Chapter 26
The snow hit my face the second I stepped off the plane in Kiev.
Of course it was fucking snowing.
I zipped my jacket and scanned the tarmac.
The private airstrip sat north of the city center, the kind of place that existed on Soviet-era maps and nowhere else.
Diego moved up beside me with his duffel over one shoulder, breath clouding white in the freezing air.
Rhadamanthys came down the steps behind us, the Stetson pulled low against the wind.
He carried a duffel, his revolvers, whatever lived behind his face when he thought about Hades.
"Cold enough for you, guapo?" Diego's voice had that rough edge it got when he ran on spite and no sleep.
"It's March in Ukraine. This is warm."
He snorted and kept walking toward the jeep Luka had left for us. The engine ran, exhaust billowing gray against the pre-dawn sky. Someone had left the heat on.
I threw my gear in back and the stitches in my shoulder pulled, a hot line from Achilles's sword.
I climbed into the passenger seat. Warmth hit my face.
My fingers burned as blood returned to them.
Diego slid behind the wheel and pulled up the nav system Vihaan had loaded.
Rhadamanthys took the backseat without a word, his duffel between his boots.
"Twenty minutes to the compound," Diego said, studying the screen. "Straight shot, no checkpoints."
"Zeus owns the checkpoints."
"Yeah, I figured." He put the jeep in gear, and we rolled forward. "Vihaan, you reading us?"
The comm crackled. "Loud and clear. You're green across the board. No movement on satellite, no chatter on local frequencies."
"Good," I said. "Keep monitoring."
Diego drove. Snow-covered fields stretched in every direction, broken by skeletal trees and the occasional farmhouse with no lights on. Everyone with sense stayed inside when it was this cold.
The jeep hit a pothole and my bad shoulder slammed into the door. I grabbed the handle. Diego muttered something in Spanish.
"You good?" he asked.
"Fine."
In the rearview mirror, Rhadamanthys stared out the window at the frozen fields. His jaw worked slowly, like a man chewing on something he couldn't swallow. I knew that look. I'd worn it for a decade.
The compound came into view, an old Soviet installation on a hill, with concrete walls and guard towers and razor wire. Someone had updated the security with cameras and motion sensors.
"Home sweet fucking home," Diego said.
I pulled the binoculars from my pack and scanned the perimeter. Both guard towers had men in them. Patrols moved along the outer fence. Cameras covered the main gate and the service entrance on the east side.
"Vihaan, I need those cameras down."
"Working on it." Keys clicked rapid-fire through the comm. "Give me three minutes."
Diego killed the engine. Snow accumulated on the windshield. The heater ticked as it cooled.
I checked the katana. The blade came free smoothly, but the draw pulled at the stitches in my shoulder and the wound throbbed all the way down to my elbow.
Diego pulled his pistol and checked the chamber. "Most people would use a gun."
"The sword works."
"I've seen it work. You still threw one into a guy's chest in Spain." He holstered the pistol. "That's not practical. That's theater."
The corner of my mouth twitched before I could stop it.
He reached across the console and laced his fingers through mine. His calluses caught against my palm, warm skin over the swollen knuckles from the tunnel wall in Casablanca. He squeezed once.
"Let's go get our girl," he said.
I held on for a second longer. Then I let go and grabbed my gear.
"Cameras are down," Vihaan said. "You've got a window before their system flags the outage. North wall, section three. Drainage grate."
We moved fast across open ground, three abreast, Rhadamanthys keeping pace on my left without needing to be told where to go.
The snow was fresh enough to show our tracks, but the wind had already filled them in.
Diego reached the wall first and crouched beside the grate.
He pulled a small crowbar from his pack and worked it into the frame, his jaw tight against the grip.
The metal groaned.
"Quietly," I hissed.
"I'm being quiet. This thing hasn't been opened since the Soviet Union collapsed."
He put his weight into it, and the grate came free with a screech that made my molars ache. We froze. I counted to thirty. The compound stayed silent.
"Clear," Vihaan confirmed.
Diego went in first. Rhadamanthys followed, dropping into the dark like a man stepping off a porch. I came last and pulled the grate closed behind us. The tunnel was narrow and concrete, stinking of decades of standing water. My boots splashed through something I chose not to identify.
"Fifty meters straight," Vihaan said. "Then, a junction. Left fork leads to the main facility. Right fork goes to a secondary wing. If they're holding anyone separately, that's where."
