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“Get her inside,” I said to Feo.
He took one arm and I grabbed the other. We dragged her into the operations room while Dinara laid down covering fire. Her muzzle spat fury to our left, but there was a burst of gunfire from the right and Feo was caught in the arm. He yelled a curse and dropped Anna.
I pulled her into the operations room by myself, then turned and grabbed Feo before he toppled over. He took three stumbling steps to get inside and collapsed on the floor next to Anna.
“I shouldn’t have given them such a big target,” he said with a faint smile.
“Put pressure on it,” I told him, indicating the wound in his arm.
Dinara raced through the doorway, frantic with fear.
“They’re coming!” she said. “Four of them. Two from each side.”
“Help,” Anna said weakly.
She was bleeding badly from the wound in her leg.
“She needs medical attention,” Dinara remarked, crouching beside her.
“She needs a tourniquet,” I said. “Here.”
I opened a pocket on my gear belt and produced a field first-aid kit that included a tourniquet. I gave this to Dinara.
“I’ll cover us,” I said.
She opened the kit and got to work. Anna’s skin looked pale and clammy by the white glow of the field lights in the corner of the room.
I turned to face the door and raised my rifle.
“Jack Morgan,” a Russian-accented voice said through a speaker somewhere down the corridor, “you know who this is. You have come here to die, Jack Morgan, but first you will watch me kill your people.”
CHAPTER 96
I HAD NO doubt the booming voice over the speaker was Valery Alekseyev’s. I glanced at Feo, who was badly injured. His face was ashen and he was bleeding heavily from the arm. He gave me a look of defiance and clasped his rifle in his good hand. Anna was in a bad way also. Dinara tightened the tourniquet and gave me a concerned look. We weren’t much of a fighting force anymore, and I knew if Alekseyev’s men got in here it would be a slaughter.
I glanced around the operations room. Eight workstations and comms gear had been placed on top of the old legacy computer terminals, which had been built into concrete consoles approximately three feet high and two wide. They were arranged in two rows down the center of the room.
“Move,” I told Feo. “Behind the terminals.”
I ran over to Anna and helped Dinara drag her behind the nearest concrete console. Dinara and I dropped behind the onesto either side as the first of Alekseyev’s men peered through the doorway.
There were two of them and they were clad in grey-and-black camo gear, ski masks, and each carried a ShAK-12 assault rifle. I glanced around to see Feo had made it behind the console furthest from me.
What I was about to do was foolhardy, and if the concrete didn’t hold, it would be suicidal. We each had a console in front of us and another behind. I prayed they’d hold as I took two grenades from my belt, released the spoons, and held them for two seconds to give our assailants minimum reaction time. The two seconds seemed like a decade.
I threw the grenades at the doorway and ducked as I heard Alekseyev’s men cry out in Russian. I covered my ears as a loud blast shook the building and a fireball engulfed the corridor and spilled into the room. The shockwave hit the consoles and chunks of concrete were blown off them. Parts of the ceiling started coming down as the fireball licked over the top of our shields.
I thought the fire would consume us, but the flames receded and I checked on Dinara, Feo, and Anna. They all looked dazed and were covered in dust and chunks of concrete, but they were alive and that’s what mattered.
“I’m going for West,” I told Dinara. “Look after these two. Get them out of here and to a hospital.”
She nodded. As I was about to leave she took hold of my arm. “Thank you for coming for us, Jack.”
I got to my feet and went to the doorway. The smell of scorchedflesh, burnt hair, and smoke filled the air. I lowered my scope to my eye and the darkness immediately came alive in shades of green. I saw four bodies near the door, all badly disfigured by the blast, none showing any signs of life.
I hurried left along the corridor past the old bunk rooms where the children who had been part of the Bright Star program used to sleep.
I reached a dogleg and went left again until I came to one of the old classrooms where the children had been taught. I peered round the doorway and lifted my scope as I saw the room was lit by a field light connected to a mobile generator.
