Chapter 42
Freezing metal burned Pav’s spine.
The underside of the truck was colder than the ground. Thick straps across his chest restricted his breathing and icy air knifed under the chassis every time the vehicle hit a rut. The suspension shuddered above him, driving vibration through his ribs and his healing chest wound.
Beside him, Zak was a dark shape strapped beneath the auxiliary tank, one gloved hand locked around the frame rail, his face turned away from the grit spitting up beneath the wheels.
“If I die under a potato truck,” Zak murmured over comms, voice barely more than breath, “I’m haunting both of you.”
The compound lights strobed through the trees. White glare. Darkness. White glare again.
Gate in twenty seconds.
Fifteen.
The truck slowed.
Bored male voices, rough with cold and sleep. One laughed. Another coughed, spat, then said something to Fox as he unwound the driver’s window.
Fox answered in fluent Russian, easy and irritated, the voice of a man who’d driven this road too many times and didn’t appreciate being kept from a warm room and terrible coffee.
A guard walked around the truck. Boots ground on frozen stones. A flashlight beam cut under the chassis.
Pav stopped breathing.
The light moved across the axle, washed over dried mud and rusted metal, and slid within inches of his face. Close enough to catch the edge of his glove where it gripped the rail. One shift, one breath, would end the operation before it began.
He became nothing. No breath. Just stillness under steel.
The beam tracked away.
A dog barked somewhere beyond the gate, sharp and sudden. Another guard swore at it. The first man slapped the side of the truck twice.
The gate opened and the truck rolled forward.
Pav let air back into his lungs slowly, controlled enough that his chest wound only dragged a little.
The gate closed behind them with a heavy metallic clank.
The truck crawled through the yard, engine idling low, tires crunching over packed snow and gravel.
Pav tracked the floodlight pattern through the breaks beneath the truck bed.
One sweep. Three seconds dark. Another sweep.
Eight seconds to the dead angle near the loading bay.
Fox let the truck crawl through the blind angle. “Now.”
Pav’s hand was already on the release clip.
He dropped the last few inches to the frozen ground, absorbed it through his good shoulder and hip, rolled once under the shadow of the truck and came up on a knee, weapon tucked tight.
Zak slid out behind him, silent and fluid. They moved before the engine note settled.
Across the shadows between floodlights. Low and fast, no wasted motion.
Fox stayed with the truck, playing driver, still useful in the cab until the last possible second.
Pav and Zak cut toward the rear service side of the main building, where the school’s concrete wall met a covered walkway half-collapsed under snow.
A patrolman stood near the generator shed, shoulders hunched against the cold, cigarette cupped in one hand. The orange tip glowed vivid, then smoke clouding the air as he exhaled.
Pav came in from his blind side.
One hand over the mouth. Blade low and fast. He caught the body before it hit the ground. He lowered the man into the shadow behind the generator shed and wiped his blade on the man’s jacket.
“Generator guard down,” he breathed.
“Solid copy,” Zak said from behind him.
Fox came back over comms. “I’m clear of the truck. Moving to secondary.”
That put Fox on perimeter and gate control. Pav and Zak had the school.
Harper.
Her name burned through him, silent and brutal, then hardened into purpose.
Pav crossed to the rear service entrance, Zak close behind. The door was old steel, painted institutional green beneath decades of rust and neglect. Frost feathered the hinges. A secondary lock had been welded over the original mechanism, crude and strong.
Zak ghosted in beside him and pressed the shaped charge into place. No bigger than a pack of cigarettes, fixed against the lock with magnetic clamps while the det cord disappeared beneath his fingers.
“Subtle,” Zak murmured.
Pav glanced at him.
Zak gave a faint shrug, his mouth tipping. “For me.”
They turned their faces away, mouths open against the pressure wave.
The charge blew with a contained punch. A violent cough of sound that snapped through the cold and shoved the lock inward. The generator’s thump ate the worst of it, but not all.
The school building reacted. Dust dropped from the lintel in a dry, powdery curtain. Above the door, glass shuddered in its frame.
Then silence.
Pav was already moving. He entered low, weapon up, Zak peeling off down the opposite corridor. Their shoulders passed close in the doorway, splitting cleanly, sectors covered without a word.
“Try not to die,” Zak muttered.
