Protected behind the gradually crumbling mobile wall of aluminum, he traversed the open area to where Marie was concealed. From the moment he made eye contact with her, she began flashing hand signals to warn him of further advancements, and each time he turned them back with a barrage from the captured rifle. Nevertheless, his defensive response was chewing through his very limited supply of ammunition. Then he saw something that took him completely by surprise. Marie raised her hand and pointed, and a jet of flame leaped from her fingertip.
She’s got a gun?
Marie snapped off several carefully aimed shots, laying down enough covering fire for him to finish the crossing. Up close, he saw that her weapon was a small .25 caliber automatic, easily enough concealed. Maybe that was why he hadn’t seen it. It was standard operating protocol for GHC personnel to be armed in a potentially hostile environment, but the sight of her with the firearm struck him as odd.
Still, she couldn’t have picked a better moment to come out of her shell, he thought. He jerked a thumb toward Laboratory Four. “Anything useful in there?”
“It’s mostly storage.” She leaned out for a split-second, and then ducked back as another volley of automatic rifle fire hammered into the fermenter. “But I did find this.”
In her hands was a misshapen gray cube. “Semtex?”
She nodded. “I cut this from a larger piece. This whole place has been wired.”
He rolled the block between his fingers. With enough time and the right material, it might be possible to fashion some kind of weapon from the chunk of polymer-bonded high explosives. The problem with Semtex, and most other plasticized blasting agents, was that they were too safe. The only effective way to set them off was with det cord or a blasting cap. He stuffed the cube in his pocket. Maybe it would come in handy later. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s a sure bet we’ll run out of ammo before they do.”
“The trolley is gone.”
“Pierre and his new friends took it.” He ignored her inquisitive look. “It’ll be a good half hour before it comes back, provided they don’t sabotage it at the other end. That’s too long to wait.”
“So what can we do?”
He gave her a grim smile. “Plan B.”
When the fermentation tank began rolling again, trundling toward the center of the complex near the controls for the tram, the five surviving gunmen unleashed a brutal assault. While three of them maintained a withering barrage directly onto the aluminum tank, virtually shredding it in the process, two of their confederates circled wide in order to catch their prey from the side. One of them fell from a single rifle shot, but the other took cover behind the control panel and waited for the tank to get a little closer.
But Kismet and Marie were no longer using the tank as a shield. Crouched in the shadows inside the lab, they waited until the attention of their foes was firmly fixed on the rolling barrier before making their move. Kismet had taken the sniper shot that killed one of the flanking team because the man was about to discover their deception. None of the others noticed that the shot had not come from behind the fermenter.
They made it as far as the door to Laboratory Three, the crucible where Chiron’s betrayal had nearly proved fatal, before the militants noticed them. With no effective cover, Kismet chose the best possible defense. “Run!”
Bullets exploded against the cavern walls and showered them with chips of stone. Kismet felt something small and hard smack into his thigh, probably a ricochet, but kept moving in spite of the dull ache that began spreading from the point of impact. Then they reached the tunnel to the helicopter hangar and left the battle behind. The respite was brief.
As they reached the top of the passage, Marie’s arm snapped up alongside him, the pistol seeming like a natural extension of her hand, and squeezed off two shots. Kismet’s eyes had only just registered the presence of yet another Arab gunman standing in their path, when two red flowers blossomed on his chest. A third shot drilled a hole between his eyes before Kismet could bring his rifle up.
Kismet stared in stunned disbelief as the gunman dropped to his knees and pitched forward. Then the concussion of automatic rifle fire, accompanied by an eruption of stone chips from the wall behind him, returned his focus to the urgency of their situation. He sprawled forward, unconsciously pulling Marie down as well, and began crawling toward the parked helicopter.
He hadn’t seen the second shooter in his initial survey of the spacious cavern, but there were a lot of places to hide and the shots had ceased as soon as he dived for cover. “Where is he?”
Marie shook her head as she ejected the magazine from her pistol and fed in a full one. “I didn’t see. But the rest of them will be coming up the tunnel soon.”
Kismet’s only reply was a grimace. He glanced around, looking for the unseen sniper, but his gaze fell on something else instead. “I’ve got an idea. Cover me.”
He half-expected her to protest, but she gave a terse nod and rolled into a prone firing position, with the pistol locked in a two-handed grip. On that tacit signal, Kismet rose to a crouch and dashed toward the rows of drums off to the left. When the gunman opened fire, peppering the wall behind the fuel dump with 7.62-mm rounds, he dropped again.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea,” he murmured. But then he heard the distinctive pop of Marie’s pistol over the roar of the AK-47. The latter weapon fell silent first.
Without waiting for further prompting, he tipped one of the drums onto its side and commenced rolling it toward the mouth of the tunnel. Marie was on her feet again, with her back pressed against the Hind-D and her pistol at the ready. “Got him.”
Kismet withheld praise, focusing instead on the task at hand. He shoulder-slung his captured AK and drew his kukri. Using the heavy blade like a can opener, he hacked into the drum lid, cutting several triangular holes that immediately began to spew hi-grade petroleum. As the noxious fumes assaulted his mucous membranes, he pulled the lump of Semtex from his pocket and pressed it into one of the holes, then gave the drum a kick that sent it rumbling down the tunnel. The container traveled only as far as the first bend in the passage — about twenty meters — before coming to rest against the wall, but it continued to vomit jet fuel onto the sloping passage.
“Stand back!” He unlimbered the Kalashnikov and held its muzzle close to the pool of flammable liquid. A short pull on the trigger was all it took to ignite the substance, and with a whoosh, the entire passage filled with flame. For just a moment, he thought he could hear screams echoing up from the depths, but decided it was just his imagination.
Suddenly, the ground heaved under his feet and simultaneously, a pillar of smoke and dust exploded from the tunnel opening. The burning trail of jet fuel was snuffed out like a candle flame. Kismet was back on his feet in an instant, running for the side hatch of the helicopter. He threw open the door and turned to admonish Marie to get in, but the words died in his throat. The Frenchwoman seemed to be aiming her pistol right at him….
No. Someone behind me? In the helo?
When she did not fire, he took a sideways step, bringing his own weapon up as he turned. A robed figure, swathed in a kefiya wrapped Bedouin-style around both head and neck, stood in opening, his hands raised in surrender. Kismet’s finger tightened on the trigger instinctively, but he checked his fire. The man was unarmed and seemed to pose no threat. And there was something familiar about his eyes…