“Definitely through the buildings.” Yekaterina agreed with Hayden’s assessment. Inside buildings, both sides would be able to use the confined quarters for chokepoints, but once again they would have surprise on their side. And once again she was reminded of Chechnya and Grozny, except this time around the city hadn’t been battered by Grads, Uragans, the occasional Tochka and scorched by Buratinos. Back then, many smaller buildings hadn’t even resembled buildings anymore. Unlike Grozny, this place hadn’t been turned into a damn fortress. No point doing that since both warrign sides had already been inside. Still, the fact remained that much like back then, the other side were home here and knew the place inside and out. She wished they had grenades.

“After all, getting inside structures is my trade.” She added with a confident grin, “And most of these [i]svolochi[/i] look about ten kilos underweight. If you two,” The Russian gestured to hayden and Sean, “take point, even the close quarters won’t be much of a problem. Beth and can bring up the back.” Not ideal, she hated being rearguard, but she’d rather the boys break the skinnies’ scrawny necks if it came to fisticuffs and be done with it than having to fight with them on more equal grounds herself. Underfed they might have been, she wasn’t the biggest or strongest either.

“One thing I’m worried about is this: The deeper we get without raising trouble, the more we’ll have in our backs once it starts going off. Do we start pruning the weeds as we go, since it will have to go loud eventually anyway?”