Chapter 145
The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, and Charlotte felt the vibration through the linoleum.
She had thirty seconds, maybe less. Behind them, the fuse burned in the open depot door, a thin orange line creeping across the concrete toward the first charge.
Between that flame and her family stood three armed men who were about to discover exactly what they were guarding and who had rigged it to burn.
They couldn’t go back through the depot. They would have to go forward, through the guards, up the stairs, and find another way out. She decided in the space between one heartbeat and the next. Forward was the only direction left.
“Stay behind me,” she said. “When I move, move. Don’t stop.”
The first guard appeared at the junction.
He was young and carried his rifle at low ready, moving with the focused caution of a man who had been told the basement held both prisoners and something valuable.
His eyes found the open depot door, the burning fuse, and the three civilians in the corridor.
The calculation took less than a second.
He shouted in Russian. The word might have meant halt, freeze, or something else; she didn’t know.
She threw the knife. It was desperation and muscle memory born of months spent carrying the blade and imagining moments exactly like that one.
The knife left her hand and traveled twenty feet between them in a flat arc that ended in the guard’s upper chest, just below the collarbone.
He dropped the rifle and went down on one knee, his hand finding the handle.
The sound he made belonged to a man whose expectations had just been violently rewritten.
The second guard rounded the corner with his weapon raised, and Charlotte was already moving.
She closed the distance and drove her shoulder into his midsection before the rifle could level.
The impact sent them both into the wall, and the rifle discharged into the ceiling.
Plaster dust rained down. Sophia came from behind her.
She had the fireplace poker, the same one she had used in Voronov’s quarters, and brought it down across the second guard’s arm with enough force to break something.
He screamed, and the rifle dropped to the floor.
The third guard fired. The bullet missed Charlotte by inches and punched a hole in the wall beside Mason’s head.
The boy dropped flat with Jack beside him, both pressed against the baseboard.
Charlotte got her hands on the second guard’s rifle.
The weapon was heavy and unfamiliar, but the mechanism was simple enough.
She jammed the stock into his face and felt cartilage give way.
He staggered back. She brought the rifle around toward the third guard, who was still standing at the junction with his weapon trained on the corridor. They fired at the same time.
Charlotte felt the bullet hit before she heard the sound.
It struck her high on the left side, just below the collarbone, and the impact drove her back against the wall.
Her left arm went numb, and the rifle dropped from her hands.
The world narrowed to the precise sensation of something that had entered her body with intent.
The third guard was down. Sophia had the rifle from the second guard and fired it with the precision of someone who had been paying attention when carriers discussed weapons.
The shot had caught the man in the chest, and he was on his back on the linoleum, making a wet, bubbling sound that Charlotte recognized.
The corridor was quiet except for the alarms, which hadn’t stopped, and the breathing of five people in various states of injury and shock. She pressed her right hand to her left shoulder and felt the warm blood through her fingers. The wound was high and clean.
“Mom, you’re hit.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “We need to move now.”
The first guard was still alive. He had pulled the knife from his chest and was trying to stand, his uniform dark with blood and his movements uncoordinated.
The second guard wasn’t moving. The third lay on the floor where Sophia’s shot had put him, his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling.
Behind them, through the open depot door, the fuse continued its patient burn.
The orange line had reached the first coil and was turning toward the fuel drums.
Charlotte estimated three minutes, maybe less, before the first charge detonated and the chain reaction began.
She looked at the children. Sophia held the rifle with both hands.
Mason had Jack by the collar. Both of them were looking at the blood on Charlotte’s shirt with expressions that carried too much understanding.
“Up the stairs,” Charlotte said. “Find another way out. The duct is too far now.”
She led with her right arm, her left hanging uselessly at her side, blood dripping from her fingertips onto the linoleum with each step.
The stairwell was ahead. Beyond it lay the upper levels of the building, the chaos of the evacuation, and whatever exit might still be open.
The burning fuse cast a faint orange glow through the depot doorway.
In three minutes, everything behind them would cease to exist. The only question was whether they would be far enough away when it happened.