communicate.
Matt stepped toward the Russian. “If we are to have any hope for this to work, we need the exact coordinates of the secondary amplifiers.”
Petkov shook his head, not so much in refusal as hopelessness.
Matt resisted the urge the throttle the man. He spoke rapidly, sensing the press of time, the falling ax. “Admiral, please. We are all going to die. Everything your father sought to hide will be destroyed. You’ve won there. His research will be forever lost. But the revenge you seek upon the world…because of an atrocity you thought was committed upon your father by your government or mine…it’s over. We both know what truly happened. The tragedy here was your father’s own doing. He cooperated in the research, and only at the end found his humanity.”
Petkov’s expression was tired, his head sagging a bit.
Matt continued, pointing over to the boy. “Maki saved your father. And your father attempted to save him, preserving the boy in ice. Even at the end, your father died with hope for the future. And right there lies that hope.” Matt stabbed a finger toward Maki. “The children of the world. You have no right to take that from them.”
Petkov stared over at the boy. Maki lay in Washburn’s arms, head cradled against her neck. She sang softly. “He is a beautiful boy,” Petkov conceded. His gaze flicked to Matt, then a nod. “I’ll give you the coordinates, but the sub will never make it there in time.”
“He’s right,” Jenny said this as she stepped back to the bars, covering the radio with her jacket. “I’ve raised the
Matt rolled his eyes. He’d give his right arm for one optimist in the damn group. He waved for the radio. “Pass it here.”
Jenny slipped the walkie-talkie through the bars. Matt pressed the transmitter and held the radio toward Petkov’s lips. The admiral’s hands were still bound behind his back. “Tell them.”
Before the man could speak, a loud thud sounded by the door. All eyes turned back to the entrance. One of the guards was on the floor. A dagger hilt protruded from his left eye socket. The other fell back, someone on top of him. An attempt to shout an alarm was cut from the soldier’s throat by a wicked long knife. Blood shot across the floor.
As the soldier gurgled, grabbing at his own bloody throat, his attacker shoved up. He was a true gorilla of a man.
Jenny rushed to the front of the cell. “Kowalski!”
The man wiped the blood from his meaty hands on his jacket. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“How…I thought…the rocket attack?”
He worked rapidly, searching the guard. “I was blown into a snowbank. I burrowed down deep when I saw the situation out there. Then I found another ventilation shaft. Way the fuck out there.”
“How?”
Kowalski jabbed a thumb toward the door. “With a little help from my friends.”
Another man entered the room, a bandage around his head and a rifle in his hands. He covered the door.
“Tom!” Jenny called out. She clearly knew the pair.
But the fellow was not alone. At the man’s knee, a shaggy form loped into the room, tongue lolling, eyes bright.
“My God!” Matt said, dropping to the floor. “Bane.” His voice caught in his throat. The dog leaped on the cell door, pushing his nose through the bars, trying to squeeze through, whining, squirming.
“We found him in the ice peaks.” Kowalski spoke rapidly as he keyed open the cell doors “Or rather,
“You survived,” Jenny said, still sounding incredulous.
Kowalski straightened with a handful of keys. “No thanks to you guys…running off and leaving us for dead. Next time check a goddamn pulse, for God’s sake.”
As Matt’s cell was unlocked, he pushed open the door and worked fast. Time was against them. He removed the dagger from the corpse and sliced the admiral’s hands free, then searched the guards for further weapons, taking everything he could find. He passed weapons around as the other cells were opened. “We’d better haul ass.”
“This way,” Tom said, rushing the line of prisoners out and around to the curving exterior hallway. The group hurried to the same service duct through which Matt and the others had fled hours ago.
As they were ducking away, a commotion sounded from across the level. Yelling. Matt straightened, listening as he waved the biology group into the tunnels. It was Craig. He must have realized the abort code was a ruse. Matt didn’t want to be here when Craig found out they had escaped.
Matt dove through the vent, following Bane and Jenny.
Kowalski led them into the service shafts. “We’ve been rats in the walls ever since the attack started. Tom knows this station like the back of his hand. We were waiting for a chance to break you free.”
“Where’s this ventilation shaft?” Washburn asked as the group piled into one of the service huts. She still held Maki in her arms. The boy was silent, eyes wide.
“About half a mile,” Tom said. “But we’re safer down here.”
Matt turned to the admiral. “What’s the blast range of the Polaris bomb?”
Kowalski swung toward them, eyes wide. “Bomb? What bomb?”
Petkov ignored the man. “The danger is not so much the
“What
Jenny told him.
He shook his head as if trying to deny the truth. “Fucking fantastic, that’s the last time I rescue you guys.”
“How much time do we have left?” Tom asked.
Matt checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes. Not nearly enough time to get clear.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
Matt removed one of the confiscated weapons. One of the black pineapples. “I may have an idea.”
“Buddy, that grenade’s not strong enough to blast a hole to the surface,” Kowalski said.
“We’re not going up.”
“Then where?”
Matt answered, then led them off in a mad dash as time was running out.
Kowalski pounded after him. “No
Craig stared at the empty row of cells, the pair of dead guards. Everything was unraveling. He spun on the pair of soldiers at his side. “Find them!”
Another soldier rushed through the door. “Sir, it looks like they fled into the service shafts.”
Craig clenched a fist. “Of course they did,” he mumbled. But what were they trying to do? Where could they go? His mind spun. “Send two men in there. The Russian admiral must not—”
A muffled blast cut him off. The floor under his feet rattled.
The guards stiffened.
Craig stared down between his toes. “Shit!”
A floor below, Matt tested the docking bay’s hatch. The others were lined up along the wall on Level Five. A moment ago, he had opened the hatch and tossed in a pair of the incendiary grenades, one collected from each of the two dead guards.
Matt touched the metal door with his bare fingers. It had gone from ice cold to burning hot. The blast of the V-class incendiaries continued to impress him. But were they strong enough to do the job here?
There was only one way to find out.
