“I’m one of the guys who’s here to take you home. Josef, are you there, too?”
“What happened to Babushka?” a young voice answered. From the way it cracked, Jonathan knew that puberty had not arrived, but was on its way.
“I’m right here!” Yelena yelled.
As Boxers unslung his ruck and put it on the floor, Jonathan said, “Listen to me. I need you to—”
The building shook with four explosions in such rapid succession that an inexperienced ear might have heard them as a single blast.
Jonathan jumped at the sound and the PCs yelled.
“Oh my God, what was that?” Yelena said. She ducked to a low stoop to protect herself.
“That’s the sound of evener odds,” Boxers said. “I bet it’s a mess down there.”
“What does he mean?” Yelena asked.
“Never mind,” Jonathan said. “Keep an eye on your door.”
If nothing else, he thought, there was a lot less chance of her having to shoot anyone.
Nicholas had never felt this level of fear. He worried that his heart might bruise itself against the bones of his chest. The explosions, the shooting, the screaming of wounded men. These were the sounds of the Apocalypse, a conclusion that seemed borne out by the dancing white and yellow light of fires burning out of control.
He worried that Josef would never be right after this. That last explosion seemed to take him to a place that was literally out of his mind. He dropped to the floor in a crouch, pressed his hands against the sides of his head, and screamed.
Nicholas dropped with him and gathered him into his arms, rocking him. “We’ll be okay,” he whispered. “We’ll be okay, we’ll be okay. Babushka is here to rescue us.” He spoke as if that actually made sense. As if the First Lady of the United States routinely engaged in warfare. A distant part of him wondered if maybe he was the one who had lost his mind, and that none of this was happening at all.
“Nicholas, listen to me,” yelled the voice from the other side of the door. “Are you there?”
Josef had stopped screaming, but he continued to cry, his hands still pressed to his face.
“I’m here!” Nicholas yelled. “We’re both here.”
“We’re going to open the door with an explosive charge,” the voice said. “I need you to get as far away as you can, against the back wall. Lie on the floor with your backs to the door. Plug your ears, close your eyes, and don’t open them until I tell you.”
“Is that safe?” Nicholas asked.
“Safer than leaving you inside.”
He heard a smile in the man’s voice with that last line, and he realized how stupid a question he’d just asked.
“We’re in a time crunch here, Nicholas, so keep your head in the game. Repeat back what I just told you.”
Nicholas repeated it, and was pleased to see that Josef was already getting himself into position.
“Just a few more seconds now,” the voice said.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FOUR
L
en Shaw had never seen bodies so mangled. They’d been torn apart by the blast, bits of flesh and internal organs embedded into the stone of the walls, ceiling, and floor. There were no survivors. There were no corpses complete enough to identify. His stomach churned at the sight and the stench of the carnage, the combined stink of explosive, burned hair, and shit.
Len had survived only because he had yet to turn the corner when the bomb exploded. Had he been in the lead—had he been in the position he’d wanted—he would be among this carnage.
As the dust settled and the smoke thinned, he saw what he had feared. This scene was replicated at the far end of the hallway. These Americans—these animals—had set dual traps.
No, it was even worse. As he looked down through the metal floor, he saw the same devastation yet again, directly below.
They’d booby-trapped every level, a brilliant move that guaranteed that no one could interfere with what they were doing—or at least that there would be an unspeakable price to be paid by anyone who tried.
Len knew now that he was alone. His comrades were mostly dead, and of those who remained alive, none would be willing to risk such violence again. They were spent.
But Len would not give up. Nothing remained of any of the plans that he had made or the dreams that he had entertained. All he had left now was revenge against those who had wrought this violence upon him and upon the Movement.
As his ears cleared from the explosion, he heard voices shouting from above, and then there was another explosion, this one not a fraction of what caused the slaughter that surrounded him, but the instant he heard it, he knew exactly what it was. The invaders had just blown open the Mishins’ cell door.
The Americans were going to win unless he stopped them.
Resolute in the certainty that one way or the other he was going to die tonight, he started up the final flight of stairs.
Boxers’ GPC had shredded the wooden door at the lock, but had wedged the hardware into the jamb, requiring Big Guy to kick the door four times to get it open.
The Mishins were exactly where they were supposed to be, in the back of the cell, cowering against the floor. Jonathan pulled a visible-light chem light from his vest, broke it open, and shook it. It glowed a green that everyone could see. As Yelena darted into the room to be with them, Jonathan pressed his hand against the center of her vest. “No,” he said. “You hold the hallway. Shoot anything that you see.”
“But I don’t see anything. It’s dark.”
“Then shoot anything that you hear moving. We’re almost done.”
Jonathan closed the distance to the PCs in three strides and put his hand on Nicholas’s back to roll him over. “You okay?”
