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The door burst open, revealing a figure silhouetted by the control room’s LCD monitors. Sam fired once. The bullet struck the man in the calf just below the knee. He screamed and toppled forward. His weapon—a compact Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun—bounced across the rubber floor and landed a few feet from Sam. In the control room he heard a hushed voice bark something—a curse, Sam assumed from the tone—in Russian. The man Sam shot was whimpering and crawling back toward the door.
“Got it!” Remi called. “Detail’s perfect. We can use it.”
“Come around,” Sam whispered. She crawled around the corner and tapped his ankle. “Here.” Sam turned, handed her the Glock, and said, “When I say go, fire three shots through the door. Aim for the glass wall.”
“Okay.”
Sam got to his knees, took a breath. “Go!”
Remi popped up and started firing. Glass began shattering. Sam somersaulted out from behind the table, veered left, grabbed the MP5, then scuttled back to cover.
“What’re they waiting for?” Remi asked.
“Reinforcements or better weaponry would be my guess. We need to get out of here before either arrives.”
As if on cue, a hand appeared around the edge of the door and hurled something. The object bounced off the side of the table, hit the rubber floor, then came to a spinning rest.
“Down, Remi!” Sam shouted.
Moving on instinct and on the faith that he’d correctly identified the thrown object, Sam stood up, took a bounding leap, and soccer-kicked the object back toward the door. As it reached the threshold it exploded. Blinding white light and a deafening boom filled the lab. Sam stumbled backward and collapsed behind the table.
“What in God’s name was that?” Remi said, shaking her head to clear it.
“Flash-bang grenade. Special forces and SWAT teams use them to distract the bad guys. A lot of sound and light, but no shrapnel.”
“How did you know?”
“Discovery Channel. At least now we know one thing—they’re trying to avoid any shooting in here.”
“How about a little distraction of our own?” Remi said, pointing with the Glock.
Sam looked. On the wall opposite the panic button was a paperback-sized Plexiglas box housing a yellow mushroom bearing a pictograph of a water droplet. “That’ll do.”
“Two shots, if you will.”
“Ready.”
“Go.”
Remi popped up and opened fire. Sam charged to the wall and slammed the butt of the MP5 sideways into the Plexiglas box, ripping it from the wall. He jerked the lever down. From unseen loudspeakers a computer-generated female voice made an announcement first in Russian, and then in English:
“Warning. Fire suppression system activated. Evacuate area
immediately. Warning. Fire suppression system activated.”
Sam rushed back behind the table. “Rain’s coming, Remi. Protect that printout!”
“Already tucked away.”
“Cleavage?”
“Safer. Found a ziplock Baggie.”
To the right, in the corner of his eye, Sam saw movement in the doorway. He spun, let loose a quick three-round burst. A monitor in the control room exploded in a shower of sparks, then started smoking. He dove behind the table again.
With a whir, silver nozzles descended from the ceiling. There was a one-second delay followed by a pop-hiss. The nozzles exploded into cones of water.
Sam peeked his head around the corner of the table in time to see a figure run through the alcove and disappear through the door.