“I need the keys. We’re almost out of here,” Sasha said.
“Where were you?” Misha said.
“Gosha had it under control by the time I arrived. You were in good hands the whole time,” Sasha said, catching the keys thrown at him.
Misha jogged to the doorway, anxious to finish the job at Vektor. The suppressed weapons had created an unmistakable racket across the quiet campus, certain to attract any nearby roving patrol.
“Look who’s back from the dead,” Misha said, punching Gosha in the shoulder.
“Just in time to save your ass. What were you doing out there?” Gosha said.
“Rolling up the windows you left down.”
“I didn’t have the keys,” Gosha replied.
They were interrupted by Seva, who stood at the security counter holding a severed hand at arm’s length away from his body.
“Ladies, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I have a special delivery,” he said, slapping the hand on the counter.
Misha rushed to the counter and grabbed the hand, which felt like a slab of meat in his grip. He handed the P25 radio to Seva, who accepted it reluctantly.
“Press the transmit button to hot mic the system. It’ll give us a few minutes of confusion on their end. Just don’t give away any operational details while you’re transmitting.”
“No shit,” Seva said.
“Yuri, where are you?” Misha said, heading to the secure vault behind the counter.
“Thirty seconds from your location. Go ahead and activate the system. Get everyone else into the car. Welcome back, Gosha,” Yuri said.
“Glad to be back.”
Less than five hundred yards away, behind Building Six, a pair of security guards doused their flashlights and crouched.
“You hear that?” one of them said.
“Barely. Sounded like suppressed semiautomatic fire. Definitely something,” the guard to his right replied.
He agreed. The gunfight lasted fewer than three seconds, ending with two distinct snaps. He couldn’t get a directional bearing, since the sounds were so faint, but there was no doubt in his mind.
“I’m calling it in. Watch our six,” he said.
While his partner backed up against the building and turned to face the way they had just come, Mikhail Blok whispered into his shoulder mic.
“Raven’s Nest, this is Raven Three-One. I report shots fired in the vicinity of the Virology compound. I say again. Shots fired in the vicinity of the Virology compound.”
He waited for several seconds, scanning the darkness over his rifle.
“No reply,” he whispered.
“Check the radio,” his partner replied.
Blok knew the radio worked. He had tested it with base and the other teams standing in the QRS ready bay. He checked anyway and quickly discovered the problem.
“Motherfucker. Hot mic,” he said.
“This is screwed, man. We’re too exposed out here,” his partner said.
“Hold on a second. You know what I just realized?” he whispered.
“What?”
“The motion lights should have lit us up when we came around the back of the building,” he said.
“Fuck. We need to get out of here. Right now.”
Blok reactivated his LED flashlight and swept the beam along the perimeter fence thirty meters away.
“What the fuck are you doing? Turn the fucking light off,” the other guard hissed.
“I’m looking for a breach. That’s why the lights are out.”
Bathed in 900 lumens of light, the contrast in color between the chain link material and the plastic zip ties was noticeable to the trained eye. He quickly found the L-shaped pattern in the fence.
“Right there. See the outline of the cut?”
“Yeah. Now turn off the fucking light.”
“I need you to verify the breach while I activate the emergency broadcast on this radio,” Blok said.
“To hell with the radio. You cover me until I’m back,” he said.
“All right,” he said and slapped his partner on the back.
The slap catalyzed the guard, who sprinted across the open area and paused at the fence area in question. Blok felt a slight rumble vibrate from the building, which he first mistook for an explosion somewhere on the Vektor campus. The other guard stopped examining the fence and started to sprint back.
What Blok saw next would stay with him for the rest of his life. Yevgeny Gribov disappeared in a thick plume of blue flame that reached forty feet into the sky, instantly super heating the air around him. He could see three more plumes spread out along the back of Building Six in his peripheral vision, but his vision was fixed to the blue shaft of flame that had entombed Gribov less than twenty meters in front of him. Frozen in terror, Blok watched the outline of his body change shape, shrinking and twisting.
Ten seconds later, the blue plume was replaced by a puffy white explosion that launched the incinerated guard’s body twenty feet in an arc through the air. As the ash particles floated down around Blok like delicate snowflakes, Gribov’s scorched, sizzling remains crashed to the ground less than three meters away, causing him to recoil in terror. His eyes met the hollow, black sockets of Gribov’s skull for a brief second, causing him to flee. He hugged the building wall the entire way, not wanting to suffer the same fate as his friend.
Farrington caught sight of the blue plumes from the parking lot, unwilling to leave until he confirmed that the system described by Reznikov had worked. The propane-fueled shafts of fire illuminated the parking lot, bathing them in an eerie cerulean blue glow.
“Holy mother,” he muttered, hopping into the front passenger seat.
Sasha had started backing the vehicle as soon as Farrington’s feet cleared the pavement, throwing him forward into the glove box.
“Sorry. We need to get out of here. Hang on,” Sasha said, turning the SUV sharply in reverse.
The maneuver would have tossed him out of the open door if he hadn’t heeded the warning. Instead, he found himself braced against the doorframe, anticipating Sasha’s next move. At this point, they needed to move forward as fast as the vehicle would take them. Farrington centered his body on the car seat just in time to avoid whiplash as the SUV lurched forward toward the main gate.
“Guards at the gate!” Sasha yelled.
Everyone reacted at once, extending the barrels of their weapons through the open windows. Farrington reached between his legs and retrieved his PP2000 submachine gun, getting it out of the window in time to join the rest of his team in the slaughter. At a range of fifty meters, Gosha started firing short bursts from the rear passenger side window with his AK-107U assault rifle, scoring immediate hits on the guards. Farrington fired a sustained volley of armor-piercing 9mm projectiles, adding to the carnage as they closed the distance. By the time they pulled to a stop at the motion-activated gate, the three heavily armed security contractors had stopped moving, their bodies contorted in positions of agony along the checkpoint.
“I don’t see anyone in pursuit!” Seva yelled from the rear cargo compartment.