” She didn’t offer a reason, didn’t fucking need one. She knew why he wanted her out of the danger zone, and it wasn’t because they were friends. The whole team were friends. No, this was because if anything happened to her, Brian thought Xavier would go ballistic and maybe get a lot more of them killed. But if she thought that was true, she never would have come in the first place.
The silence on his end said he didn’t like it, but knew she was right. “Roger that. We’ll hold here until you’re both out.”
“Roger that.” She’d give him that much, since it made tactical sense.
“Out.”
Layla turned the volume on her comm down to what she considered the “click” range, pushed the mic aside, then leaned close to Kerry. “That one,” she whispered, pointing to the nearest of the strange ammo dumps. Maintaining their hidden location for the time being, she scanned for the most discreet path downward in terms of likely cover, considered what they’d seen of the relevant guard patrol, and finally decided on the best route which would avoid detection by both stationary and patrol guards.
By mutual agreement, she and Kerry waited until the current pair of patrol guards passed each other down below. Then with Layla in the lead, they began a cautious but steady descent that would bring them close enough to the curious site, while avoiding notice by the stationary guards.
It went better than she’d hoped, aided by the stationary guards who’d gotten bored enough to exchange a short conversation just in time to provide a convenient distraction. Layla reached for her camera just as Kerry tapped her leg. Jerking her head around, she saw Kerry gesture at her head and nod emphatically.
Magic. Damn it. She hadn’t wanted to be right.
They were far too close to risk a voice comm, so they waited again until the patrol guards crossed each other’s paths, wasted a few seconds wishing the stationary guards would get chatty again, then Layla gave the signal and they did a literal slow crawl back up to the safest hiding spot available, just short of the wall, where she called Brian one more time.
Brian and River were together, which saved some time. They both confirmed identification of the same type of installation. But while they’d questioned the battlefield experience of whoever had approved the design, they’d hadn’t considered magic, and had no Kerry to sniff it out, in any case.
“We should take these out now, while they’re still inactive. By the time our vamps arrive, Sakal could have activated them, and it’ll be too late.”
“Any way of accessing what we’re dealing with?” Brian asked. “Are these things even worth the effort, much the less the risk we’ll be taking by trying to neutralize them?”
Kerry shook her head. “I can’t say. This is beyond me. It could be anything.”
“The presence of guards says something about its importance to Sakal. We know that much. Anything important to him should be important to us.”
“If we do this, how will we do it? What’s the best way to blow up magic, without getting blown up along with it?”
“Just that, I’d think,” Layla said, though she didn’t know for sure. “Blow the fuckers to kingdom come, disrupt the spell or whatever, right?” She looked again to Kerry for an answer.
Her response was another shrug. “We’re well outside my expertise here. I do know that spells can be disrupted by changing their physical elements, which would seem to apply here, but . . . ” She shook her head. “I can’t say for sure.”
“Brian?” Layla asked. As much as she believed her assessment was right, it had to be unanimous. There were too many unknowns to permit one person’s judgment to carry the day.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But I like leaving it there even less. I say we go.”
“I say what the bloody fuck are we doing here?” River grouched. “But yeah, we go.”
Layla checked with Kerry, who added a simple, “Agreed.”
“All right. We go in, and we get out. Rendezvous at our entry point. We wait no more than twenty, that’s two oh mikes. If either team doesn’t show by then, the other gets out and reports. Agreed?”
They agreed one at a time, until Layla said, “Let’s blow some shit up. Out.” She disconnected, adjusted her volume, and turned to Kerry.
Putting their heads together, the two women calculated their explosives supply and quickly decided on a plan. Ideally, all four dumps would blow at once, or at least within a minute or two of each other. But they couldn’t guarantee that, didn’t have the communications or the gear to time something that precisely. The best they could do was time their own two sites to blow more-or-less simultaneously, and hope the guys took roughly the same amount of time to set and blow theirs.