Rhadamanthys nodded. "That's where I go."
"Vihaan will guide you through," I said. "We take the left fork."
Rhadamanthys settled his hand on the revolver at his hip. In the dark, I could only make out the shape of the hat and the tension in his shoulders. "If I find Achilles between me and him, I'm not going around."
"Wasn't going to ask you to."
We moved through the tunnel by touch. The darkness pressed close. I found the junction by the change in the air and stopped.
Diego's breathing stayed steady behind me, close enough to track, far enough not to crowd. We'd done this in different tunnels, different countries, always the same rhythm.
"Junction," I said.
Rhadamanthys stopped beside me.
"Good hunting," Diego said quietly.
Rhadamanthys turned right. His boot heels scraped against the concrete, steady and even, and the sound faded until the tunnel swallowed it.
Diego's palm landed on my shoulder in the dark, and I turned away.
The tunnel opened into a maintenance corridor. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing. I drew the katana and my shoulder burned under the sutures. Diego pulled his pistol. We moved along the wall.
"Checkpoint ahead," Vihaan said. "Two guards."
I held up two fingers. Diego nodded. I signaled: suppressing fire, I close. He raised his pistol. I counted down on my fingers.
Diego's suppressed shot took the first guard in the neck. I closed the distance on the second before he could shoulder his rifle. The katana opened him from hip to collarbone, and he folded without a sound.
We dragged the bodies into a side room and kept moving. The stairwell was concrete and Soviet-era ugly. I went up first with the katana ready, clearing each landing before Diego followed.
Someone had renovated the second floor with polished floors, modern lighting, and paintings on the walls. Everything stank of Zeus.
Vihaan warned us about a patrol. I pulled Diego into a doorway. We pressed against the wall and waited. Footsteps approached, casual conversation in Greek. Four Myrmidons walked past, close enough to touch.
Diego pressed against my back, his breath on my neck. I tracked the Myrmidons' footfalls, the cadence of their Greek. When they cleared, I exhaled. Diego squeezed my hip once and stepped back.
"Main stairwell just sealed," Vihaan said. "You'll have to go through the central atrium. Three stories, catwalks on every level. You're exposed."
I looked at the doors ahead of us. Everything behind those doors wanted us dead, and Eight was on the other side.
"Then we move fast," I said.
The doors opened onto a massive space that rose three stories above us. Catwalks crisscrossed overhead, metal grating casting geometric shadows on the polished floor.
The space was empty. The silence sat wrong on my skin.
"This is wrong," I said.
Diego scanned the upper levels. "Yeah."
The doors on the third-floor catwalk burst open.
Myrmidons poured out with rifles already shouldered and opened fire.
I dove behind a concrete planter as rounds chewed into the floor where I'd been standing. Diego rolled behind a support column and returned fire. His pistol barked twice, and a Myrmidon pitched over the railing, hitting the polished floor below with a sound like a bag of wet sand.
More came from the second floor. Rounds sparked off the planter, and concrete dust stung my eyes.
A myrmidon tried to flank Diego's column.
I moved before the thought finished and came up inside his guard.
The katana took him across the belly. He grabbed at the wound and I shouldered him into the wall.
Another came down the stairs, swinging his rifle like a club.
The stock caught me across the ribs and something cracked.
The floor tilted beneath me. I stumbled back.
Diego put two rounds into the gap below the Myrmidon's helmet.
"We need to move," Diego shouted.
We made it halfway across the atrium when Diego's whole body torqued sideways.
He staggered. His gun hand hit the pillar first, then his shoulder, and red punched through the fabric of his jacket in a wet starburst that spread faster than I could move. His knees buckled. He caught himself, barely, and braced against the stone.
"Fuck," he said.
I grabbed him and hauled him behind cover, pressing my hand to his shoulder. Blood poured between my fingers, hot and wrong. I reached for the kit. The gauze soaked through before I could pack it.
"How bad?" I kept my voice flat.
"Been worse." His face had gone the color of the concrete behind him. "Remember Gdan..." The word trailed off, and he sucked air through his teeth. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the joke was gone. "Okay. It's bad. Go. I'll be here."
The round had gone clean through, but the exit wound had torn the muscle ragged. He needed pressure. He needed a hospital. He needed me to kill every person who'd been part of putting that bullet in him.
"Stay down," I said.
I was already moving.