“Yes, sir, we looked down there real good,” a soldier replied, slurring his words. He was clearly on his way to drunk. “We walked all around it. I told you that already! Look yourself if you—”
Elna heard a loud smack followed by a bang, as if the soldier had been slapped and knocked into something. This was followed by a crash, some unintelligible shouting and cursing, and more unidentifiable smashing sounds.
“I want two teams down there,” the commander shouted. “Knock down the walls, turn over every box, dig up the floor. Don’t come back up until you’ve taken that place apart brick by brick. Go!”
Footsteps on the kitchen floor, moving through the building. Coming quick.
“Let’s go, Elna,” Malin said.
“Will the charges be ready? Fish needed time, and he expected us to have to search the house,” Elna replied. An idea had started to form in her head, an idea that was perhaps a bit reckless, but now she saw it clearly. “There’s a good chance the mercs will find the entrance if they start poking and prodding down here. We can’t let that happen. We have to turn the cellar into a trap.”
“What does that mean?” Malin asked.
She pointed down the left side of the cellar. “If we funnel all of the soldiers down the left side of the room, it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. We can take cover behind the steps. We’ll get at least a few of them. Then we shut the door and flee down the tunnel. If they attempt to follow us, they’ll get caught in the explosion.” Prig wouldn’t like the plan. She knew that. But this seemed like the best, and perhaps only, opportunity to deal with these guys with some advantage.
“You’re ready for a fight like that?” Malin asked. “It’s one thing to chase after the Marines while they run and gun through a militia camp, but this…?”
“This is what it’s come to, Malin,” she said. “We’re fighting for our island now, and we’re fighting for ourselves. Come on. Help me.”
She grabbed the nearest wine rack and began dragging it away from the wall. It was heavy old wood, and it didn’t move easily. Malin rushed to the other end and helped her pick it up. They carried it to the middle of the room and set it against the pillars, covering the gaps along the first three. This would force the soldiers to take to the left side of the room, and it would also prevent them from using the first few pillars as cover. Of course, they could move the wine rack, but that would take a few seconds—time enough for an ambush.
Once the long rack was in place, Elna rushed back to the open door. She saw Selene and George standing on the other side and she waved them on.
“Go, go, down the stairs,” she said. “Don’t wait for us.”
Selene grabbed George by the wrist and guided him down the stairs. As they went, Elna grabbed the sliding door and pulled it about halfway shut, providing herself a little more cover. Then she dropped to her knees, half-hidden behind the door, and raised her pistol. Malin took up a position behind her, one shoulder against the door, as he pointed the Beretta into the wine cellar. The footsteps of the mercenaries were approaching from the upstairs hall.
“The flashlight,” Elna said.
Malin clicked off the flashlight just as the hatch banged open. The mercs brought their own light. It moved down into the room and traced a path along the wall on the left. Elna saw boots on the steps, long shadows moving into the room. She could tell by the clunky way they stumbled down the stairs, bumping into each other, muttering, cursing, and snorting, that at least a few of them were sloshed.
Am I really going to shoot these people? Can I do it?
It was one thing to plan and imagine it, but now that the moment was upon her, she felt a kind of cold, rigid resistance coming over her. The first two soldiers entered the cellar and moved down the left side of the room. One of them reached out and touched the wine rack that had been moved beside the pillars. It should have alarmed him, but he merely touched it, grunted, and kept coming.
“Look for more bottles,” one of them said. “There are no secret doors. We looked. Commander can rant and rail all he wants. But if there’s more wine…”
“Yeah, yeah,” said another soldier.
Two more came down the stairs. Elna was frozen in place, breathing so fast that she felt light-headed. She couldn’t coordinate with Malin. How long should they let the men come into the room before opening fire? They were all in one place, six soldiers crammed in close on the left side of the room. She had a clear shot from cover, and the soldiers hadn’t spotted her yet.
Just a second longer. Just a second longer, she told herself, but she knew she was just buying time, putting off the terrible thing she knew she must do. It wasn’t so easy to kill people, even when they put your family, property, and way of life at risk.
The lead soldiers, stumbling and drunk, were about halfway into the room when the one with the flashlight swung the light along the back wall. Suddenly, it was shining directly into Elna’s eyes. The soldier made a single sound, the beginning of some word, and it was enough—it broke through the shell of fear that had clamped around Elna. She pulled the trigger and fired the handgun. The sound of gunshots in the stone room were so loud they stabbed into her ears, into her skull.
The flashlight went flying. Whether it was dropped or thrown, she didn’t know, but
