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“Can we finally leave this party?” Remi asked.
“After you.”
They sprinted down the tunnel and skidded to a stop at the entrance. Outside, the fog had lifted and the erosion bridge was dimly lit by moonlight. Waves lapped and hissed at the cliff face. Despite the breeze, the smoke cloud was moving down the tunnel toward them and with it came the faint sounds of coughing and retching.
“When we reach the water, we’ll let the tide take us. It should be running north to south along the coast. Balaclava’s only about three miles down the coast. We’ll go ashore there.”
“Right.”
“Still have the printout?”
Remi patted her dress at the waistline. “Safe and sound.”
Sam eased up to the edge and peered down. A bullet smashed into the rock beside his head. He jerked back and they dropped flat.
Remi gasped. “What—”
“There’s a patrol boat down there,” Sam muttered. “They’re sitting right below the spikes.”
“We’re trapped.”
“Like hell we are. Come on.”
He pulled Remi to her feet and they began sprinting back down the tunnel. “Care to fill me in?” Remi said.
“No time. You’ll get it. Just stay on the tracks.”
With each step the smoke thickened until even their flashlight beams did them no good. Hand in hand, they kept running, heads down and eyes slitted against the fumes.
“Almost there,” Sam called and stretched his free hand before him.
The retching and coughing were louder now, seemingly all around them. A voice shouted something in Russian, followed by a rasped reply in English: “Back . . . go back . . . !”
Sam tripped and fell, taking Remi down with him. They got back to their feet and kept going. His groping hand bumped into something hot and he jerked it back. He dropped to his knees and pulled Remi down beside him. Somewhere close by, multiple boots crunched on gravel. A flashlight beam cut through the smoke, then disappeared.
“What’s going on?” Remi whispered.
In response, Sam gave the ore cart a quick rap with his knuckles. “Take off the coat.” She did so. Sam shoved his hands into the sleeves from the outside in, then twisted the body of the jacket into a ball. “Oven mitts,” he explained.
Now Remi caught on: “Depth charge?”
“You got it.”
“Clever boy.”
“Once I get it rolling, you push me from behind.”
“Okay.”
Hunched over, Sam moved around to the other side of the cart, planted his feet wide, then placed his gloved hands against the steel side and shoved. The cart didn’t budge. He tried again. Nothing. He heard a metallic click-click, then Remi’s whispered voice: “Wheel brake was on. Try again.”
Sam took a deep breath, set his jaw, and shoved. With a steel-on-steel shriek, the cart lurched forward. The crack of a gunshot echoed down the tunnel, but Sam ignored it and kept going. He passed Remi and she fell in behind him, hands pressed against his lower back. The cart quickly picked up speed. Pushed by the breeze, the flames and smoke streamed backward over their heads like a comet’s tail.
Suddenly the smoke thinned out. The tunnel entrance loomed before them, not twenty feet away. “Braking,” Sam shouted and leaned backward, digging his heels into the gravel ballast. Remi, her hands tight around his belt, did the same. Their combined weight began to slow the cart. The opening rushed toward them. Ten feet . . . five feet . . . Sam made a quick mental calculation, decided the momentum was right, then let go. They stumbled backward together, landed in a heap, and looked up just in time to see the flaming cart tip ever so gently over the lip of the entrance.
There were three seconds of silence, then a thunderous crash.
Sam and Remi crawled on hands and knees to the entrance and looked over the edge. Already half engulfed in flames, the patrol boat was listing heavily to port as water bubbled up through a crater in the afterdeck. After a few seconds a pair of heads bobbed to the surface; one began swimming away, but the other remained motionless. The boat dipped stern first below the surface and slid from view.