Mission critical, p.53
Mission Critical, page 53
part #8 of A Gray Man Novel Series
* * *
• • •
Court and Zoya had each fired at one target. Zoya hit a man in the thigh who disappeared behind a group of hostages, and Court hit a man in the lower abdomen, but he was on the ground, out of view behind a table, and possibly still in the fight.
Zoya had seen Hines and a group of armed men racing through the side door, and she leapt to her feet, launched off the stage, and went in pursuit of him.
Court climbed to his knees, still engaging targets in the room, but he shouted to her. “No! Wait!”
She did not listen, just kept running through the crowd as everyone began to climb to their feet and stampede for the center exit. Court leapt off the stage, picking off gunmen one by one, who were all struggling to orient themselves to the many angles of this small but disciplined attacking force.
* * *
• • •
The great hall cleared out in under one minute, save for the American operators, the wounded, and the dead. Jenner was in the latter category, shot through the mouth, and Greer had taken a subgun round through the right biceps that had him on the floor while he tied it off with a compression bandage, using his left hand and his teeth.
By now Travers had lost enough blood out of the wound in his right leg that his fight was over, as he could barely stand, and though Lorenzi had shot three Russians grouped closely together, he took a bullet through his right shin and his left foot in the process.
Zack Hightower had killed five men in the last minute, all with a single magazine. He reloaded his rifle now, ready to head towards the doorway where Hines and some other men had disappeared. But he heard a voice behind him that spun him around.
It was Hanley. He held the shotgun in his hand. “Where’s Zakharov?”
“What the hell are you doing here, sir?”
He saw Brewer behind Hanley now, a terrified look on her face. What a shit show, he thought. All the smart suits were running away, and these two nitwits were running in.
“I’m helping you,” Hanley said. “Brewer will help, too.” Brewer seemed to Zack like she had no interest in helping anyone but herself, but she was here, a pistol held low in her hand.
Zack sighed. “They went into that stairwell. It seems to lead down to the basement.”
Hanley started moving for it. “Let’s go.”
“Wait. Violator and Anthem have already—”
“Let’s go!” Hanley shouted, and he headed through the doorway.
Zack ran after the two of them, overtaking them and making it into the stairs before them. With his weapon light shining he led the way down.
* * *
• • •
Court and Zoya arrived at the first subterranean layer without seeing or hearing anyone. Both wondered where the hell the squirters thought they were going down here, unless their plan was to use some other staircase to make their way back up to ground level.
This was the dungeon level; it was a poorly lit warren of rooms, formerly cells, common spaces, and barracks for the guards, now mostly used for storage. There were dozens of rooms where people could hide. Heavy metal gates hung in archways, held up by thick rope; a wine cellar had been built where prisoners once had been stockaded; and the entire area smelled to Court like it was right on Loch Ness and not 150 feet above it.
The two of them moved together for a while, until they reached a circular room with three archways leading out of it. Zoya touched Court on his shoulder. “We have to split up.”
Court was afraid of this. Tactically, it made sense; there was too much area to cover to find anyone hiding down here before they could escape. But he could only now pray that he was the one who came across her father first.
He reached out with his good hand and took her head in it, drew her to him. Softly he said, “Be careful,” and he kissed her.
“You, too,” she said, and then, “My father. He’s mine.”
She turned away and disappeared in the dark to the right.
Court chose the left-side passage. He transmitted this decision over his mic, but he didn’t think anyone still alive upstairs could have possibly heard him down here belowground.
* * *
• • •
Hightower, Brewer, and Hanley heard the garbled transmission, and they pieced it together. Anthem, right. Violator, left. The three moved slowly and quietly out of the dim stairwell and into the dungeon area. They arrived at the circular room one minute after receiving Violator’s call, and they continued forward, under the middle arch.
* * *
• • •
Feodor Zakharov followed behind the two sleepers still alive as they pushed on through the dungeon towards the secret door that led down to Loch Ness. They knew the way, but they had a stop to make along the way first. Also, they were slowed somewhat scanning with their flashlights, checking the placement of the daisy chain of explosives that had been attached around the dungeon level. Zakharov had sent Fox and Hines off in another direction to check the explosives there. The wires were supposed to be out of the pathways, running instead along the walls, but the men who wired the subterranean level had a lot of ground to cover and little time, so it was an obvious rush job. Everyone knew that accidentally kicking a wire would set off the cigarette-pack-sized amount of C-4 the wire had been attached to, and this would kill anyone ten yards in any direction, so they did what they could to avoid this eventuality.
The Russian mercenaries hadn’t brought enough C-4 to drop the entire castle, not by a long shot. But a timer had been attached to one of the devices, and all the devices were wired together. It was set for ten minutes, but now Zakharov wanted to find the device with the timer on it and speed the countdown to five minutes before getting into the passageway to the water, detonating thirty small but powerful charges down here in the lower levels to eliminate any pursuers.
