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In the end, he and Alek had settled the issue when Alek had posed a question Lyon hadn’t wanted to answer: was Lyon strong enough that the men could count on him to save their lives if it came right down to it?
Lyon had been offended by the question, but honesty had quickly taken the place of indignation.
He didn’t know.
He’d been back in the gym, working to rebuild his strength, but he was not yet as physically strong as he’d been before his kidnapping and imprisonment.
Finally, he’d agreed to a compromise. The strongest men would pave the way through the tunnels and into the water crib. Lyon would follow with Markus and Alek when most of the way had been cleared.
Lyon hated it, but he wasn’t stupid, and he would not have the death of another soldier on his hands, especially not in an instance where he had the foresight to prevent it.
Lyon thought he heard the muffled thump of gunfire somewhere deep inside the tunnel. It forced him back to the present, the safest place for him to be.
“Update,” Lyon said to Alek.
Lyon had opted not to wear a comms earpiece. He didn’t want to hear every move the other men were making, every obstacle they had to overcome. This time, the details were a distraction he didn’t need. There was only one thing that mattered: isolating Vadim and his son in the water crib and killing them both.
Lyon didn’t need comms for that mission, not with Alek running interference.
Alek touched his earpiece, then looked at Lyon. “The boats are in position.”
Lyon nodded.
The youngest and weakest of the men had been assigned to approach the crib by boat, providing a distraction for the other men working their way through the tunnels. Lyon had devised the strategy as a way to make up for the weakness of their army, which he feared was still too small even with help from the Syndicate and Roman’s men.
While they circled the crib, baiting Vadim’s men, a second team would breach the crib through the tunnels, using silencers to avoid alerting Vadim’s entire army.
Surprise was the only advantage they had, and Lyon intended to use it.
Lyon wasn’t worried about the men in boats taking gunfire. Vadim wouldn’t want to bring the Marine Patrol or Coast Guard to the crib. His men would watch and wait, eventually chalking it up to joyriders out for a night ride.
Markus gazed into the tunnel entrance and focused on the chatter in his earpiece.
He turned to Lyon. “They’re in.”
“Let’s move,” Lyon said.
They started down the tunnel, Alek in front with his phone as a flashlight, Lyon behind him, Markus at the back. The tunnel was quiet except for the sound of dripping water and an occasional rustle Lyon assumed were rats.
It was surreal to realize that at some point, they crossed over from being under the city to being under the lake, and Lyon tried not to think about the fact that decades ago, water had rushed through these tunnels into the city.
He’d never been a man with phobias, but he felt out of balance, unmoored.
A stranger in his own mind.
He wasn’t entirely sure who he was anymore, and he was grateful his body kept moving, a kind of psychological musclememory at play, propelling him through the tunnel, keeping his gun raised, even as his mind screamed that there was danger everywhere.
More muffled shots sounded ahead.
“At least they’re ours,” Markus said behind him.
He was likely right. Vadim had no reason to use silencers in the water crib. It had been abandoned for ages.
Then, as if to make a liar of him, gunfire rattled through the tunnel.
They picked up their pace, jogging through the two-mile long tunnel.
It started to feel interminable, like a cruel game in which the tunnel went on and on, never to deliver them to their destination.
