Chapter 19 #3
Katya stood over him, weapon steady. “You’re going to explain every part of your plan,” she directed. “And then we’re going to walk out of here. Alive. I’ve yet to decide if you will though.”
Bashir’s eyes darted toward the door. He inhaled, chest expanding.
A new set of alarms blared overhead, so loud they rattled the monitors. Red lights flashed across the room. Doors slammed in the hallway. The entire compound erupted into panicked shouting and the thud of boots.
Katya glared at him. “Fantastic.”
I spun Bashir’s chair toward me and shoved the muzzle of my gun under his jaw. “Unlock the damn building.”
He grinned through bloody teeth. “Why would I do that?”
Katya leaned down until her face was inches from his. “Because if you don’t, we’ll make sure Revenant knows exactly what you planned to do with us. And I promise, they won’t send drones. They’ll send a whole strike team. They’ll burn this place to the ground.”
Bashir faltered.
He knew she was right.
Revenant didn’t tolerate threats, not even incompetent ones.
He lifted his chin, trying for bravado. “You won’t kill me.”
I leaned in close enough for him to see the decision already made in my eyes. “I don’t know about her, but I know how I’m feeling right now. I don’t need you breathing to burn this place to the ground.”
His expression finally cracked, the facade slipping.
Katya acted immediately. She flicked open the knife at her belt and drove it into the side of his neck, giving it a little sideswipe as she withdrew it.
His breath caught and his eyes widened in surprise.
Katya pressed her palm to his chest and shoved him backward as the blood spread rapidly down his shirt.
He gurgled, reached for something that wasn’t there, and then went still.
Katya wiped her blade on his shirt and shoved it back in her belt.
Several sets of pounding footsteps reached the door. I grabbed the dead leader’s body and shoved it into the corner, clearing our line of fire.
Katya aimed at the door. “When they breach, go right. There’s a second exit over there.”
The door blasted inward. A guard rushed through, rifle up. Katya took him down with two shots center mass. I sprinted forward, grabbed the next guard by the vest, and threw him into the console hard enough to smash a display screen.
More shouts. More boots. They were swarming us.
Katya ducked under the console and fired between the legs of another attacker, hitting a man in the shoulder. He screamed, fell, and dropped his rifle. I seized it, turned, and fired down the hallway, forcing the rest to take cover.
“There are too many,” I called to her.
“That’s why we’re leaving,” she answered me calmly.
We slipped through the secondary door as bullets pinged off the metal frame.
The hallway beyond was narrow and dark, lined with wiring conduit and storage crates. Katya moved fast, checking corners, and sweeping her weapon back and forth.
We darted into a side room full of metal shelves and tools. Above us was a rusty maintenance hatch. I gave Katya a boost. She pushed the panel open and climbed up. Heavy boots thundered closer.
“Hurry,” she hissed.
I jumped, grabbed the edge, and pulled myself into the cramped duct. She slid the panel quietly back into place just as three guards burst into the room below.
Katya held her finger to her lips.
Through the slats, we watched them sweep the room, weapons drawn, tossing crates aside. One of them fired a round into the ceiling. Dust rained down around us, coating my arms.
Katya’s breath warmed my cheek in the tight space. She placed her hand over my mouth briefly when one of the guards paused directly below, listening.
After a long moment, the men moved on.
When it was clear, we crawled carefully through the duct system. Katya was quick and sure-footed, counting turns under her breath. She stopped at an intersection, listened, then took the left path without hesitation.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “The main stairwell is here.”
We reached a grate and peered down. The stairwell was abandoned. Hopefully, the soldiers had been redirected elsewhere.
Katya pointed. “Drop.”
We did. I landed first, then caught her as she jumped and there was a brief, electric second when her breath brushed my jaw.
Then we were moving again.
We took the stairs up two at a time, climbing until we reached another reinforced door. Katya tested it. She sighed in relief to find it unlocked.
She cracked it open.
The secondary control room was empty.
She entered, immediately moving to the computer terminal. “If we can unlock an exit and open the outer gates, we can get to the tarmac before they regroup.”
I stood by the door, covering her.
She typed rapidly, bypassing systems as if she had been born inside them.
“Got it,” she said. “Main gate is open. East entrance is disabled. And I’ve triggered a temporary block on internal comms. They’ll have to shout to each other to coordinate.”
“Good.”
Katya wiped a strand of hair from her face. “We should go.”
Footsteps were already echoing again through the halls.
