Phantom Instinct (9780698157132)

by Gardiner, Meg

  She’d seen Aiden exchange an aching look with Sorenstam. Harper knew: Sorenstam was doing this to save all their lives but especially that of the man she still loved. Erika was keeping Aiden alive.

  She counted in her head, as Sorenstam had told her to. Six, seven, eight, nine . . .

  Ten.

  Erika stepped out, away from the wall of the tunnel, and swung to face the exit from the hallway. She waited for the shrouded gunmen, the breathing shadows who lurked in the dark. Footsteps scuffed on the concrete. She held, waiting, waiting. The stock of the Remington was snugged against her right shoulder. Her left hand supported the action. The gun had warmed in her hand. It was hers, it was ready, it was ten more seconds of sight and sense and life. Her trigger finger held just short of firing.

  A man rounded the corner and came into sight.

  “Los Angeles County Sheriff. Drop the weapon,” she shouted.

  He raised his own gun. She leveled the shotgun, leading him, and fired.

  Red fire sparked from the barrel of the Remington. The recoil smacked her shoulder. The man slammed backward, hitting the wall and crashing to his knees. He toppled and fell.

  She racked the action, ejected the spent shell casing, and loaded the next shell. The thunder of the shot echoed off the walls and rang in her ears. It filled her head. The smell of gunpowder filled the hallway. She heard only her heart and the ringing of the shot. She couldn’t hear Aiden and Harper running down the tunnel. But they had Piper. They were going. With each heartbeat, they got farther away, got a better chance of moving out of range, got another second’s blessing, another chance to rescue the girl. Another breath, another chance to live.

  The man around the corner ahead in the hallway was nothing but a silhouette. A darkened form, moaning, grunting. Moving. He still had the gun in his hand.

  “Sheriff. Drop the weapon,” she repeated.

  Her hair fell in her face. She held the barrel of the shotgun level on the hallway. The man didn’t drop his weapon.

  “Now,” she bellowed.

  He raised it. His hand caught the light. She fired again.

  The gun in the man’s hand dropped and clattered to the floor. He no longer moved or moaned.

  One down. One left.

  She retreated around the corner into the tunnel. Her ears rang.

  A shot boomed from the hallway. Okay, then. Number two. Let’s do it.

  Footsteps rushed toward her, fast. She had four shells left in the Remington and her Glock in its holster, plus ten more shells and a second full clip in her pocket. She once again raised the shotgun.

  And saw. Saw them coming, all of them, into the light, guns in their hands, saw a MAC-10, and an AK, and at least two carrying shotguns of their own.

  For a split second, a vast and eternal breath, she considered turning to run. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself spin and dash down the tunnel, could feel herself draw her semiautomatic and fire blindly behind her at them as she escaped. She pictured herself reaching Aiden and Harper and bolting themselves behind a steel door, barricading themselves, comrades in arms, a team ready to fight back. She saw it, felt it, could nearly feel Aiden’s body against hers as they stood back to back, covering the entire field of fire.

  For that moment, she was not alone, facing the onslaught. For that moment only.

  They came around the corner. She stood in the middle of the tunnel. She leveled the shotgun and fired.

  They heard it behind them: the roar of the Remington, firing again. Harper was running, breathing hard and crying at the same time. Aiden, his stride ever more ragged, hesitated.

  “No,” Harper gasped.

  Behind them, at the far end of the tunnel, the return fire was devastating. Shot after shot, the deep boom of another shotgun, the flat crack of pistols, the crack-crack-crack of a rifle firing in a three-shot burst.

  Piper cried out. Aiden stumbled, and for a moment, Harper thought he had been hit. He started to look back. She grabbed his arm.

  “Aiden.”

  Behind them came another gunshot, this time from a pistol, and a shout from Erika. It was wild, the most fearsome and terrifying cry Harper had ever heard.

  “Run,” she said.

  They had to. Sorenstam was standing strong, knowing the consequences and doing it anyway. Giving Aiden and Harper every vital second they needed to survive and get Piper out. One hundred yards to the far end of the tunnel. Ninety.

