With Angela in the lead they both moved up the broad, concrete stairs as quietly as possible. The sliding metal door at the top stood half open. They both slipped through, guns at the ready.
The room they emerged into was filled with a forest of rusting iron posts holding up iron beams. The ceiling was a mass of pipes covered in disintegrating asbestos. A few sections of pipe lay on the floor along with crumbled masonry and other unrecognizable detritus that had drifted into ankle-deep piles here and there. The place had an echo, so they walked slowly and carefully near the wall and used hand signals.
They both tiptoed on the larger chunks of broken concrete to make as little noise as possible. It reminded her of crossing the stream on Grandfather Mountain by dancing from one dry rock to another.
Angela heard a sound, like water running. She held an arm out to stop Jack. He froze in place.
The far side of the room had a row of short concrete block walls jutting out from the rear wall to make a series of cubicles. A man turned from the corner of one of those cubicles, zipping up his pants after having urinated. He had an AK slung over his shoulder.
His hand on his zipper froze as he looked up. His eyes were opened wide.
Angela put a bullet between them.
He collapsed, his head banging the floor hard. It made an echoing thud. The ejected shell from her gun pinged with a metallic ring as it bounced against a pipe lying on the floor.
They both stood still for a moment to see if anyone had heard either the man’s dead weight landing in the rubble or the soft pop of the suppressed shot.
When Angela started heading for the back corner to her left, Jack pointed at a stairwell to the right, letting her know they should go that way.
Angela shook her head. She pointed to a dark corridor in the distance to the left side. When he came close to question why, she leaned in and whispered in his ear.
“This leads to a back stairwell. They don’t realize it’s here.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“The main stairs had lookouts. Cassiel found this back way out and used it to sneak away without being seen.”
Jack didn’t look convinced. “It could be a dead end,” he warned. “We could get trapped in a tight place like that and be sitting ducks. Are you sure?”
She started toward the narrow passage in wordless answer. She knew that surprise was invaluable. The main stairs had lookouts. They were the only stairs the men knew about, so they had them covered. Jack followed without further complaint.
The spooky-looking passage had a small window at the far end, so at least it wasn’t completely dark, but the bright light coming into the dark space made for high-contrast shadows that were difficult to see into. It smelled musty. Deeper in, she could see that it appeared to be a utility service passageway of some sort.
Big pipes running along the ceiling with faded white paint had peeled for years, leaving chips and crumbles of plaster all over the floor to crunch underfoot. She pointed for Jack to big footprints in those curled paint chips.
“Cassiel,” she whispered.
There were vertical pipes as well as exposed wiring. In one spot a beam crossed at chest height. They ducked under it and kept moving.
A brick wall they came to on the left had partially collapsed, spilling bricks out across the floor of the narrow corridor. Since there was no going around it, they had to step carefully over it to get past. Angela pointed out Cassiel’s footprints again on the dusty floor. Jack nodded that he knew what they were, finally conceding that she was right.
Broken stubs of pipes sticking out low on the right threatened to catch their ankles. To the left was a room left exposed by the collapsed brick wall. Rusty tanks stood against a wall. They looked like they might be some sort of old, industrial water heaters. Everything was covered with a heavy layer of greasy dust. Ductwork and pipes coming out of the water heaters went in all directions back into the darkness, while some came out of the room to run overhead along the ceiling of the corridor.
Jack grabbed her sleeve between a finger and thumb to urgently stop her. He pointed ahead to a place in the floor that was hard to see in the flare of light coming in from the window directly ahead.
“There’s a hole in the floor,” he whispered. “Be careful.”
Angela nodded and moved on, hugging the wall to shuffle past the rectangular hole. It was probably a utility pass-through. She looked down as she went by. It would have been a long fall two stories into a dark basement.
When they reached the window, the passage turned to the right and terminated at a flight of open, iron-tread stairs. The wall studs were exposed. Dusty insulation and thick veils of filthy cobwebs hung down in places. Fallen plaster lay on some of the iron treads. They started up, both pointing their guns up at any threat that might be above them. Plaster crunched softly underfoot.
On the next floor, Angela gently pushed open a door. It squeaked. A man standing guard at the main stairwell not too far away immediately turned and saw them. He turned back to shout an alarm up the stairs. That denied her the preferred target of the triangle between his eyes at the tip of his nose. She admonished herself for not taking the shot immediately. She knew better.
Before he had a chance to make a sound, Angela put a round through his windpipe, immediately followed by a second one through the center of his left ear. By the way he dropped, the round through his ear had penetrated his skull just fine.
The guards at each flight of stairs were the reason Cassiel had avoided the main stairwell and instead snuck away down the utility stairs at the back. Now that they knew where the guards were posted, Angela took them out at each level on their way up. She didn’t want men left down below rushing up the stairs behind them once the fight started.
After they had made their way up the lower floors, which looked to be more for manufacturing type of work, they reached the smaller upper floors. The stairs there had proper railings that looked more ornamental. She also saw iron radiators and more windows. Some floors had dust-covered desks and chairs.
At each level she took out the guard.
Before going through the final doorway at the top floor, she stopped and put in a full magazine.
She held her weapon in both hands, pointed up, adjusting her grip, taking a couple of deep breaths, preparing to go through the final door.
This was where the bomb was. She could see it in her mind, in the memories from Cassiel. This was where Rafael and the rest of his team were gathered for their final religious act.
She could feel her heart pounding. She repeated the mantra to herself: Speed and violence of action.
Angela remembered her grandfather snapping his fingers as fast as he could, teaching her to pull off shots that fast as she fired at the target.
Angela looked back at Jack. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
SIXTY-SEVEN
“Remember, we have to stop them from detonating that bomb,” Jack whispered with earnest concern. “Nothing else matters. We need to stop the guy sitting on that dead man’s switch from getting up. If he gets up from that chair, it’s over.”
Angela nodded. “I know what he looks like. I’ll find him.” She gave him a long, last look. “I’ve got this, Jack. Stay behind me and take care of anyone who tries to sneak up on me from behind.”
Jack answered with a single nod.
Angela took a last deep breath and then shoved the utility door open with her shoulder.