He looked terrified. “I’m fine.”
“How about you, Josef?”
“Joey,” the boy said. “Who are you?”
Jonathan heard strength in the kid’s voice. He liked that. “Listen up,” he said. “We’re in a hurry.”
The man with the gun looked like a four-eyed monster. Joey knew that was ridiculous, and he told himself to listen to the words he was hearing, not the ones that were screaming in his head. He knew they weren’t eyes, but that’s what they looked like. He’d seen night vision eye things on the History Channel before, but they were always just two. He figured that the four ones were better.
“Listen up, we’re in a hurry,” the man said. “My name is Scorpion. My big friend is Big Guy. I think you know the lady over there.”
Babushka stood in the doorway. She was dressed like the men, but without the four eyes. She wore a black outfit and she carried a rifle. “Hello, Joey,” she said. She held out her arms for a hug, but before he could move, the man who called himself Scorpion stopped him.
“The hallway, Yelena!” the man yelled. Then he turned to Joey. “Put this on,” he said. He’d pulled a helmet out of the backpack he’d put on the floor. “This is bulletproof,” he said, settling on his head and adjusted the chin strap. “Don’t even touch it if you don’t have to. These things’ll keep you alive if someone shoots at you.”
Joey cast a glance over to his father for confirmation, and saw in the weird green light that a huge man who looked just like Scorpion was giving a helmet to Dad.
“What if they shoot someplace other than my head?” Joey asked.
He thought he saw Scorpion smile. “Bad guys don’t shoot at legs,” he said. “And if they tried, they’d have to go through me.”
As Scorpion stood, he grasped Joey’s shoulders and moved him toward the door. The guy was a lot stronger than he looked. But rather than put him out in the hall, he pushed him to the corner near the open door. A few seconds later, his dad was next to him, and the men gathered under the window to talk about things.
“I told you we’d get out of here,” Dad said.
Len Shaw moved with agonizing slowness up the eastern stairs into the darkness, putting out of his mind the carnage that he’d literally crawled through. He was terrified of being caught and shot like a dog, but he was equally terrified of pressing his hand on an unseen trip wire and inadvertently blasting himself to vapor. These monsters who’d invaded Saint Stephen’s killed without hesitation and without granting dignity to other brave soldiers.
The Americans had the audacity to label him and the Movement as terrorists, yet they unleashed this brand of wholesale murder. It was unspeakable.
Soon, he was able to hear voices over the pounding of his heart, and as he approached the top step to the fourth floor, he could just barely see a silhouette in the dim light of the fires outside, combined with an otherworldly green glow emanating from the interior of the cell, which had clearly been opened. The silhouette was that of a soldier, but a small one. He imagined it to be a woman, commensurate with the Americans’ decision to finally allow women to do their duty for their nation’s defense. Where there was one, there had to be many more. The others must be stationed in shadowy corners that he could not see.
Len had a clear kill shot on the woman if he’d wanted to take it, but it made no sense to kill only one when they had killed so many. He would wait. Sooner or later, they would all have to enter into the hallway, toward one of the two stairs. Either direction they chose, he would have unobstructed access to them.
He could show patience when he needed to.
The view from the air showed destruction of a scale that David had never seen before. Through the left-hand door of the cargo area, where a harness kept him from falling out, and from which he was supposed to shoot people if it came to that, he could see that an enormous hole had been blown open on the north end of the complex, along the western wall. Scale was hard to judge from this far away, but he guessed that it was every bit of sixty or seventy feet square. What wasn’t blown open had collapsed in on itself, and that whole part of the complex was on fire.
Two trucks were burning as well—two of the very trucks that had passed him on the way in. One of them lay on its side, as if the blast of the explosion had toppled it. Somehow, the lights in the compound had remained on, and in their glow, David saw maybe two dozen people moving around on the ground, and half that number sprawled in crimson-stained snow. The ones who were still alive seemed to be organizing themselves, clustering in groups on the southern end of the compound, as if to greet the incoming emergency vehicles. They all appeared to be armed.
Striker had given him a headset to wear after he climbed aboard the helicopter, and through it, he heard the pilot’s voice say, “Scorpion, Striker’s on station at eight hundred feet. Rooster and Chickadee are both on board, and I’m awaiting instruction.”
Scorpion’s reply was immediate: “Good evening, Striker. Welcome to the party. Give me a sit rep from up there.”
“It isn’t pretty. You made a hell of a dent—” He paused. “Break. Mother Hen, are you still on the net?”
“Affirmative.”
“Contact the Ottawa authorities and tell them that the police and fire units responding to Saint Stephen’s are driving straight into a firefight. The bad guys are lined up, and it looks like the fire trucks will be hit first. Break. Okay, Scorpion, you’re pretty much screwed.”
