“Sir, are we supposed to sit here and do nothing?” Dorothy asked from close by.
He noted she wasn’t latching on to him, like in a movie where he was the hero. Instead, she sat about five feet away, if he was any judge of voices in the dark. It bothered him on a fundamental level that she seemed so confident while he experienced such fear.
The building shook, as if another bomb went off. It wasn’t his building, so he didn’t care much about the damage being done, but each strike indicated the police were getting closer to his position. Breaching walls, as his man in the lobby had relayed before he cut and ran.
Another item nagging at him.
He gripped the gun firmly. Whatever was heading his way, and however fearful he was inside, Petteri Tikkanen didn’t cower in the darkness and take it. He’d used a gun before. It was time to do it again.
“I’ll protect you,” he said to the young woman.
Dorothy grunted noncommittally, which he tried hard to not hear as her mocking his statement. If there was one thing he was confident about, it was his own confidence. The young lady would be grateful to have him around. All he had to do was show her. He aimed at where he thought the door was.
A burst of gunfire rattled from close by.
Several booming shotgun blasts came from another part of the level. Since he was inside an interior room, the battle seemed to be all around them.
Men shouted.
Petteri’s old heart skipped up to jogging speed. Then a sprint.
The battle raged closer. Gunshots and screaming men mixed into a soundtrack of destruction. How anyone could survive it was beyond his understanding.
An explosion seemed to come from right at the door. An object struck his head in the darkness. Not in a painful way. More like someone slapping him. In reaction, he fired the gun toward where he thought the entrance was located.
Dorothy’s reaction to his gun was to squeal with fright.
“I’ve got you,” he said, mimicking the tone of the action hero he knew he could be.
The room filled with light as the door blew open.
“Breach!” a man shouted.
Petteri’s ears popped with the pressure, and his eyes filled with dust, but he aimed at the dark shapes coming through the doorway.
In seconds, the gunfire seemed to erupt from all over the room. How many of those shooters were searching for him?
Heroes don’t die like this.
CHAPTER 15
Somewhere in Central Wyoming
Grace hopped out of the grass, intending to stop the fire now burning in the rear corner of her truck.
“Wait,” Misha advised. His eyes were on the helicopter.
“My truck—”
“A second, pajaloosta. Please,” Misha implored in mixed Russian and English.
She did take a pause. Asher quickly crawled across the grass to get next to her. Together, they waited for the green light.
“It is going,” Misha assured her.
“I’m good?” she asked.
“You seem fine,” he agreed.
“I mean, can I go to my truck?” she said with exasperation at his English comprehension.
“Da! Go!”
She hopped up and sprinted to her truck. On the way, she made sure Misha was right; the helicopter rotor noise faded into the night. She also tried to triage the truck. The flames didn’t appear to be spreading. They were focused on the rear corner of the driver’s side.
“Help me put it out!” she yelled to Asher, not knowing how to do it. They didn’t have a fire extinguisher or more than a few small bottles of water.
By the time they arrived, he’d unbuttoned his park service shirt and ripped it off. The second she opened the rear gate, he patted the fire with his makeshift blanket.
“Over there. Get it!” She pointed to a secondary fire spreading along the rear wheel well. The carpet had been singed. There was also a large hole in the frame of the truck. She looked straight through to the road below, which was now bathed in light from an arriving vehicle. Before she pulled herself from the smoky cargo area, she took note of the fill pipe leading to the fuel tank. The heavy machine gun shell had narrowly missed it. It also missed the rear tire.
“We got lucky,” she said.
Misha sauntered up to them.
A big rig slowed and stopped beside her truck. The driver, a young woman, rolled her window down. “You folks okay? From back there it looked like a fireworks show had gone wrong. What the heck happened?” She checked out Asher, who was shirtless and panting to catch his breath.
Grace waved in a friendly manner. “It’s nothing. Just a little fire in the rear compartment. We’re good.” The ski-feet of the Lahti sat on the open tailgate. If the driver saw it, she didn’t make a comment. Grace shifted on her feet to try to block it from view.
“Well, do you need anything? Is it out? I have a fire extinguisher on board.”
The woman was about a minute too late to be of use. However, since she was there, Grace figured it was worth asking. “You wouldn’t by chance have any bandages? We have an injured friend in another vehicle.”
The woman smiled. “Yeah, I can scare something up. Let me check in the back.”
While she drove ahead and moved the sleeper cab to the shoulder, Grace jumped in the truck and turned it around, so it faced the proper direction. She put it directly behind the woman’s tractor trailer. Asher, smudged shirt mostly back on, immediately climbed in the front with her.
“Hey, you did good putting out the fire. I wouldn’t have thought to take off my shirt.” She laughed at herself for saying it.
Asher chuckled as well; he was tucking in his soot-stained shirt