“Likewise.” Pav headed up the corridor alone.
Inside, the school smelled of damp concrete, old paper, and people kept too long in rooms without air.
The corridor ahead was narrow, walls painted a dead shade of yellow that had peeled in long curls near the ceiling. Children’s murals faded beneath grime—bright cartoon animals with missing faces, a sun with chipped orange rays, small handprints stamped in paint beside a classroom door.
A place built for children. Turned into this.
Fuck.
He locked it down. Boots silent. Rifle steady. Pain stashed. Breath controlled.
At the first junction, he paused.
Generator hum behind him. Pipes knocking somewhere in the wall. A television murmuring faintly from a room above. Men’s voices somewhere deeper in the building, relaxed, unaware, stupid with routine.
A smell hit him. Leather. Cold rubber. He turned his head, moving into an empty classroom. A pile of shoes sat against the far wall.
Women’s shoes. Dozens of them. Boots with broken zips. Cheap sneakers. Sandals. One high heel snapped at the narrow stem. A pair of hospital clogs stained dark at the toes.
His chest went icy in a way pain had never reached. At the edge of the pile was a child’s shoe. Small. Pink once, maybe but now gray with grime.
Something inside him stopped making heat. He exhaled and moved on, deeper into the school, following the corridor toward the central block. Empty classrooms. Old trophy cabinets filmed with dust. A cracked glass case holding faded certificates and a soccer ball deflated into a leather husk.
Children had once run these corridors. Now women disappeared into them. His grip hardened on his gun.
Easy.
Too tight meant emotion and emotion meant imprecision. The stairwell was empty as he climbed to the next floor but a guard blocked the landing, his weapon slung, radio clipped high on his vest.
Pav picked up a small shard of broken plaster from the floor and flicked it down the corridor. It clicked against tile as it landed.
The guard’s head turned. Pav crossed the distance in three silent strides.
He clamped a hand over the guard’s mouth, driving his knee into the back of the guard’s leg. He yanked him off balance and into the shadow beneath the stairwell, his blade already finding the gap above the collar.
The man jerked in his grip but Pav held him through it. The little pink shoe. He couldn’t stop seeing it. The man slumped.
The guard’s radio crackled. “Danil?”
Pav lifted the handset and pressed transmit. “Da.”
“You freezing to death down there?”
Pav looked at the blood spreading slowly across the tile beneath the dead man’s shoulder. “Da.”
He released the button then dragged the guard out of sight into the nearest classroom. He removed the guard’s radio earpiece, clipped it to his vest, then stepped over the body and eased down the corridor, checking out each room muzzle first, his breathing measured.
Noise behind.
Pav ducked into an open doorway, pressed against the wood.
Footsteps. They stopped. A muttered curse.
Pav risked a glance. A guard’s beam swept the floor illuminating the thin smear of blood across the tile. The man grabbed for his radio.
Pav launched forward.
The guard pivoted, swung his rifle up. Pav hit him before the muzzle cleared his chest. They slammed into the wall rattling the glass in the nearby trophy case. The flashlight spun away, beam skittering across the walls in broken flashes of white and dark.
The guard was stronger than he looked. He drove an elbow into Pav’s ribs. Pain split through Pav’s side and took the corridor with it for half a breath.
Pav moved inside it, trapped the other man’s rifle and twisted hard. The suppressor struck concrete. The guard’s finger clenched. The shot cracked through the corridor. Suppressed didn’t mean quiet indoors. The sound hit the school like a hammer.
For one heartbeat, everything froze.
Then the compound woke.
The radio on the guard’s hip erupted. Russian voices overlapping in agitation. A door slammed open somewhere above him. Lights snapped on down the corridor one after another, harsh white flickers dragging the school out of darkness.
Fox’s voice came over comms, calm as a knife. “Compromised.”
Pav drove his forehead into the guard’s face. Cartilage gave with a satisfying wet crunch as he wrenched the rifle free and slammed the butt into his attacker’s throat. The man dropped hard, choking soundlessly against the wall.
Stealth was gone.
Pav dragged air into his lungs, copper flooding the back of his throat. Somewhere above him a woman screamed.
A door slammed. Someone shouted. Pav turned toward the stairwell. Every instinct in him locked onto the sound.
Harper.
He hit the stairs at a run.