The helicopter nosed down and banked hard to the left as they dropped a couple hundred feet and headed toward the north end of the shoreline. Down below, the ground was strewn with burning debris.
“Your primary exfil site is inaccessible from the western side of the compound,” Striker said over the radio. “No way to get to the boat, and way, way too many people with guns. Secondary exfil is now filled with skirmishers lining up to do battle with emergency responders. If I set down there, we’ll never have a chance. We need a third option.”
“Stand by,” Scorpion said.
As they turned to go south, David saw the flicker of muzzle flashes among one of the clusters of people with guns. “They’re shooting!” he shouted.
“So I see,” Striker said. “Let’s give them something to think about. Both of you move to the starboard—
right-hand
—door.”
As David moved across the cabin, dragging his safety line along the wire that ran the width of the ceiling, the chopper gained altitude again, and flew out over the river a ways before pivoting on its own axis and heading back toward the compound at a million miles an hour.
Striker’s voice sounded excited as he said, “Put your weapons on full-auto. When I say ‘shoot,’ point the muzzles down forty-five degrees below the horizon and just pull the trigger till I say to stop. In three, two, one,
shoot
!”
David had expected more warning. He’d barely switched the lever to full-auto when the order came. He didn’t aim the gun so much as he pointed it, pulled the trigger, and let fly. His bullets raked the line of shooters, all of whom appeared to be facing the other direction. His magazine went dry the instant before Striker said, “Cease fire.”
David looked over to Becky. In the dim, deflected light, she looked pale.
“Sounds like Striker pretty much hit the nail on the head,” Boxers said in a low tone. “We’re screwed. We need a way to get to the roof.”
Jonathan smiled. It’s funny how sometimes it’s the simplest things that bring clarity to your mind. “I’ve got six GPCs left,” he said. “What about you?”
Big Guy shrugged. “I used them all in the chapel. I’ve still got probably twenty feet of det cord, though. What are you thinking?”
“Well, this room’s pretty tight,” Jonathan thought aloud. He pretended not to hear the increased rate of fire from outside. He hated the thought of the local police getting caught up in all of this and dying for a cause they didn’t even understand. “And this stone, while it’s strong, it’s probably pretty brittle, too. If we can combine the charges, wrap them in the det cord, and then place them up against the wall—”
“We can get enough overpressure to make a door,” Boxers said, finishing the thought for him.
“Bingo.”
Jonathan turned to the Mishins. “Nicholas, you and Josef go into the hallway.” Next, Jonathan started stripping his kit of GPCs and handing them to Boxers. “Yelena!”
“Yes!”
“Take your family to a cell at the end of the hall, at least three doors down, and go inside and close the door. We’re going to set off explosives, so don’t peek out until you hear the boom.”
When she didn’t respond, he turned to see a reunion in action, the three of them in an embrace.
“Now, Yelena.”
“Which way?”
“You tell me.”
An indecisive pause. “I’ll move east,” she said.
“Fine,” Jonathan replied. “Get there quickly, and don’t come out until I say.”
Len recognized the outlines of the boy and his father as they exited the cell, but the greeting they received in the hallway startled him. This was not the body language of a hostage meeting his rescuer. There was genuine affection. Could it possibly be that—
Hearing her speak removed all doubt. That was Anna Darmond, the former Yelena Poltanov. Good Lord in Heaven, could revenge be any sweeter?
He raised his rifle to his shoulder and slipped his finger into the trigger guard. He could take them all with one long burst. He could shred them just as certainly as they had shredded is brave soldiers.
And they were walking directly toward him. His finger tightened.
Between the PETN in the det cord and Jonathan’s six GPCs, he figured they had eight or nine pounds of explosives to work with. Absent the luxury of the time necessary to form it all into its optimal shape, Boxers molded the C4 into an eight-inch-long white brick and gave it to Jonathan to hold. Then he unspooled the det cord and folded the tube of explosive back and forth against itself, the way you would fold an extension cord for storage. That bundle was maybe fifteen inches long and six inches thick when he was done. With his left hand, he pressed the finished bundle into the angle where the outside wall met the western cell wall, while with his right, he picked up the brick of C4 and then molded it to hold the det cord in place.
Their plan was simple and inelegant. The C4 had a detonation velocity of 26,400 feet per second, the det cord 27,000 feet per second. In the first few milliseconds after detonation, the charge would direct a peak pressure wave of well over one hundred thousand pounds per square inch through the stone, shattering it. At the same instant, the explosion would overpressure the interior of the cell, with the result—they hoped—of collapsing the exterior wall and part of the roof it supported.
Boxers fished two OFF detonators out of his ruck—old-fashioned fuse—and pressed the first one into the end of the det cord, and the second one into the body of the C4. “Keep your fingers crossed.”