One thing at a time, Henri. Make it outside first.
His next obstacle was the outer doors. He’d been troubled by the way they had closed automatically behind them. Apparently they were on a timer, some mechanism installed in the floor that triggered them to close. He hoped for the second option. Henri didn’t want to have to stop to open them.
When he was within one hundred yards of them, a blinding light appeared as they slowly crept open.
Looks like it was a trigger.
He relaxed and willed the Sno-Cat to go faster. He was nearly free.
When he was fifty yards from them, they somehow started to close.
No!
The doors had only made it halfway open when they had somehow been reversed. The only way that could have happened without there being some malfunction… was if someone had closed them from the outside.
“Krause.” That confirmed Henri’s prior hypothesis regarding the old man and the rest of the men being on the lookout for him. “Not today.”
Henri reached over to the passenger side and grabbed his rifle. If he made it outside, there would be an immediate firefight. Luka had wanted to take him alive, but it seemed that Krause had changed gears and now valued Henri dead just as much.
Or more.
Thirty feet to go, and Henri realized that he’d make it with plenty of room to spare. He readied himself for conflict and waited for the first trooper to appear.
He did.
A single soldier stepped in front of the Sno-Cat and sent a stream of bullets pinging off the vehicle’s metal body. Four rounds struck the windshield, spider-webbing it badly. Only one bullet made it through. The tough glass had mostly held up, though now, Henri could barely see where he was going.
But he could see the trooper. The man backed up and pumped another burst into the cabin windshield. Henri ducked just as the front end cleared the threshold to the outside, just as a fast-moving Goliath careened into it.
The mechanical beast shrieked as it clipped the roof of the Sno-Cat, sending it rolling like a toy car. It nearly smeared the trooper into paste, but the soldier had dived out of the way with only inches to spare. Henri was trying to see what it was — it looked to be a plane, albeit just the fuselage and shortened stubby wings — but he was quickly thrown to the roof, then the floor, and finally bounced against the passenger-side door.
That’s where the Sno-Cat’s roll stabilized.
Henri’s head was killing him. He’d hit it several times. He opened his eyes, rolled onto his stomach, and reacquired his rifle. Luckily, he had not taken off his backpack. He had opted to keep it on while he drove. It had been uncomfortable, but worth it. If something like this happened, then he didn’t want to have to go searching for it, too.
He bellycrawled outside through the decimated windshield and was swiftly surrounded by four men. Henri knew when he was outgunned. He released his hold on his weapon and waited.
“Commander Vogel, you are relieved of duty!”
Henri looked up at the speaker. “So I’ve been told.”
“Where is everyone else?” another trooper asked.
“Dead. They are all dead.”
He was made to stand at gunpoint, and they bound his wrists with thick zip ties.
“You killed your own men?”
Technically, yes, Henri did kill one of his own men, but he’d like to think that the sharpshooter’s death and the deaths of everyone else in the Underworld had been because of someone else.
“No,” he said, staring the soldier in the eyes, “Tobias Krause killed them.”
Chapter 71
Zahra
Zahra squeezed her armrests as hard as she could. The B-29 shook violently as they zoomed down the underground runway. Zahra still couldn’t believe it! They had originally thought it was just an oversized loading ramp.
“What’s that up ahead?” Hammet asked.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’” Zahra asked, unable to see from her rear-facing seat. She tried to look over her shoulder, but all she saw was the back of Hammet’s shoulders and head.
“I don’t know,” Yana replied. “I can’t tell.”
“What is it?” Zahra asked, shouting as loud as she could.
“We don’t know!” Yana yelled back.
“Do we have headlights?” Hammet asked.
Yana snorted. “Again, another thing I don’t know!”
Zahra had no idea what the two of them were arguing about, so she focused on something else she was curious about.
“How fast are we going?” she asked.
“Around one hundred and — shit!” Yana shouted, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Hang on!”
They slammed into something hard, not that the B-29 felt any of it. Its girth handled it just fine. What it didn’t handle was having both its wings shorn off at the shoulders. The B-29 was now just a massive, metallic, frozen hotdog. It sailed into the air and dropped as gravity pulled them back down to ground level.
The lake!
They hit the icy surface at full speed and skimmed across it like Olympic lugers for a considerably long distance. It didn’t last, though. Soon, it turned into a carnival ride from hell. The tail slid right, but the rest of the plane didn’t.
It rolled.
Zahra screamed until she couldn’t breathe, not that she could hear her own voice. The crunching and tearing of metal were loud enough to drown out everything else. She nearly blacked out from the excessive motion.
Then she blacked out from a blow to the head.
Chapter 72
Zahra
“Hello? Anyone?”
“Uh,” was all Zahra could reply with. “Uh…”
The other voice spoke again. “Zahra?” It was Hammet.
“Uh…” Zahra opened her eyes but quickly closed them. “My head.” Everything above her shoulders was killing her, and she felt blood seeping from a wound on her temple. Something had smacked her skull during their “landing.”
She was also upside down and wasn’t sure how long she’d been unconscious.
“Yana?” Hammet asked.
But there was no reply.
“Ya-na?” Zahra asked. She had to work hard just to get the syllables out.
Still no reply.
The next noises she heard were a series of grunts, followed by a bang. Hammet appeared in front of Zahra, carefully standing on what was once the ceiling of the cockpit. He was also bleeding from a cut on his chin.
She grinned. “You kinda look like a young, upside-down Harrison Ford with that.”
She reached out and gently touched his chin.
He rolled his eyes and helped her down from her inverted chair. He held her close, which was wonderful. It wasn’t that it was Hammet holding her closely; Zahra would have accepted the embrace from anyone right about now.
No, not Kyle — I mean, Henri — he’s awful.
“Here. Help me with her.”
That reawakened Zahra’s sluggish brain a little. The prospect of Yana being seriously injured was like a sobering kick to the face. She blinked hard a few times and shook her head. Her vision cleared enough to see two of Yana. Both women sported blood in their blonde hair.
And she was out cold.
“Dammit,” Zahra said, sliding in next to her.
Hammet took Yana’s weight while Zahra worked the harness holding her aloft. Once the Russian was free, he repositioned her ragdoll form in his arms and laid her down. They knelt on either side of her. Zahra checked her head, and Hammet checked for a pulse.