Chapter 14 #2
Trevor picked his way through the wounded and dying on the periphery of the grand entrance.
Jamie knew when he’d erected his telekinetic shields by the way people went from shocked to frantic when they realized they couldn’t leave the area.
A flutter of fabric caught Jamie’s eye, and he watched as a woman in a voluminous ball gown suddenly crumpled to the ground.
He thought maybe it had all become too much for her, or Splice was working exceptionally quickly on her, but then Katie touched his mind, her telepathic voice sounding tired.
Suicide bombers are no longer a problem. Still got hostiles in the museum.
“Let’s start clearing them out,” Jamie said as he reloaded.
A chorus of affirmative responses echoed over the comms. Jamie mentally tagged everyone with relief, but he came up one short.
Wraith?
Here. I’m making my way to Viper’s position, Sean said through a mental link.
“Wraith is clear,” Jamie announced for the team at large. “I’m heading toward the underground entrance.”
“Inferno and I will meet you there,” Annabelle said.
“I’ll cover you,” Samaira said as she braced her own assault rifle against her shoulders.
Tariq stayed behind to cover the area outside of Trevor’s shield in the grand entrance while they advanced toward the Exhibition Road entrance.
The once-white marble statues had scorch marks on their surfaces from the fire, their shields having failed, and the floor was slippery from the water Samaira had created earlier.
Jamie wished his dress shoes had more grip as they moved through the sculpture gallery in quick bursts of movement, using some of the larger statues for cover.
Annabelle and Alexei joined them as they approached the stairs leading down to the tunnel that connected the museum to the South Kensington Station beneath the Exhibition Road. Annabelle held up a stun grenade for Jamie to see and jerked her head at the stairs.
“Want me to clear the way?” she asked.
“By all means,” Jamie said.
Annabelle primed the device before stealthily creeping down the stairs far enough to lob it over the side and onto the lower landing.
Then she hustled back to where they waited as, seconds later, the stun grenade went off.
With the floor and walls between them and its debilitating sensory attack, they were fine.
The Reborn IRA tasked with holding the tunnel entrance weren’t so lucky.
Their screams echoed in the stairwell as the stun grenade let loose a burst of light so bright that, even with his eyes closed, Jamie could still see it.
The noise of its eruption was slightly muffled through the flooring, but it still made Jamie’s ears ring a little.
Blinking rapidly, he took point on the way down, with Alexei right beside him, the two of them sighting down their weapons and clearing the way.
Jamie kept his finger on the trigger, doing wide sweeps as they descended.
There weren’t many Reborn IRA left below.
Faced with a resistance they weren’t prepared for, most had fled down the tunnel, either out through the entrance near Hyde Park or into the crush of people in the Underground.
Jamie wasn’t happy about that, but the fewer enemies they had to face without proper field gear meant a lower chance of getting hurt.
Alpha Team was hobbled by needing cover for protection more than the other side.
Drawn down into the brightly lit underground area, Jamie and Alexei held position at the bottom of the stairs and picked off their targets.
With each person they took out, they advanced, taking back the area in increments until they were faced with a long hallway.
At the end, one of the metal security doors leading to the tunnel beneath Exhibition Road was propped open, with only one man guarding it.
He opened fire, keeping them pinned where they were at the other end of the hall.
When a lull happened, Alexei swiftly checked the threat before moving around the corner and down the tunnel.
When the Reborn IRA guard popped back into view, Alexei took him out with ruthless efficiency.
The body dropped to the ground, and Alexei listened intently for any hint of sound as he advanced.
Jamie was halfway to his position when Alexei chanced a look into the tunnel proper.
“Think maybe running to Underground,” he reported, sounding annoyed about that. “Can go after?”
“Knight, you got police at South Kensington?” Jamie asked, holding up a hand to Alexei, silently asking him to wait.
“The Met Police have it covered now. Hold your position in case they double back,” Liam responded.
Jamie signaled Alexei to stay put. “Confirmed. We’ll hold the tunnel.”
“Copy that.”
I’ll start scrambling memories, Katie said.
