Chapter 42
The emergency backup strobes bathed the corridor in a chaotic, rhythmic red glow. Automatic gunfire rattled from the upper catwalks—the suppressed, clinical bursts of professional black-ops operators executing guards with terrifying speed.
"They breached the main sally port!" Vance kicked open the heavy security door separating the visitor bay from the prisoner holding pen, a captured SIG Sauer pistol in each hand. He tossed one to Carter. "Over twenty armed shooters descending the stairwells! They aren't taking prisoners!"
Carter didn't hesitate. Raising his weapon, he fired two rounds into the electronic lock of Dylan’s security cage, kicked the steel gate open, and used his combat knife to slice through Dylan's wrist restraints.
"Get on your feet, Dylan!" Carter ordered over the deafening roar of sirens. "If you want to survive, stay two paces behind me!"
Dylan scrambled up, his hands shaking, clinging to the back of Carter's tactical jacket as they surged into the central hallway.
Three operators in black tactical gear and night-vision goggles rounded the junction ahead, their submachine guns coming up instantly.
"Flashbang!" Shelby yelled from behind a rolling stainless-steel laundry cart. She hurled a tactical stun grenade across the floor.
A blinding, multi-million-candlepower flash accompanied by a 170-decibel concussion wave ripped through the corridor. The three operators staggered backward, disoriented. Carter and Vance broke from cover, firing synchronized, double-tap rounds that dropped all three men before they could recover their footing.
Carter scooped up a discarded MP7 submachine gun from the tiles, slapping a fresh magazine into the well. "Vance, what's our egress?"
"Waste disposal conduit beneath the commercial laundry!" Vance shouted, firing three rounds down the elevator shaft to suppress advancing hostiles. "Empties into the Limmat River drainage canal. I have an armored snowcat staged two hundred yards downriver!"
They sprinted through the dense haze of pulverized concrete and tear gas. Dylan stumbled, a stray ricochet gouging a bloody trench across his forearm, but he bit his lip and kept running, driven by pure, primal terror.
They reached the laundry room just as a secondary breaching charge tore the heavy steel fire doors off their hinges behind them.
"Into the chute! Now!" Vance shoved Dylan and Shelby into the industrial drainage slide.
Carter turned, kneeling behind an industrial washing drum, laying down a sustained burst of suppressive fire to stall the four mercenaries swarming through the smoke. A round caught Carter in the left shoulder, the ballistic impact spinning him around and tearing through the flesh above his collarbone.
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Gritting his teeth against the searing agony, Carter fired his last rounds, dropped the empty weapon, and threw himself down the concrete chute into the freezing dark below.
They emerged into the sub-zero bite of the alpine night, the icy spray of the Limmat River stinging their faces. The armored snowcat sat idling beneath the railway bridge, its tracks chewing through the snow as Vance floored the throttle, racing into the dark mountain passes while Regensdorf burned behind them.
