It feels like that night on the train, but then, I knew who I was fighting against, I knew who to trust.
Students are rushing for the doors, trying to see the explosion. “Don’t forget your jackets!” I shout to our friends, “We may not be back inside for a long time.” Mariya throws my coat at me and pulls on her own. I’m glad she’s wearing boots.
Taking the side door, we race around the dining hall, skidding to a stop as another massive flare of flame shoots up from the Dean’s building. The front half was hit hard, it’s already crumbling in piles of stone and burning wood. The back half - where her office is - and the huge glass arboretum are still intact.
Professor MacTavish is silhouetted in the flames in the center square, directing students and frightened kitchen staff. “Spies!”he roars, “Get your weaponry and move to your assigned locations. Warriors and Assassins, get with your teams.” Two of the sobbing servers are trying to take his arm and he shakes them off. “You two, get the rest of the waitstaff and join the fire brigade at the front of the Dean’s building.Go!”he shouts and they jump, racing away like startled rabbits.
Mariya grabs my face, kissing me fiercely. “I love you, too.” She looks at me for a moment, like she’s memorizing me, then turns and runs into the night before I can say a word.
“Turgenev and Toscano, to me!” Professor Fukumoto shouts over the roar of another wall collapsing in the Dean’s building. “This is only the beginning,” he says sharply, “a helicopter dropped the bomb, it’s a simple ammonium nitrate mix but it took out the front gates. They’ll be back. The guards are set for a ground assault. Get to your weapons cache, I want automatic weapons, as many as you can carry.”
We’re off and running for Larry’s gardening shed. “Did you get through to Giovanni?” I shout to Lucca.
“The guards in Kilronan Village saw the blast, I’m sure they notified him and the team. Cell signals on campus are jammed,” he growled, adding a burst of speed when the shed is in view, “makes sense.”
“It is what we would do,” I groan, tapping in the combination to the weapons cache lock. I’ve already got my Glock in my shoulder harness; I take more ammo clips and pull out an AK-47.
“Really?” Lucca scoffed.
“Old school but very effective,” I said, slinging it over my shoulder and beginning to load up on the AR-15 rifles. The windis frostbite-level cold, and it’s freezing some of the fire hoses. I can hear the shouting from here as Max directs the fire crew.
“Gents, I have another stash with some bigger equipment.” I whirl around with my gun up to find Larry the gardener. “Focus!” he said sharply, “This is an old IRA trick. Bomb and Bait. The enemy wants you focused on the fire and the front gates. We’re looking at an aerial assault, I’m sure of it.”
He looks taller, sterner. The elderly man who carefully prunes the Dean’s orchids is gone. “They’re going to go for the Armory. MacTavish is there.” We follow him to the closest greenhouse, and he kneels, pulling up a trap door. We scramble down after him.
“Sothisis where the good stuff is,” Lucca says raptly. There’s tidy row after row of heavy-duty armaments; grenades, Stinger missiles, RPGs…
“Do you have a walkie-talkie on you?” I ask hopefully.
Larry holds it up. “Jammed. Do you have cell phones?”
“Also jammed,” Lucca said.
Larry runs his hand through his silver hair, already sooty from the fire. “Fukumoto has the snipers up in the towers, we should get an advance-”
The lights go out.
I can hear the groan of a nearby generator trying to start up, it sputters and stops. The moon is buried behind the cloud cover as we race back up the stairs and out of the greenhouse. It’s nearly pitch black where we are. There’s a weak gleam of emergency lighting by the front gates and around portions of the perimeter. So, some of the generators still worked.
“Fuckers,” he snaps. “Here-” he opens a new compartment in the potting cabinet and pulls out flashlights. “Strap ‘em to your wrist so you can see what you’re aiming at.”
The ground under us rocks violently, nearly knocking us off our feet. “Shit, that’s the security building,” Lucca said. “Do you think they’re breaking out the Blue Tattoos?”
“The what?” Larry said, lifting his night scope.
“The traitors,” I said, “it’s how we were finding them.”
“Possible,” he agrees, “or killing them.”
“What?”
He looks at us grimly. “They’re no longer useful.”
I think of Liam. That what he did was all for nothing. “Let’s get moving.”
Every part of me wants to head for the west tower, I know Mariya and Tatiana are stationed there as two of the best snipers.
I’m glad they’re together, in case…