  Harper’s heart seemed half ready to tear. She couldn’t let Aiden turn around. Turn around and it would be him next, then her and Piper.

  “Come on,” she said.

  He looked as though he couldn’t get any breath. He looked as if he wanted to put the muzzle of his own gun to his forehead and pull the trigger. Seventy yards to the turn. Sixty. Piper was fearfully quiet.

  “God, run, we gotta run,” Harper said.

  Then Aiden put his back into it and pumped his arms and paced her again, bolting along the tunnel. They heard return fire. They heard Erika fire her weapon again and again. The cacophony rose, concrete snapping as bullets hit it.

  Forty yards. Thirty. The firing stopped. Harper kept going, knew men were coming behind them. She heard shouts, commands, sounds of voices bouncing off the concrete floor and walls.

  Men’s voices. More than one. Maybe more than two.

  Don’t look back. She pounded along. Twenty yards.

  A final single shot reverberated in the tunnel. She heard the clatter of metal against concrete, as though a long gun were being kicked away from the fallen hand that had held it. Sorenstam was silent. Ten yards.

  Aiden reached the corner, limping hard. He grabbed her elbow and slingshotted her and Piper around it, into a passageway that was dark and smelled of rust and chemicals.

  She kept going. Realized he had stopped. He had literally hit the wall, leaning his head against the concrete. His eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth gritted.

  “Aiden,” she choked. “Come on.” She pulled on his elbow.

  The sound of men running in the tunnel finally got him to push away from the wall. He turned back to face the tunnel and raised his pistol.

  Harper felt a sensation in the center of her forehead, like a drill. She yanked on his arm. “No.”

  He was ready to charge the men head-on. Harper held tight to his arm.

  “Don’t. Aiden, no. Piper—both of us have to get her out. Come on.”

  He resisted a moment longer, breathing hard. Then he nodded. “Go.”

  Harper swept the Maglite along the passageway. And she saw that the emergency exit sign hadn’t led them to the stairs—ahead was a fixed steel ladder, bolted to the wall, going both up to the factory floor and down to a subbasement. She aimed the flashlight at the ceiling.

  The ladder was broken off a few feet overhead. They couldn’t climb up.

  Piper moaned, a high, desperate sound. Her legs wobbled. Harper feared that she barely had enough blood left to circulate in her system. She feared that Piper’s heart was empty.

  “Come on,” she said.

  In the semidark, they reached the ladder. Harper leaned over and looked down.

  Aiden said, “Have you ever been down to that level?”

  She kept looking. “Yeah. It’s all narrow tunnels and pipes and chemical storage tanks. But this isn’t the only ladder. I’m sure of that.”

  Piper said, “I can’t.”

  Harper put her hand to Piper’s face. The girl’s cheek was warm. “We can. Together.”

  Aiden was half-shadowed under the Maglite. He looked at her and blinked, as though he was having trouble seeing her clearly in the near dark. She could see the intensity on his face, and pain. She held out a hand.

  He took it. She squeezed.

  “We’re getting out,” she said. “We’re getting out and taking Piper home.�
�

  He pulled her close, and when he looked at her, he seemed to see her clearly, to see the path out.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  52

  Aiden hurried down the ladder, boots clanging against the rungs, and stepped off one story below. Harper edged her way down ahead of Piper, ready to catch the girl if she slipped or, God forbid, passed out. The rungs were cold. With each step, the metal rang and the darkness increased.

  Harper dropped to the floor. The ceiling was low. Aiden stood close by. She could feel his chest, rising and falling.

  Piper worked her way down, awkwardly, using her good hand. When she got within reach, Aiden pulled her in. Her eyes were shimmering and hot.

  She nodded and said, “I can stand by myself.”

  Harper aimed the Maglite. They were in an access tunnel for pipes and gas lines. The ceiling was an inch above Harper’s head. Aiden was ducking.

  He said, “Which way?”

  She pointed toward the west end of the building, the side they had entered from, and cinched an arm around Piper’s waist again. “Drive it like you stole it.”

