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166
HALO: FIRST STRIKE
"Should we just shoot him?" another man said.
"No," the one leading them hissed. "Payback first." He
stepped up to John and punched him in the stomach.
John doubled over from the blow.
The man hauled him up and patted him down. "We gotta find
that damned flag or the Captain will have our asses in a sling.
Where is it, kid?" He shook John. "And where's the rest of your
pack?"
John laughed.
"What's so funny?" the man growled.
"You idiots are bunched up."
A hail of darts hissed through the air from all sides. The men
from the Pelican convulsed; one fired his rifle, but the shot went
wide and high. They fell over, paralyzed.
John dropped to a crouch, grabbed a pistol from the man
who'd punched him, and crawled on his stomach to the Pelican.
He crept around the open hatch and swept the interior. Empty.
He scrambled into the cockpit and pulsed the Pelican's radar.
He got a contact bearing of 110, fourteen kilometers out, but it
moved on a parallel course to their position. John left the Pelican
and ran across the field.
Red and Blue Teams were still hidden... and they would stay
hidden forever, until he gave the all-clear.
Their all-clear signal wasn't something that could be wrung
from John—not even torture or CPO Mendez's best coercion
techniques would wrest it from him. He would rather have died
than betray his teammates.
John whistled the singsong six-note melody and called: "Oly
Oly Oxen Free!"
Red Team emerged first and marched across the meadow.
Kelly paused to kick one of the men in the head; she took his rifle,
too.
Linda and Fred dropped down from a tree branch and ran
across the field. "Oly Oly Oxen Free," Linda repeated, grinning
from ear to ear. "All out in the free. We're all free."