Chapter Thirty-Four
Isolde
Darkness swallowed Terminal Fourteen so completely that for one disorienting second Isolde lost every point of reference she had spent the drive memorizing.
The floodlights vanished, the warehouses disappeared, Corwin became nothing more than a shape beside her, and the black harbor seemed to expand until the entire terminal consisted of cold wind, the smell of diesel, and Taddeo's warning from Northglass repeating inside her head with sudden, brutal usefulness.
The loading wall was six steps behind her.
Isolde moved before anybody told her to.
She dropped low, turned away from where Russo had been standing, and made it two steps before the first gunshot cracked across the apron.
A second followed almost immediately from farther east, then several more answered from a different direction, the sharp reports multiplying between warehouse walls until echoes made it impossible to tell whether three men were firing or ten.
Corwin caught her coat near the elbow as they moved and released it almost as quickly, changing the grip to the fabric at her upper back when another shot struck metal somewhere near the verification table.
“Wall, Izzy,” he said close to her ear, and the fact that he remembered the same destination she did kept his touch from feeling like another man deciding where she belonged.
“I know.” Isolde kept moving bent low, one hand extended until her palm struck cold concrete and confirmed they had reached the loading wall. “Get down before you make surviving this unnecessarily difficult.”
They dropped behind the barrier together just as something heavy overturned near Orsino's table.
The isolated laptop remained visible for a moment because its battery-powered screen glowed pale blue in the darkness, and Isolde saw Orsino crouch behind the waist-high concrete divider while one of the Bellandi men pulled the computer down below the line of fire.
Someone shouted Taddeo's name from the south side.
Another voice yelled for the east gate to close.
Then the primary Bellandi radio erupted into overlapping commands loud enough that Isolde could hear them from several yards away, men contradicting one another about vehicles, utility access, and where the shots originated.
The chaos might have been frightening under any circumstances, but after Taddeo's briefing she understood something more important than the individual words: the official security network was the part he expected to fail.
A low mechanical hum started somewhere behind the warehouses.
Emergency lighting flickered on.
The lights were nothing like the bright industrial floods that had illuminated the exchange.
Dim red fixtures came alive along the warehouse doors and utility fencing, leaving the terminal washed in intermittent crimson that made distances harder to judge but returned enough shape for Isolde to identify the loading apron, the edge of Corwin's van, and the concrete wall protecting them.
She searched for Taddeo.
He was no longer near the verification table.
The realization hit hard enough that she had to force herself not to stand.
“Where is he?” Corwin asked, following her gaze while keeping his body below the top of the barrier. “He was beside you when the lights went.”
“He moved before they cut.” Isolde listened past the gunfire and heard a different radio burst somewhere north of them, quieter and more controlled than the official shouting. “He has another security team.”
Corwin looked at her sharply. “Another one.”
“Taddeo suspected the roster was compromised.” Isolde risked lifting her head just enough to see across the top of the wall before another shot struck the pavement and sent a bright chip of concrete sideways. “He built a second plan underneath the first one.”
Corwin stared at her for half a second. “Of course he did.”
Under other circumstances, Isolde might have agreed with the tone.
A vehicle engine roared near the western approach.
Corwin turned immediately.
His driver had thrown himself behind the van's open door and was shouting toward them, though the first words disappeared beneath gunfire. When the shooting shifted east for several seconds, his voice carried clearly enough to reach the loading wall.
“Corwin, move now!” the driver yelled, one arm extended toward the van while the engine revved behind him. “West road's open, and I can get us out before they close it!”
Corwin's entire body tightened.
Isolde looked toward the same lane.
The western route was exactly the exit Corwin had chosen because nobody could trap him easily once he reached the container corridor. His van sat less than thirty yards away with its engine running, his driver alive, and nothing obvious blocking the lane between them.
For several seconds the path out was genuinely open.
Then gunfire struck the pavement between Isolde's wall and the van.
Corwin swore and ducked again, but his attention stayed fixed on the vehicle.
Isolde understood the choice before he made it.
He could go.
The Bellandis already had the first drive.