  “What?” Piper said.

  “Balls to the wall.”

  Aiden led them along the tunnel. After about ninety yards, he stopped. Harper saw why: Ahead lay an open pit. Below them, under flickering emergency lighting, they saw two gigantic pressure tanks. Twelve-inch pipes ran from them horizontally into the walls, spanning the pit. Nearby were several dozen upright gas storage vessels topped with needle valves. Harper didn’t know if they were rusting hulks or filled with combustible vapors. A catwalk bridged the room, leading to a narrow ledge and a hatchlike exit opposite.

  Behind them on the ladder came footsteps. Urgently, they stepped onto the catwalk. It dipped and groaned.

  “Shit,” Harper said.

  “Shit,” Piper said.

  Aiden said, “Too much weight. You two first.”

  Holding Piper, Harper took tender steps out above the pit. The metal quivered beneath her feet. Rust from the railing came off on her hand. Ahead, the bolts that held the catwalk to the wall vibrated with their steps. Crumbling bits of dust and concrete spilled from the wall. She had a wicked fear that the whole thing was seconds from shaking itself loose. The drop to the thicket of tanks was at least twenty feet, the spill to the concrete floor so far that it was all but invisible.

  They reached the far side and stepped onto the ledge. The second they stepped off the catwalk, Aiden ran onto it. His feet rang on the metal. The catwalk’s bolts creaked and shimmied—they were working their way out of the wall. He was halfway across when she realized why he was going all out.

  Black-clad gunmen appeared in the entrance on the far side. Aiden came on, nodding her to move, move, move now.

  She maneuvered Piper through the hatch into the passageway beyond. Aiden thundered across the catwalk. The gunmen fired at him.

  Piper screamed. Aiden leaped off the catwalk and dropped and rolled.

  The gunmen rushed together onto the catwalk. They were heavy men in body armor. Harper sat down on the ledge and raised her foot and kicked at the bolts holding the catwalk to the wall.

  One of the hostiles shouted. He raised his weapon, but Aiden fired at him. The shot hit the man in the chest. He fell backward, grunting—winded but alive, the round buried in his vest. Harper kicked again, harder. Aiden fired another shot and grabbed the railing on the opposite side from Harper. She yelled, “One, two—”

  He pulled and she kicked. With a squeal and a snapping sound, the bolts broke free.

  The catwalk screeched and the near end swung down hard. The men turned and tried to run back, but the ancient metal, thin and corroded, twisted and snapped. Shouting wildly, the men flipped over the railing and plunged into the tank forest below. A scream ended abruptly as one of them hit the stack of compressed gas cylinders topped with needle-nosed valves. He lay like a fish embedded on a rack of straight pins.

  The other man hit the top of one of the big tanks. He landed on his back and held on to his gun. Then the catwalk crashed on top of him. It slapped down across his chest like the blade of a paper cutter. The sound reverberated. He lay motionless, until the echoes died, and with them his last moans.

  Aiden and Harper looked down, Harper on her knees, head hanging low. She was shaking.

  He put a hand on her back. It felt more than reassuring. It was telling her: Get up.

  Piper edged forward. “Jesus.” She stared, her bright-quarter eyes even wider than before. “Did you kill them?”

  Harper struggled to her feet. Her hair was hanging in her face, stuck to her forehead with sweat.

  “Are they dead?” Piper said.

  Aiden raised a hand to nudge Piper back. “They aren’t coming after you anymore.”

  She shrank from him and protected her sliced wrist. “Jesus.”

  He raised his hands, giving her space, and turned again to the pit. “One minute.”

  Stuffing the pistol in the small of his back, he lowered himself over the ledge. With apparent pain, he edged down until he was hanging by his fingertips.

  “What are you doing?” Harper said.

  He looked down. It was about a ten-foot drop to the wrecked portion of the catwalk, another fifteen to the floor below. He kicked out from the wall without a word and dropped noisily to the twisted bridge. He crouched quickly to grab hold.

