Shadow Tyrants

TWENTY-FOUR

Fyodor Yudin was still trying to figure out why the feed from the camera outside went down when he heard the explosion from the direction of the elevator shaft. Every guard in the control room jumped to his feet.

Yudin yelled to two of the guards, “Go find out what happened!”

Then he went numb when it dawned on him that this might not simply be an equipment malfunction. Did Lyla Dhawan sabotage the facility in an attempt to escape?

He looked at the level-three monitor showing the wide hallway where the prison cells were located and realized the situation was far worse.

The door from the south stairwell burst open, and a huge black man charged out, knocking out the guard stationed down there with a single blow. He was followed by an Asian man, who sprinted to the stairwell door at the north end of the hallway, knelt down, and started smearing it with some kind of gel.

After the Asian man came three more people: a blond man, who took the keys from the guard; a dark-haired woman; and Lyla Dhawan. All of them except Dhawan were heavily armed.

The blond man began unlocking cells, and elated prisoners hugged Dhawan as they emerged.

Somehow, some way, Lyla Dhawan was staging a prison break. If even one prisoner got away, Yudin knew he was a dead man.

The two guards returned, and one said, “The elevator is out of order. The hoisting cable must have been cut. The cab dropped a few feet before the emergency brakes kicked in.”

Yudin blanched. This was a nightmare. He had to stop the intruders.

“What about the south stairs?”

“We can’t get the door open no matter how hard we pulled.”

He called down to the second level, and they reported that their door to the south stairwell was also blocked. But they said the north stairwell door was accessible.

The intruders must have jammed the doors, probably with that gel. These were pros. “Every man get a weapon!” Yudin shouted. “We’re stopping this escape attempt at all costs.” By the looks of it, they still had superior numbers to overcome the attackers.

“We’re locked in,” one of the men said. “And we can’t get to the prisoner level or outside.”

Yudin knew the guard was right. They had to break out, but how? The explosives they had were kept up in the shed. Blowing the doors open was impossible. And the intruders had disabled the elevator.

But maybe not the elevator doors. The shaft itself might be accessible from the second level.

He turned to the guard. “Take every man down to the second level and climb down the elevator shaft to the prisoner level. Kill everyone there.”

The guard nodded and waved to the others to follow him.

Yudin called on the radio to the five guards at the beach.

“Come in, zero-nine.”

“Zero-nine here,” came the response from the German. “Zero-six is dead. We can’t find the prisoner.”

“She’s here. We’re under attack.”

“Attack? Who is—”

“I don’t know!” Yudin yelled. “Just get back here on the double.”

“Yes, sir.”

Now that the facility was compromised, Yudin couldn’t wait any longer to activate the self-destruct. He entered his code in the computer and set the timer on the bombs embedded in the prison’s walls. Then he relocked the computer.

Now Yudin was the only one who could stop the countdown. In five minutes, the entire underground structure would implode.

As the cells were unlocked, the prisoners were ushered to the south stairwell and up to the shed, where MacD was waiting for them.

The pounding on the north stairwell door had stopped. Juan’s biggest fear was that the guards had enough explosives on hand to blow open one of the doors. He was trying to get everyone out as quickly as possible. Some of the eighteen prisoners were out of shape, and the long walk to the sunken pier could take too long. Protecting all of them during the hike would be nearly impossible.

“MacD,” Juan said into his comm mic, “prep the tractor. We’re going for a drive.”

“Roger that.”

“Max, what’s your ETA?”

“Still five minutes out,” Max replied.

“Understood. If you can wring out some more from the engines, we’d be much obliged. Might need some cover fire. Got a bit of a situation here. Keep a lookout for us at the pier.”

“Our eyes are peeled.”

They reached the end of the hall and opened the second-to-last cell. A small woman came out and embraced Lyla.

“I’ve got you, Patty,” Lyla said. “We’re going to be all right now.”

“I can’t believe this,” Patty said, sobbing with relief.

She leaned on Lyla as they returned to the south stairwell. Linc joined them to help Lyla while Eddie kept herding the other prisoners up the stairs.

Juan did a mental count and said to Lyla as she walked away, “That’s nineteen. Are you sure about the number of prisoners?”

Over her shoulder, she said, “Yes.”

While he unlocked the last cell, Raven put her ear to the north stairway door.

“Anything?” Juan asked.

“Not a peep,” Raven said.

“I don’t like that.”

“Neither do I.”

Juan pulled the last door open and saw that the small cell was empty. Lyla had been right about the count.

“Let’s clear out,” Juan said. He waved Raven in front of him while he backed down the hall, covering the door behind them.

They’d made it halfway to the safety of the stairwell when Raven yelled, “Contact!”

He whipped around to see Eddie shove Lyla and Patty through the south stairwell door as shots rang out from the elevator, which faced the long wall of the hallway. The rounds barely missed the three before Eddie could close the door behind them.

Both Juan and Raven ducked behind open steel doors on opposite sides of the hall. They swung out instead of in to keep the hinge pins protected from the prisoners inside, so they provided cover for the two of them. Bullets smacked into the doors but didn’t penetrate them.

“Chairman,” Eddie said on the comms from the south stairwell, “report?”

“No injuries,” Raven said as she put her P90 around the side of the door and let loose a volley.

“Linc and I will stay behind to get you out of there.”

“No,” Juan said. “Seal the door behind you and take the prisoners to safety.”

That got a glance from Raven.

“Aye, Chairman,” Eddie said. “We’ll be back to get you.”

“Hopefully, that won’t be necessary… Go!”

“Aye, Chairman,” Eddie repeated.

“You seem pretty optimistic,” Raven said before firing another few rounds. “Especially given that we’re now locked in here with ten hostiles who want to kill us.”

Juan held up a syringe holding his supply of anti-glue solvent.

“We won’t be locked in. They will be.”