A dozen black boots clambered up the stairs, echoing in every direction. At a glance, Sam saw that they had dozens of flights to climb. Sam had opted to wear American-style jungle boots, flexible and inexpensively-made of canvas and rubber; he picked ones without a steel plate in the sole. One after the other, the stairs flew past underfoot. Boy, was he glad that had opted to sacrifice a little durability in exchange for flexible soles; pounding past all these concrete stairs in steel-toes would have his dogs barking in no time flat. 

He checked his watch, worn with the face on the inside of his right wrist - near the lacquered wooden grip of his Noble-Arm revolver. Eleven minutes since they entered the building; with the gunships backed off and one of the guards from the patio running off alive, something bad was bound to come soon. Sam was something of a worry-wart. As if on cue, shouts in Cambodian echoed from below them, and loud cracks from rifles and pistols about eight stories down thundered up to them, and little chips of cinderblock fell on Sam's nose as bullets hit the wall in their vicinity. Crazy acoustics; that actually made the ear not covered by his headset smart a little. No more quietly, he sent a dozen of the 19th-century's most cutting edge leaden slugs down at them, rapid fire. A little trick he had learned from American cowboy movies: he kept the trigger squeezed while slamming back the hammer again and again with his free hand. Visually impressive as it was, it wasn't hardly accurate, and was rather hard on the ears.

This'll be a whole lot louder, he thought, holstering his revolver while the two Philippine soldiers in the back of the line cracked off a few bursts down the stairwell. One hand pulled out a little foam earplug for his uncovered right ear, and the other pulled out a grenade from his chest rig. Off the top of his head, he didn't remember the exact model, but it was smooth and cylindrical, not the pineapple-looking type from moves or cartoons. He pulled out the pin and released the spoon, bellowing out in English as the device ticked away, "Fire in the hole!" He dropped the little thing of the side of the stairs and took a step back from the railing. The vibrations from the subsequent blast emanated off of every concrete surface around him. After a brief pause, the gunfire from below did not resume. He couldn't know whether or not he had timed it such that it was [i]right[/i] next to the enemy when it exploded, but what's that English expression about "close enough still counts with horseshoes and hand grenades?"

He turned to continue moving up the stairs, but the bulky pointman didn't budge. Momentarily rattled by the blast- maybe - or any number of other things; Sam didn't judge. A pretty harmless moment to choke, all things considered. He rested a hand on the stout man's neck, and mentally willed a surge of adrenaline and testosterone to flow. "You've got this." The man nodded his head and surged on up the stairs, Sam and the rest close behind.