  Harper leaned out, her nerves thrumming.

  Lowering himself cautiously from the catwalk, he dropped to the top of the big storage tank. Harper watched anxiously. Behind her Piper stood half-shadowed in the hatch exit, breathing rapidly.

  Aiden worked his way to the man who had crashed onto the tank and been crushed by the broken section of the catwalk. The man lay staring sightlessly into the recesses of the ceiling. Aiden pried the pistol from the man’s hand and took his earpiece and radio transmitter. A few feet from the body, he picked up a shotgun. Then he scrambled across the top of the tank into the shadows. A moment later, Harper saw him climbing on a stacked set of cylinders, packed tightly in a shipping crate. He groaned but pulled himself up, leaped and pulled himself back onto the ledge.

  He limped up, carrying the hostile’s shotgun. He twisted the man’s earpiece into position and tucked the radio into his shirt pocket.

  “Anything?” Harper asked.

  “Chatter. Not in English.”

  Piper’s face was blank, apparently with shock.

  Harper said, “Probably Russian. Let me have the earpiece.” He handed it to her and she put it in. She squeezed Piper’s shoulder. “We’ve gotcha. Ready?”

  Piper’s voice was surprisingly hard. “Yeah.”

  She had stopped shivering. Harper didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

  Harper looked at Aiden. He didn’t even have an expression on his face.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Those cylinders down there?” He nodded at the pit. “They’re leaking. I don’t know what’s in them, but it’s high-pressure gas and we don’t want to hang around.”

  Holding Piper tight, Harper started down the tunnel.

  Side by side, flanking Piper, Harper and Aiden rushed down the access tunnel. Aiden ducked beneath its low ceiling, gripping the shotgun, the weapon held low. Piper dragged under Harper’s arm, moaning every time Harper tried to lug her tighter. The light was almost nonexistent, but she could see Aiden’s face in gray scale, a worn and determined outline against the tunnel walls. Behind them came a hissing from the damaged gas cylinders.

  Sixty yards along the tunnel, they came to another access ladder, this one ascending. Harper stared up into gloom, listening. Heard nothing.

  Aiden said, “Me first.”

  He climbed to the opening in the floor above, peered out, and waved them up. Piper climbed without complaint, hooking her injure
d elbow over the rungs of the ladder to stabilize herself. Halfway up, Harper pressed a hand to the radio earpiece.

  “Chatter,” she whispered. “Somebody’s trying to contact those two hostiles we left back in the tank room.”

  Aiden pulled himself through the opening onto the floor above. “ID? Names? Maybe I could respond in English and make them think it’s one of those men?”

  He reached down for Piper. “Come on, let me help you.”

  She flinched. “I’m okay.” She climbed awkwardly out and slumped to the floor.

  Harper scrambled out behind them into an office hallway lit with fading emergency lights. She recognized the fallen ceiling tiles and torn-up carpet.

  “Aiden—we’re just around the corner from the hallway where we came into the building.”

  She pointed. He rushed to the corner, checked, and waved for them to follow.

  Cinching her hand around Piper’s waist again, Harper headed for the corner. The girl was wheezing now, and stumbling over her own feet. Aiden saw her struggling and put an arm around Piper as well.

  In the earpiece, Harper heard static, then a man’s voice in Russian.

  “Echo One, come in.” The voice was muffled and tinny. “Echo One, come in. Zhurov, respond.”

  Aiden was limping more severely. He pulled them around the corner, into the hallway they’d entered not long before with Erika. The door was directly ahead of them.

  “We’re almost there,” Harper whispered. “Come on, come on.”

  Aiden pulled them all toward the door. Five feet from it, he stopped.

  The tape he’d placed over the lock had been removed.

  The door was securely shut again. A lock had been flipped: a Yale dead bolt. To open it took a key.

  They were trapped.

  From the earpiece, a voice fuzzed. “Echo One is not responding. Check the back exit.”

  53

  Harper’s legs felt all at once like loose string. Her vision went fuzzy. “They’re coming this way. We have to find another way out.”