“What now?” Lexi said with a sigh. “Collect some eggs for lunch?”
Scarlet gave a sarcastic eye roll. “Listen, we had nowhere to run, and they’re not going to waste ammo shooting blindly at us in here because…”
Before she could finish her sentence thousands of bullets drilled through the enormous glass roof of the bird house and sent millions of razor-sharp shards of splintered glass fragments showering over their heads.
“Run!” Scarlet said.
They ran along the twisting path of the bird house, flanked on either side by tall rubber plants and palms, now covered in the smashed crystal remnants of several tons’ worth of reinforced atrium glass. Hundreds of terrified birds squawked and flapped and disappeared up into the sky in a shower of feathers. The icy air from outside rushed into the warm bird house.
Lexi spun around and fired off two or three rapid shots at the chopper but it was useless — a fast moving target obscured by the wood and steel beams of the roof.
“You were saying something about them not firing blindly at us?” Karlsson shouted as they finally reached the safety of the reception area and its solid roof.
Scarlet gave him a look but didn’t rise to the bait. “There! I thought I heard submachine gunfire under the noise of Brad’s whiny voice.”
“From where?” Lexi said.
“Where we came in — down there.”
She was right. Several men were now running toward them down the main room, crunching on the broken glass all over the path, and releasing short bursts of fire from what looked like PP-2000s.
“We’re shit out of luck now,” Karlsson said without emotion.
Lexi glanced at her gun and shook her head. “This isn’t enough.”
Scarlet took a deep breath and shook her head. “We have to get out of here — this is getting a little too real even for me.”
Karlsson looked at her. “Do I need to remind you that there’s a maniac with a machine gun in a chopper out there, and he’s aiming for us.”
“We have no choice,” Scarlet said. “We can’t take out half a dozen goons armed with subs in an enclosed space with these.” She waved her pistol in the American’s face.
He nodded in grim agreement and the three of them sprinted from the reception and into the open air.
“Where now?” Lexi said.
“We could try…”
But before Scarlet could finish, her heart sank as she watched the chopper appear from behind the atrium and descend into the paved entrance outside the bird house.
“Put your weapons down or we will open fire.”
The voice came from the chopper, and was amplified through a megaphone.
Scarlet sighed deeply and reddened with anger. “Do it!” she commanded the others.
They lowered their guns.
“Put the map down and walk away with your hands up.”
“Do it…I’m sorry, but do it,” Scarlet said.
“You’re the boss,” Karlsson said.
Lexi lowered her bag to the ground and they walked backwards with their hands in the air.
The notorious Kodiak stepped out of the chopper and strolled casually to the bag. He looked inside, gave the thumbs up sign to the pilot, and returned to the helicopter. On his way back, he stopped and blew a kiss at Scarlet.
Scarlet’s reply was wordless — the meaning conveyed in her narrowed eyes and clenched jaw.
The six men with submachine guns followed him into the chopper, and she watched with rage as it increased power and began to hover into the air, the mighty downwash of its speeding rotors sending ripples out across the surface of the polar bear enclosure and blowing a little ice cream cart over. Litter from the bins flicked up in the downdraft and blew around like snow. A second later it was high in the sky and turning away.
Then it was out of sight.
“Damn it all!” cursed Scarlet, and lashed out with her boot at the sign directing people to the café. An unusual failure for her, and she wished Kodiak dead for it. She didn’t know if that made her a bad person or not, but that was just fine with her. In her view, anyone with a past like hers was allowed to think whatever they wanted about other people.
“Just cool it, honey,” Karlsson said. “This isn’t over yet. Not by a long-shot.” He tried to put his hand around her shoulder but she pushed it away.
“But they have the map, Brad!”
“But they don’t know how to decipher it,” Lexi said.
“And you can shut up!” Scarlet snarled, still burned by her loss of the map and the thought of having to report her failure to Eden. “It’s all your damned fault in the first place!”
“Hey, I told you they were going to kill my parents…”
“Yeah, whatever,” Scarlet snapped.
She walked away, her head in her hands and her mind racing as problems and solutions fought in her mind. She didn’t like losing and Lexi’s parents being threatened with death brought back other raw memories. It had been a long time since Scarlet had watched those men gun her own parents down and kill them. She was no more than a child, and that was her introduction to the world around her.
Even now, she would wake in the night screaming, her dreams turned to nightmares once again as the agonized faces of her innocent parents rose up in her mind without warning. Her father had hidden her in their wardrobe and she had cowered there. She had done nothing to protect them or save their lives, and now she had failed again.
For this, Kodiak would pay the ultimate price.
“Listen, we have to regroup,” Scarlet said at last, pulling herself together again. “We need to get our heads around this.”
“We’ll sort it out,” Karlsson said reassuringly.
Scarlet scowled. “They have the fucking map and we don’t. That’s all I know.”
“That’s not strictly true,” Lexi said, smiling.
“What do you mean?”
She pulled her phone from her pocket. “You think I’d have that map in my possession for all that time without taking a picture of it?
Alex and the others looked up startled as the door to the library smashed open and the man with the black mask stomped into the room. He tore off the mask and kicked the door shut behind him, shouldering a submachine gun as he moved into the room.
“Hi Alex, great to meet you. I’m Joe, by the way.”
“Yeah, I got that…” she smiled for a second, not knowing what to think about a man she had spent years thinking about and now meeting him for the first time amidst such chaos and danger.
“Where are the others?” Ryan asked.
“Massive reinforcements out of nowhere, mate. No way can we fight them and me and Dempsey got cut off in the brawl. We’re going to meet outside and try and take out Vetrov’s chopper before he can get away.”
Before Ryan could reply the library door was shredded by a savage burst of machine gun fire until a hole the size of a beach ball was in the top panel. A second later a grenade flew through the hole and landed in the center of the library.
Hawke snatched Alex up and screamed at the others to dive for cover. The grenade exploded and sprayed its lethal, twisted cast-iron shrapnel around the room in a burning fireball which set fire to the drapes and bookshelves.
Hawke was dazed, but staggered up and crawled over to Alex.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, but was also too dazed to answer.
Hawke strained to see through the smoke. “Lea! Ryan!”
Back in the hall he heard the hideous chatter of machine guns as Vetrov’s reinforcements closed in on them. Hawke knew their orders would be to terminate him and the others without mercy and he had only seconds to execute a safe retreat.