I took one last glance around the room, met her eyes, and nodded. “After you.”
We left the control room together and ran away from the chaos of the compound.
“They’re routing personnel to the west wing,” she said breathlessly. “They think we’re headed for the main stairwell.”
“Good,” I said. “Let’s head east.”
“East is storage, fuel, and piping.”
“Even better.”
She shot me a quick look, half confusion, half dawning realization.
“You really do want to burn it all down, don’t you?”
“I want to leave nothing for Revenant to salvage,” I answered.
She grinned. “I like the way you think.”
A big set of double doors led into a huge warehouse type space.
We slipped in and shoved the door closed behind us.
The room reeked of gasoline, oil, and rust. There were rows of industrial shelving packed with barrels, tubing, spare parts, machinery, tools, and boxed equipment.
A maintenance workstation sat in the center, wires spilling from the drawers like veins.
Katya scanned the room. “There’s enough accelerant here to cook the whole structure.”
“Help me find a way to light it.”
We rifled through drawers until she pulled out a handheld torch, the kind used for welding small parts. She held it up with a wicked little smile. “This will do it.”
I rolled a barrel to the doorway.
“Stand back,” I warned, cracking the seal on the large drum of fuel.
The air filled with the sharp tang of fumes. Tipping it, I let the liquid pool into the hallway, creating a stream that ran down the corridor and around the corner. Katya grabbed another, rolled it over to me, and did the same, watching it flow through the space like a river of impending disaster.
She kept her voice low. “They’ll be able to smell it.”
“Perfect.”
We emptied two more barrels before Katya pointed toward the ventilation shafts overhead. “If we can direct it upward, the fire will climb through the ducts.”
“You want the roof to go too?”
“If we’re going to burn this place,” she said, “we’re going to burn it properly.”
I smirked. “I really like you, princess.”
“I know.” She had the audacity to grin at me. “Once we’re done here, we return to the warehouse, light it, and escape out the rear exit from the bays there. Fast.”
We each rolled a barrel up the next hallway, mine leaving a trail of fuel, hers still sealed.
We stopped only when we reached a dead end with a grate in the floor that dropped into an open shaft leading toward the lower levels.
Katya cracked open her barrel, crouched down, and poured a stream of fuel over the edge.
“That should give us a nice backdraft,” she said.
“And light the lower floor on fire.”
“Exactly. Fire burns upwards.”
“Perfect.”
Pounding footsteps drew closer, as well as the sound of guards shouting. They were spreading out.
We didn’t have long.
We sprinted back to the warehouse, weaving between shelves and barrels. Katya held the torch in her hand, thumb resting on the ignition trigger.
“Light it,” I said, hearing heavy boots clatter against concrete.
She flicked the trigger.
A blue flame hissed to life.
She exhaled softly. “Let’s go.”
She touched the flame to the fuel trail we’d poured.
The fire whooshed outward instantly, racing across the floor like a starving beast. It turned the corner, growing brighter as it devoured the line we’d laid out. The heat from the flame hit us a second later.
The guards shouted in confusion as the flames surged upward. Smoke filled the corridor behind us.
“Move!” I grabbed Katya’s hand and pulled her as we sprinted toward the opposite side of the huge space.
We burst through a maintenance door that led to the outside perimeter and ran full out. A blast pulsed behind us. The whole building shuddered. Yells could be heard behind us. Then another explosion. The fire had hit the fuel pouring through the ducts.
Katya looked over her shoulder as the compound lit up from inside. “We did that,” she said proudly.
“Yes, we did,” I smirked.
She smiled. “We’re lucky we didn’t blow ourselves up.”
“We’re not lucky,” I threw back. “We’re good.”
“I like the way you think.”
“Plane is that way,” I said, pointing to the jet across the field.
We ran through tall grass, keeping low. Katya kept pace easily, even after everything we’d done together. Her breath came out steamy, her silhouette stark against the burning compound behind us.
At the far end of the field, the jet sat ready. Our pilot stepped out of the plane as soon as he saw us sprinting toward him.
“What the hell?” he yelled over the roar of collapsing metal behind us.
“Start the engines!” Katya shouted back.
He took one look over our shoulders at the inferno climbing into the sky and didn’t question a thing.
We rushed up the stairs. Katya turned and gave one last look at the compound.
“Revenant’s plans die here,” she said quietly.
“Not all of them,” I said. “But this chapter is closed.”
She swallowed, the fire reflecting in her pupils. “Let’s go home.”