"Gordon, Steve - Insectoid 03 - Death to the Insectoids!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gordon Steve)

his team split up into two groups, each setting up their own backup
hideout, without telling the other group where it was. Red Sally, the
Silencer, and Preston had set one up, and he, Mongo, and the Clapper
had set up this one, and each group hadn't told the other where their
backup was located. At the time they had wondered why Croft required
this duplication and secrecy.
Croft shook his head. "Your backup hideout is a deathtrap."
"How do you know?" said Sally. "You don't even know where it is."
"But the Insectoids do," said Croft. "How do you think they found
out the location of our primary hideout?"
Sally frowned. With all their running around, she hadn't given it
much thought. "They may have stumbled upon it during a patrol-"
"No, it was too well hidden," said Croft. "Unless you believe the
Insectoids have a policy of breaking into every generator they see, on
the off-chance that it's been hollowed out and used as a hideout. They
knew what they were going to find before they attacked. They set up
specifically to attack this location; it was obvious from the monitor."
"Then how did they know?"
"They got to the Silencer, or Preston," said Croft. "It's the
only answer."
"They're dead," said Sally.
"They may indeed be dead now, but not before one of them talked,"
said Croft.
"The Silencer would never give away our location."
"It may not have been his idea," said Croft. "Either way, one or
both of them were captured, and lived long enough to tell them about
our primary base. Now, both of them also knew about your secondary
base. Want to bet that the Insectoids haven't staked that out as well?"
"Why don't we just check out-"
"If we check in, we won't check out," said Croft bluntly.
"As my dear departed wife used to say, better safe than sorry,"
said Sashay.
"How do you know it wasn't Mongo who was tortured for
information?" said Sally. "He's unaccounted for."
"Possible," said Croft. "But he split before everything came
apart. I'm guessing he saw far enough into the future to protect
himself. We should leave now."
"Leave?" said Sashay. "But we're already at the hideout that your
group built. Where else shall we go?"
"To the hideout I created on my own," said Croft.

Clifford Croft was not an especially trusting fellow. Working for
decades as a spy hadn't sharpened his instinct to trust or rely on
others, but even without his training, trust didn't come naturally to
him. And so while he had gone through the motions of setting up an
auxiliary hideout with Sashay and Mongo, he had, bit by bit on his own
time, set up a real backup hideout for himself. And it was there that
he took Sashay, the Clapper, Red Sally, and the two resistance fighters
she had rescued. Only Croft insisted on a blindfold for the resistance
fighters. No need to trust more people than necessary.