Mission Critical
He coughed as he stood with the weapon, then used the flashlight on the rail below the muzzle to light his way forward.
He made it only a few feet before he saw a human form lying facedown. Closing carefully, he realized it was Fox, and he’d been shot in the left shoulder blade.
Court figured the one shot he’d managed to fire, which hadn’t been aimed anywhere near Fox, had ricocheted around the room and wounded the man, who’d bled out fifty feet down the tunnel.
Just to be certain, though, Court performed a dead check, shooting him in the back of the head. The man had a SIG MPX submachine gun lying next to him, and Court hefted it, slung it around his neck, and pressed on.
* * *
• • •
Feodor Zakharov set the master timer on the plastic explosive so the entire chain of thirty explosives around the underground portion of the castle would go off simultaneously. He gave himself and the two sleepers with him five minutes before detonation, then initiated the countdown on the detonator. He and his men would be far enough down the stairs by then, and he assumed the Royal Scots Dragoons would be down here around that time looking for him.
Along with his daughter. Zoya would die, but Zakharov told himself this was something that was long overdue.
Once the timer was set, Zakharov shined his flashlight on the two sleepers. “Let’s get out of here.”
The men had their pistols aimed down the arched corridor they had used to get here, expecting anyone chasing them to come from that direction, but another passage ran off to their left. It had been completely pitch-black inside, until a pair of flashes in quick succession, simultaneous with loud gunshots, sent Zakharov ducking low and spinning his light towards the noise and light.
Both sleepers dropped where they stood, shot in the side of the head and neck at a distance of less than twenty feet.
Zakharov moved to turn off his flashlight, but before he could, a high beam shined in his eyes. He dropped his light on the floor. Softly he said, “Zoya, darling? Is that you?”
“It’s me.”
Zoya flipped off the light on her SIG MPX, allowing the illumination from her father’s flashlight, now lying on the floor, to provide the only glow to the bricked room.
Zakharov looked at his daughter with a sad smile. “This will be hard for you,” he said. “I feel your pain. When Feo died, of course I blamed myself; I still do in a way, and that weight has never left me. It will be worse for you, dear, of course, because you are doing this intentionally. You will carry this forever.”
With a cracking voice she said, “Don’t worry about me, Father. I’ll be just fine after this. Better than ever, in fact.”
“Your words are sold out by your emotions,” he said. “My old eyes can’t see in this light, but how are your stress hives right now?”
Zoya did not waver. “How are yours?”
“Why don’t you put the gun down? There is a way out of here. A secret passage down to the water. We have diving equipment waiting. You and I can go alone, get away, talk.”
She just responded softly again. “Not a chance.”
“You should consider it. In about four minutes this entire dungeon will be a fiery grave for anyone in it.”
Zoya looked around the room and saw the small box on the floor next to her father, with wires running out of both sides. The wires continued along the wall on the floor, passing into two corridors.
“Then I guess I don’t have much time. But you have even less.”
CHAPTER 67
Zoya shot a quick glance behind her when she heard gunfire echo up the corridor there, and in that moment, Zakharov shifted his body slightly to the right and lowered his hand closer to his waist.
Across the room his daughter shifted to the right, so that she wasn’t in the line of fire of anyone coming up the hall, and she backed herself up to the brick wall.
* * *
• • •
Her father used his left hand, gesticulating with it to take his daughter’s attention away from what he was really doing, going for his gun. He’d taught her this in picking pockets when she was a little girl, but he hoped she would not be thinking of her childhood right now.
He pointed at the C-4 charge. “Thirty of these, all throughout the lower level. Here, down that passage, the one next to it there.” It was working; she was watching his left hand, not his right, and his right was partially shielded by the turn of his body. His hand slipped to his waistband, grabbed the pistol, and drew it slowly, while pointing down the corridor to his right. “I’ll turn it off, or you can if you want. The timer is on the main device, just down that way. It’s not far. You can probably see it from where you are standing if you shine your light.”
* * *
• • •
Zoya did not move her gun from her father’s chest, but she flicked her eyes to her right, up the hall he had indicated.
And Feodor Zakharov pulled his gun.
The concussive booms of two, three, four, then five gunshots in quick succession came from the hallway behind Zoya on her left, sending her to her knees and hefting the gun in front of her. In the dim light her father jerked, spun, and staggered backwards against the wall behind him. A pistol in his right hand fell to the floor, and then his body came crashing down forward.
She spun the gun towards the hallway just as Court stepped through, his Glock pistol still sighted on the body lying crumpled across the room, his SIG submachine gun hanging from his chest.
“No!” Zoya screamed. “No! He was mine!”
She pointed her gun at Court, and he lowered his back down to his side.
“You son of a bitch. You had no right!” she shouted at him, but he just flipped on the light on his weapon and shined it on the floor.
He said, “There are wires running all over this place. They look new.”
“I fucking hate you!” she shouted.
“Later. The wires?”
Zoya’s head cleared a little, remembering the imminent peril they were in. “C-4. Thirty bricks. Daisy-chained and on a timer. Three minutes.” She jerked her head down the corridor. “He said it’s down there.”
Court said, “What if it’s not?”
Zoya turned for the passage her father had indicated and started running. “Follow the wires in the other direction. Just in case.”
Court ran back up the hall, his light leading the way, following the wires. A group of people appeared at the same intersection where Primakov’s body lay, but quickly he recognized them as Hightower, Hanley, and Brewer.