“I hate to break it to you, Ryan, but the way out is back that way,” said Jackson, pointing at the closed door.
“They built things in here. There has to be a ventilation system of some sort,” said Mitchell, looking up at the roof.
Yuri aimed his flashlight at the roof. “There, above the bomb,” said Yuri excitedly.
Mitchell and Jackson looked over.
There it was: a ventilation shaft.
Mitchell shone his light up into the shaft. It was narrow, but could fit a man.
“Jesus,” muttered Jackson, “not again. That’s smaller than the elevator hatch we had to climb out of.”
“Strip down or wait here for our attackers to blast their way in.”
Jackson mumbled something to himself as he began to remove his clothes.
“Yuri, you’re the skinniest one of all of us. You go first,” said Mitchell.
Yuri dropped his vest to the floor and began to scale up the crane holding up the bomb. When he shone his light inside the ventilation shaft, he could see that it went for about ten meters and then turned to the right. He dragged himself up inside and began to crawl down the long, narrow tunnel.
Outside, Tara placed her surviving people alongside the tunnel wall near the closed door.
“Blow the door,” said Tara to a tall, black-haired man with a deep scar down the side of his face.
With a sharp nod, the man dug out a pre-made charge from his small pack and placed it against the metal frame of the door. He set the timer for ten seconds and stepped back slightly.
Anticipation mixed with fear began to build inside the killers waiting to pounce upon their prey trapped inside the workroom.
Atsuko scared beyond measure nearly leapt out of her skin when a rough hand unexpectedly grabbed her from behind.
The blast, when it came, wasn’t half as loud or as terrifying as Atsuko had feared. Designed to blow the door off its frame, the charge knocked the door back into the workroom with a loud thud, sending decades of dust flying into the air when it hit the floor.
“Now,” said Tara to the thug holding onto Atsuko.
Pushed from behind, Atsuko’s heart raced wildly in her chest as she was forced forward through the gaping hole that had once been the doorway. Her eyes couldn’t see a thing. It was as dark as a crypt inside. With a hard push from behind, Atsuko blindly stumbled into the room. With her arms flailing in the air, Atsuko tripped over something and fell face first onto the dust-covered floor.
Jackson was at the ventilation shaft when the door blew inward.
“Go,” yelled Mitchell to his friend as he lowered his NVGs over his eyes and brought up his rifle to his shoulder, ready to engage anyone who tried to enter the room.
In a world bathed in green, Mitchell’s thumb changed the selector switch on his rifle from safe to automatic. A second later, a person came stumbling into the room. He placed his laser sight on the chest of the intruder and took up the slack on the trigger of his weapon. He was about to fire when his brain registered that the person falling to the ground wasn’t one of Cypher’s goons, but Atsuko Satomi. The cold-hearted bastards had thrown her into the room to draw fire.
Mitchell was about to call out to Atsuko, warning her to keep down, when a man leaped into the room with his weapon tight into his shoulder. Years of training and experience kicked in, and Mitchell fired a short, deadly burst into then man’s chest, killing him.
In the dark, Atsuko screamed as the dead thug’s body fell to the ground right beside her.
Mitchell wasn’t sure how many more goons there were waiting in the hallway to burst inside the room, nor was he going to wait around to find out. He ran forward, grabbed the booby-trapped box containing the grenade he had found earlier, and then hurled it out of the open doorway. Without slowing down, he ran over to Atsuko, grabbed her by the arm and quickly hauled her up onto her feet.
“Run,” said Mitchell into her ear as he pulled her back with him.
“I can’t see,” cried Atsuko.
“I can. Now run unless you wish to die here.”
In the dark, Atsuko’s desire to live kicked in. She ran blindly forward, praying that it wasn’t too late for them.
Tara heard the burst of automatic gunfire. She knew that it wasn’t from her man. She bared her teeth in anger. She realized she had once more seriously underestimated her opponent. Killing him was going to be a pleasure. She was about to order the next man in line to enter the room when a wooden box hit the ground beside her. Her heart leapt up into her throat as a grenade rolled out of the box and onto the floor.
She dove backward. Tara never heard the blast that killed the remaining men with her. Torn open by the blast, both men died where they stood. Thrown against the wall, Tara hit her head hard and blacked out.
In the hallway, darkness and silence returned, bringing to end the deadly struggle.
Mitchell took off his NVGs and turned his flashlight back on, illuminating the area around the crane.
“Are you injured?” Mitchell asked Atsuko, who stood beside him, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
“No,” meekly replied Atsuko.
“Good. Now climb.”
“Where?”
“Up there,” said Mitchell, pointing his light at the opening to the ventilation shaft.
With a nod, Atsuko began to climb, closely followed by Mitchell. Seconds later, they both vanished from view as they made their way into the narrow tunnel.
Mitchell began to sweat. It wasn’t that he was claustrophobic, but the thought of being trapped and killed like a rat inside the shaft was not one that he relished.
38
Sweat poured like a river down Mitchell’s back. His clothes were soon soaked. He wasn’t sure how long they had been crawling through the maze-like tunnel system. It felt like forever but was more like twenty minutes when, in the distance, he could see a light. His body ached all over. Mitchell’s tired and sore muscles reminded him that he wasn’t as young as he used to be. After another five minutes crawling, Mitchell could see Jackson up ahead, shining his flashlight down the tunnel, guiding them to him.
Jackson shook his head when he saw Atsuko, her face and clothes covered in dust and perspiration, making her way toward him.
“Where did you find her?” called out Jackson.
“Cypher’s goons were using her as bait,” replied Mitchell.
“Did anyone follow you?”
“No, I think I got them all. It grew real quiet after I tossed one of the old Japanese booby traps out into the hallway at them.”
They soon came out into a barren room barely large enough to move about in. Mitchell and Atsuko stood up.
“Where are we?” asked Mitchell, looking around.
“Yuri said he thinks it was an old maintenance room. He’s gone up top to take a look around,” said Jackson, pointing to a ladder built into the wall leading up to the surface.
A second later, Yuri called down, “Nate, I think you should come up here; the hatch seems jammed.”
Jackson climbed up and switched places with Yuri. He tried to open the round metal hatch. As Yuri had guessed, the hatch wouldn’t budge an inch. He grabbed a latch on the side of the hatch and pulled as hard as he could. His muscles began to burn, but Jackson wasn’t going to quit. He sure as hell didn’t want to crawl back the way they came. Putting his shoulder up against the hatch, Jackson gritted his teeth and then pushed up. The sound of metal scraping against itself filled his ears. A second later, the hatch slowly began to lift up. The rush of cool air from above felt good on Jackson’s sweat-covered brow. He warily climbed out of the hatch and looked around. He had come up inside an abandoned garage. Rusted-out Japanese and Soviet military trucks sat quiet, relics of another time, covered in dust.