Behind him he heard a distant, echoing voice. “Papa? Papa, I’m coming for you!”
Zakharov felt the twinge of fear run down his back now as he kept moving forward with the others.
CHAPTER 66
Court moved quickly up a hallway, checking each dungeon cell with a flash from the light hanging on his rifle. Some rooms were storage now, others empty, and some rooms in this subterranean warren seemed to serve no purpose but to lead to more rooms. He flashed his weapon light on, then back off, moved forward a few feet to cover, and did it again. Over and over. It was not the fastest way to move, but it did expose him to the least amount of danger.
Or so he thought.
He knelt down behind a row of old, steel box fans in the arched stone corridor, held his rifle up, and flashed the light. Just past an archway with a massive steel gate above it suspended there by thick rope tied to a metal hook in the floor, he saw a large room and, from the quick look he gave it when the light was on, he could tell there were several mirrors in there, because of the flash reflected back on him. He was distracted by the bright light in his face for a few seconds, rubbed his eyes, and then squinted. Flashing again but towards the floor to avoid the reflections, this time he could see movement in the room, a shadow streaking right to left in the dim.
Court grabbed a flash bang grenade hooked to his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it underhanded into the room. He ducked down quickly to avoid the blast, and as soon as the distraction device erupted he rose and ran into the room with his rifle held high.
And as he entered the room he realized the flash bang had been a mistake. The device instantly started a fire in a collection of old, dusty, and unframed oil paintings, blueprints, and maps stacked in piles and leaning haphazardly along the wall.
Shit, the last thing he wanted was to be stuck down here in this dungeon in a fire.
He looked for something to extinguish the fire with, turning to the corner on his right and shining a light to see what he could find.
And then he realized he had been wrong before. This, this was the last thing he wanted.
There, three feet away and closing fast, was Jon Hines. Behind him he caught a glimpse of Fox, running under a metal gate over another archway that led out of the room, a subgun in his hands.
Court got a shot off but his weapon had already been knocked to the side by Hines; a bullet ricocheted around the room with an angry multinote shriek. The two men crashed into the hard stone floor, rolling up next to the burning paintings, and Court’s rifle sling slipped off his head as the weapon slid away. He struggled up to his knees and started to reach for his pistol but didn’t get it out before Hines grabbed his wounded hand and wrenched it to Court’s left. This sent him down on his back in agony and short-circuited his attempt to pull his gun.
Hines got a meaty hand on the pistol’s grip and yanked it free of his holster, but Court elbowed the man’s hand and the pistol spun away, as well.
The fire behind Court against the wall was growing; he could feel the heat, and through the flickering firelight Court saw smoke billowing across the floor. Hines was on his feet now. Court’s body still felt broken from his first two encounters with this leviathan of a man, and he knew he had little chance in another round of one-on-one with him.
“We’re gonna get to finish our fun, after all, mate!” Hines said with a roar, and he launched forward at Gentry yet again.
Court threw a right jab that connected with Hines’s chin but only partially slowed him down. The Englishman threw a swing of his own; Court managed to lean back away from it, but in doing so he fell down again onto his back.
The flames were raging, the smoke thickening by the second as more oil paintings ignited.
He rolled over, launched to his feet, and ran unarmed for the tunnel Fox had taken, not in pursuit of the Russian, but instead desperately trying to get away from Hines. He’d just run under the iron gate suspended above by rope attached to the floor when he felt Hines grab the back of his Kevlar vest and yank him back.
Court fell to the ground and spun around to kick at the big boxer, while simultaneously reaching out with both hands to grab something, anything, to fight Hines off with. His left-hand fingertips grabbed a two-foot-square wooden-framed oil painting that was fully engulfed with flames, and he Frisbeed it as hard as he could at his attacker, both to keep from burning himself too badly and to generate as much momentum as possible. He hit Hines square in the face with the burning material, but the broken bones in his hand hurt worse than ever now.
The man shouted in shock and fell back, buying Court a moment’s time. He rose to his feet and ran again for the archway now, but he noticed flames raging from the ACE bandage on his left arm. He took a blow to the back of the head; Hines had thrown something at him, apparently, and he tumbled forward, falling on the ground yet again, now directly under the wrought-iron gate suspended over the archway tunnel out of the room.
He coughed in the smoke, rolled onto his back, and looked back to Hines, who was rubbing soot out of his eyes. While he did this Court ran his left arm up and down the old but thick rope holding up the gate above him, and flames immediately began licking upwards towards the ceiling.
He then covered his burning bandages with his body, extinguishing the flames, but creating fresh agony as his weight went down on his broken hand.
He looked back over his shoulder as he lay on the floor under the iron gate.
Hines was approaching, back in the fight now; he always seemed to bounce back.
Court rolled on his back, scooted backwards on his elbows, trying to draw Hines closer.
The Englishman’s big voice boomed in the subterranean room as he advanced, paying no attention to the fire all around him.