“We’ll guard the Exhibition Road entrance,” Annabelle said.
Jamie nodded. “Copy that.”
Annabelle and Samaira headed back upstairs to keep watch on the street level while Jamie and Alexei found what cover they could along the wall inside the entrance, which wasn’t much.
Alpha Team and the other UMG agents would do their best to keep whoever might survive safe and comfortable until the danger had passed. When all was said and done, their covers would remain intact.
The dead couldn’t speak, after all.
* * *
Kyle raced down Exhibition Road, the path he needed to take seared into his mind. He was glad for the long walk he’d done the other day. It made orienting himself easier, even at night.
Police and UMG agents swarmed the area outside of the museum.
Police sirens whooped through the air as more people arrived to help with containment.
Someone pointed and shouted at Kyle to stop, but he just kept running.
He hit the intersection at Cromwell Road and sprinted across, breathing hard.
The UMG, with the help of the police, had discreetly cleared several blocks around the museum, which meant he didn’t have to deal with vehicle traffic.
Rather than stay on the street, Kyle veered right, careening down the stairs of an Underground entrance to the tunnel that would take him to South Kensington Station. He wasn’t sure if it would put him ahead or behind Pavluhkin, but either way, he’d be on a more direct path to his target.
He came out in the underground tunnel with its brickwork walls and holographic adverts racing the length of long screens.
Kyle caught his breath as he checked the tunnel in both directions and found it eerily empty.
The only way to go was forward, so Kyle ran in the direction of the South Kensington Station.
His footsteps echoed in the tunnel, no matter how quiet he tried to be.
Dress shoes weren’t meant for fieldwork, and he couldn’t hide his approach.
At every curve in the tunnel, Kyle waited just long enough to be sure the coast was clear before running again.
Kyle wasn’t sure if the lack of people was due to the UMG or whichever camp laid claim to the Reborn IRA fighters currently shooting up history in the form of art.
The tunnel took a sharp curve to the right, and Kyle checked for clearance before racing around it.
The food stand at the end of the short section of tunnel had all its lights on, but no one manned the counter.
Kyle would’ve passed it on by if not for the multiple bodies stacked up against a food case.
He skidded to a hard halt before the next corner, staying out of sight.
He swore under his breath as he took in the black and white uniforms of Metropolitan police officers.
A thick pool of blood was forming underneath them, and Kyle didn’t bother checking for a pulse on any of them.
The Reborn IRA had clearly gotten the upper hand; he just didn’t know how.
The noise of a crowd well beyond the tunnel echoed down to where Kyle stood.
He could hear several people angrily asking why they couldn’t enter the tunnel, which told him someone was standing guard.
Whoever they were, Kyle doubted they were legitimate officers.
Kyle flexed his fingers around the grip of his handgun.
Slipping around the corner, he quickly ran toward the bright lights of the station pouring through the tunnel exit.
He took the stairs near the entrance two at a time to the final landing right as one of the people arguing with a fake cop on duty pointed in his direction.
“What about that bloke? Why did he get to go down and we can’t?”
The man masquerading as a cop turned, but he was too slow.
Kyle lashed out with his foot and caught him in the back of the knee with a hard kick.
The man shouted in pain as he stumbled, unable to recover quickly enough to counter Kyle’s next attack.
Kyle wrapped an arm around his throat in a chokehold and twisted him around, using his body as cover.
Kyle put his back to the wall and brought up his gun, taking aim and firing at the pair of cops on the other side of the tunnel entrance who were already pulling out hidden guns.
The cops initially assigned to guard the tunnel hadn’t been armed police. The fact that these were just proved they were imposters.
The sound of the gun going off prompted everyone in the vicinity to scream and run.
Kyle slammed the butt of his handgun against the temple of the guy weakly thrashing in his arms to knock him out.
Dropping him on the floor, Kyle ran through the panicked crowd and what space the threat of his gun allotted him, making it to a railing that overlooked the ticketing area and the gates to the Underground.
He scanned the crowd with a sniper’s eye, knowing he couldn’t have been that far behind, just needing a glimpse of his target but coming up empty.