The money had verified. The second drive had been on Orsino's machine when the lights failed, but Corwin still knew enough of the archive to remain useful if he escaped, and whatever deal Cesare had promised would matter very little if everyone inside Terminal Fourteen ended up dead.
Corwin looked toward Isolde.
The hesitation ended.
He turned away from the van.
“Get behind the scale housing,” he said, looking toward the concrete structure farther north while another burst of gunfire came from near the utility building. “The angle from the east can't reach both sides of it.”
Isolde stared at him. “Your driver has a clear route.”
“I noticed.”
“He can get you out.”
“He cannot get you from here without crossing the same fire.”
“Corwin.”
He looked at her then, and for once there was no clever plan waiting behind his eyes. “I'm not leaving you again, Izzy, so save the argument until we're somewhere bullets aren't involved.”
The sentence should have irritated her.
Instead something painful tightened beneath her ribs.
Corwin looked toward the gap between the loading wall and scale housing, calculated the distance, and waited until shots from the rail side forced the eastern gunman to pull back. “When that starts again, we move together, and if you tell me Taddeo gave you a better route, I'll use his.”
Isolde looked north.
The scale housing was concrete, as Taddeo had explained, but the approach required crossing approximately twelve exposed feet before another stack of abandoned equipment interrupted the sight line from utility.
Beyond it, the north warehouse offered the hidden extraction vehicle and, more importantly, men Taddeo had selected outside the compromised roster.
“The scale housing first,” she said. “Then north if the route opens, but we don't cross toward the tracks unless we can see who is calling us.”
Corwin nodded. “Fine.”
The fact that he accepted her directions without improvement or correction might have been more startling in quieter circumstances.
Gunfire erupted from the rail side.
A man near the eastern gate shouted.
Isolde heard something metallic crash and then Marco's voice somewhere in the darkness, giving a short command that did not resemble the confused traffic on the official radio.
A figure moved from behind an abandoned maintenance truck toward Russo's communications station, and the position Taddeo had described as invisible suddenly became real.
“Now,” Isolde said.
She and Corwin moved.
They made perhaps half the distance before someone fired from the south warehouse overhang.
Corwin hit Isolde from the side.
For one terrifying instant she thought he had been trying to tackle her, then a bullet struck the metal frame behind where her head had been and sparks flashed red-white in the emergency light.
Corwin drove them both behind the abandoned base of a forklift mast, his shoulder striking the pavement hard enough to make him grunt.
“Are you hit?” Isolde demanded, twisting toward him as another shot punched through sheet metal above them. “Corwin, look at me.”
“I'm fine.”
“You made a sound.”
“I fell on concrete.”
“That was not the sound you make when you fall on concrete.”
Corwin started to answer and then flinched.
Isolde saw the dark patch spreading along the upper sleeve of his coat.
Her stomach dropped.
“You're shot.”
“Grazed.”
“That word has become extremely popular among men who do not want women asking follow-up questions.”
Corwin pressed one hand to his upper arm and looked down at the blood with obvious irritation rather than panic. “It went through the outside of the arm, and I can move my hand. I would prefer not to discuss terminology until we get somewhere harder to shoot.”
Isolde wanted to argue, but he was right about that much.
She listened.
Gunfire had shifted again.
The official Bellandi men were no longer firing blindly from their assigned positions.
The hidden team was pushing somebody back from the eastern side, and the pattern had become more intelligible now that Isolde understood she did not need to identify every shooter; she only needed to know which movements matched the layout Taddeo had given her and which did not.
A man ran from the communications station toward the center apron.
Russo.
The ring flashed under the red emergency light as his right hand came up around a handgun.
Isolde ducked lower.
Russo did not fire at them.
He fired toward Orsino's verification table.
The hard-shell evidence case struck the pavement when someone behind the barrier knocked it aside, the lid springing open as it slid. One of Corwin's handwritten notebooks spilled across the ground, followed by the physical ledger and a small black object Isolde recognized immediately.
The second drive.
It skittered beneath the steel table.
Russo saw it too.