Becky didn’t understand half of what she’d just been told, but the important parts got through. They were going to rescue David from wherever he was, and her job was simply to shoot anyone she saw who was not David. Frankly, she didn’t know that she was capable. Who was she to be the arbiter of who should live and who should die? Who gave her that power?
“I want you to remember that you’re here of your own volition,” Striker said, as if reading her thoughts. “When you volunteer for a mission, the least you need to do is show up. Now keep your eyes peeled for that light.”
“Flash your light now,” Mother Hen said over the radio on channel one. “Now, now, now.”
This was a mistake. David knew it in the depths of his soul even as he pointed the flashlight to the sky and thumbed the button. Once, twice, three times.
The ripple of gunfire came almost immediately, with the bullets impacting so close that his opponent must have been looking directly at him when he flashed the light.
David rolled three rotations to his right and switched his selector to full auto to rake what he thought was the other guy’s position. He fired till his magazine ran dry, and then he rolled to his back and executed a mag change that Big Guy would have been proud of. He slapped the bolt closed and released another long burst toward his opponent, hoping to keep his head down as he raised his light toward the heavens and flashed it another three times.
This time, when his opponent opened fire, the bullets didn’t come anywhere close to him. Instead, they were all directed toward the approaching helicopter.
Tink, tink, tink, tink. The noise, which had the cadence of a card shuffle, sounded like the one you’d get from hitting an empty soup can with a wooden stick. The floor of the helicopter pulsed with each impact.
“Shoot back!” Striker shouted in Becky’s ear. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
“What do I shoot at?” Becky yelled back. “Everything I see is a flashing light.”
“Don’t worry about muzzle flashes,” Striker said. “The bright light you saw was Rooster. Sparkly flashes from that location are him shooting back at the bad guy. Other flashes are the bad guy shooting at him.”
It was all too much to process.
“You can save his life, or you can cost him his life,” Striker said over the intercom. “Choose.”
The radio in David’s ear said, “The chopper is landing for you. You need to make it there to get out.”
A second voice that sounded like Director Rivers added, “Set your rifle to full-auto and let the rounds rip while you run. That’ll keep their heads down.
A thousand questions and ten thousand objections formed in David’s head, but he voiced none of them. If this chopper was his ride to safety, he didn’t want to say anything to queer the deal.
The hum of the chopper’s rotors continued to increase in volume, and a few seconds later, he could actually see the outline of the helicopter flaring to land. His ride had arrived. But how was he going to run to it without getting shot?
As if the helicopter had heard his question, someone in the doorway started shooting back. Long bursts of automatic fire raked the area where the final shooter had been lying low.
Striker’s voice scratched from David’s radio. “Rooster, Striker. Now would be the time for you to start running.” His tone was light, almost amused.
This was a mistake. He was going to get out in the open, and he was going to get shot. With dozens of rounds being fired in both directions, it would only take one to kill him.
But staying here wasn’t an option, either.
Screw it. He found his feet and he took off, running as fast as he could with all the gear dangling from him. The gunner in the door must have seen him — good God, was that Becky? — because she opened fire again on the woods. The hammering of her rifle was so loud that he didn’t think he’d be able to tell if the other guy was shooting back.
Between the slippery footing and the heavy gear, he felt like he was running at a walker’s pace, but finally, he could feel the wash of the rotors, and three steps later, he flung himself at the open door. He’d barely landed on the floor before he sensed the lift and he knew they were airborne.
As the ground fell away, he was amazed by the number of emergency vehicles that were approaching Saint Stephen’s Island from every road and from miles away.
Len Shaw knew that he needed to settle down. It had been a mistake to follow the attackers down that corridor into a kill zone. It was always a mistake to follow your enemy’s tracks. Saint Stephen’s was his home territory. He knew every nook, crease, and chip as well as he knew the face he saw in the mirror every morning. There was no need to chase the intruders and walk into their traps. Not when he could set a trap of his own.
He’d put the Mishin family on the fourth floor because it was the warmest. From it, there was no escape but to come down the stairs and exit to ground level. Even if they chose to exit through other cell blocks, they would have to climb down to the third floor or below. And that’s where he would set up his teams to ambush them, one team each on the east and west stairwells. The instant either one came face-to-face with the enemy, they would engage, and the other team would move in to reinforce them.
As a hedge against the possibility that the attacking team left security details in the hallways to guard the stairwells — thus splitting their forces — Len decided that he had to split his as well. Four men each would enter the southern wing from the second and third floors from both the east and west. He had to assume that the attackers had taken the radio from the murdered sentries and they therefore could monitor his communication, so before he split the teams, he synchronized everyone’s timepieces and they established a precise moment when they would move into their stairwells.
As he addressed his troops, he looked each of them in the eye, assessing their commitment to the cause. With Dmitri dead, Len was the sole leader of the Movement, and the men would look to him for confidence and resolve. What he got in return concerned him. The deaths of their comrades at the base of the barracks stairs, followed by the deaths in the corridor, had unnerved them. He tried to spin them up with the glory of avenging their fallen friends, and while they nodded and said the right things, he sensed that they were ready to run.
Finally, he said, “Listen out there, comrades. Do you hear the sirens? We are ruined here. Our mission is over. Now, our choices are only two: we die in prison, or we die in the glory of our cause. If there is a third path, I’m willing to listen to anyone who knows what it might be.”
Their faces had shown sadness and anger — anger at him, he imagined, and anger at the loss of so much when victory had been so close. But Len’s instincts told him that that comment — the choice between death in prison or death in battle — had been what cemented their resolve. His troops were informed, motivated, and ready to go.
As commander, he’d chosen to be a part of the team on the east side third floor, the one in his estimation most likely to encounter the enemy. It had been his plan to lead the team until Geoffrey said that he was insulted. He used the distinctly American phrase “glory hound” to describe Len’s effort to lead the final assault, and Len had stepped aside. It was the will of his team, in fact, that as commander, he should be the last man in.
It was a statement of commitment not only to the cause, but to him as a leader.
As the clock ticked down the final ten seconds, Len said, “Remember. Enter slowly. We remain silent unless we encounter the enemy, and we engage any enemy we see.”