“Gotta snap your neck and end this shite now, mate, but you were one hell of a goer, I give ya that!” Court kicked at the man, trying to buy a little more time, but also trying to keep from looking to the rope on his left that, once it burned through, would fly up, sending the iron gate down right through Court’s midsection.
Hines stepped under the archway now and knelt down with a smile over the wounded American, his face glowing red from the flames. He took Court by the collar, but just as he did, Court brought his knees to his chest and shifted his legs to his left.
With all the might left in him he kicked with both feet into the rope that had been burning fiercely for thirty seconds, and in so doing he tore away the last of the fibers that had not burned through.
Hines smiled as Court’s wild kick missed him and hit a burning rope, and then he heard a loud squeaking noise several feet above his head.
His eyes met Court’s in the firelight.
And now it was Court’s turn to smile.
The iron gate dropped like a guillotine, and the vertical shanks slammed into Hines’s back, penetrating his rib cage, lungs, and heart, exiting out his chest and slamming him face-first into the stone floor.
His face just a foot from Court’s, blood gushed from his mouth. He choked out one last “Fuck you!” before he died, a look of astonishment frozen into his wide-open eyes.
Court climbed to his knees and looked back into the smoky room around the body. His rifle was on the opposite wall in a raging fire, but his Glock pistol was just within reach through the square openings in the gate. He reached in for it, next to Hines’s left hip, and scooted it with his fingertips back towards him. But when he tried to pull it through the gate he realized the weapon was just slightly too large to get through.
“Shit,” he said. With his one good hand still on the other side of the gate he dropped the magazine from the weapon, fired off the round in the chamber, then pulled the slide back a half inch by pushing the grip back on the floor. With his thumb he pressed the takedown lever on the frame. After he pulled the trigger again, the metal slide slid off the pistol onto the floor.
Now Court easily pulled the frame through the opening next to the dead man, then reached back in and grabbed the magazine and the slide, barrel, and slide rod off the floor and brought them out as the heat began to overtake him.
Lying on his side he reassembled and reloaded the pistol, still with one hand, all the while worrying about Zoya, somewhere down here in pursuit of her father.
He coughed as he stood with the weapon, then used the flashlight on the rail below the muzzle to light his way forward.
He made it only a few feet before he saw a human form lying facedown. Closing carefully, he realized it was Fox, and he’d been shot in the left shoulder blade.
Court figured the one shot he’d managed to fire, which hadn’t been aimed anywhere near Fox, had ricocheted around the room and wounded the man, who’d bled out fifty feet down the tunnel.
Just to be certain, though, Court performed a dead check, shooting him in the back of the head. The man had a SIG MPX submachine gun lying next to him, and Court hefted it, slung it around his neck, and pressed on.
* * *
• • •
Feodor Zakharov set the master timer on the plastic explosive so the entire chain of thirty explosives around the underground portion of the castle would go off simultaneously. He gave himself and the two sleepers with him five minutes before detonation, then initiated the countdown on the detonator. He and his men would be far enough down the stairs by then, and he assumed the Royal Scots Dragoons would be down here around that time looking for him.
Along with his daughter. Zoya would die, but Zakharov told himself this was something that was long overdue.
Once the timer was set, Zakharov shined his flashlight on the two sleepers. “Let’s get out of here.”
The men had their pistols aimed down the arched corridor they had used to get here, expecting anyone chasing them to come from that direction, but another passage ran off to their left. It had been completely pitch-black inside, until a pair of flashes in quick succession, simultaneous with loud gunshots, sent Zakharov ducking low and spinning his light towards the noise and light.
Both sleepers dropped where they stood, shot in the side of the head and neck at a distance of less than twenty feet.
Zakharov moved to turn off his flashlight, but before he could, a high beam shined in his eyes. He dropped his light on the floor. Softly he said, “Zoya, darling? Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
Zoya flipped off the light on her SIG MPX, allowing the illumination from her father’s flashlight, now lying on the floor, to provide the only glow to the bricked room.
Zakharov looked at his daughter with a sad smile. “This will be hard for you,” he said. “I feel your pain. When Feo died, of course I blamed myself; I still do in a way, and that weight has never left me. It will be worse for you, dear, of course, because you are doing this intentionally. You will carry this forever.”
With a cracking voice she said, “Don’t worry about me, Father. I’ll be just fine after this. Better than ever, in fact.”
“Your words are sold out by your emotions,” he said. “My old eyes can’t see in this light, but how are your stress hives right now?”
Zoya did not waver. “How are yours?”
“Why don’t you put the gun down? There is a way out of here. A secret passage down to the water. We have diving equipment waiting. You and I can go alone, get away, talk.”
She just responded softly again. “Not a chance.”
“You should consider it. In about four minutes this entire dungeon will be a fiery grave for anyone in it.”
Zoya looked around the room and saw the small box on the floor next to her father, with wires running out of both sides. The wires continued along the wall on the floor, passing into two corridors.
“Then I guess I don’t have much time. But you have even less.”
