CECILIA MAY

Susan pulled the cord, igniting the thermite charges. The heat was so intense that the steel plate began to melt. She reached for the RPG and fired. The blast was bigger than expected. A pressure wave raced down the tunnel, knocking her off her feet as the plate tore free.

More explosions sounded overhead. They arrived to find Maggie checking her watch.

“Six minutes!”

Midnight was struggling to focus, her balance gone.

“Go! Go!” Sarah hauled her over one shoulder. “I’m right behind!” They sprinted for the tunnel door.

Two attackers had crawled up the ventilation shaft and reached the fuel room. With the fans off, they found a lead running into a tank. Assuming it was a booby trap, they carefully disconnected it, only to discover that the blast-proof door was locked from the far side. With no way through, they doubled back the way they’d come.

Gola, hearing the sirens, knew it was time to move. She had two grenades left, but crossfire from multiple directions had her pinned. The undergrowth was too thick to pinpoint a target, and even if she could, the grenades might not reach. But convincing the attackers they were under a different kind of attack might buy her the seconds she needed.

She lobbed the first grenade high towards the gunfire, reloaded, and threw the second in the same direction. Both grenades burst as they fell.

The firing stopped. Gola dropped the launcher and ran, crashing through the brush like a spooked animal. Bullets chased her, but those few seconds of confusion gave her time to reach cover. From there, she headed downhill towards the gully. She knew there was a price on her head, and out in the open, they wouldn’t let up.

Susan was back on her feet, moving towards the tunnel exit. The world had gone quiet except for a low ringing in her ears.

The other four reached the rail carriage. Sarah settled Midnight into a seat as Rosy slammed the blast door shut and locked it.

“Two minutes!” Maggie called.

Rosy climbed aboard and pulled the release. The cart began to roll. The dynamo kicked in as it gathered speed. Racing down the narrow track in the dark, with the lights catching the tunnel walls inches away, was a genuine rush, even for veterans of everything they’d just survived.

The lights dimmed as they slowed near the tunnel’s end, the cart triggering the final bank of sensors. Sarah and Rosy helped Midnight out.

“Thirty seconds!” Maggie had been counting the whole way.

Midnight could walk now, with support.

They stepped out into the night air, moved clear of the tunnel mouth and braced themselves against the hillside.

Their attackers had spread through the building above. One entered the control room just as a blinding surge tore through the electrical system, frying the wiring as it raced towards the fuel room.

The abandoned jumper lead lay across the floor, the fuel hatch still open, more vapour bleeding into the air. The control board exploded, the surge racing down the cable and arcing against the steel inspection ladder.

A massive blast tore through the structure. Tons of concrete, steel and bodies were hurled hundreds of feet into the air.

Gola kept running as chunks of concrete crashed through the trees around her. She cleared a fallen tree and dropped into a small hollow beneath its trunk.

Sarah and the others were four miles away when the explosion came. She checked Midnight’s wound. A flap of skin had peeled back, exposing bone.

“Must’ve caught a piece of concrete when the wall took those rounds.”

She pressed the skin back into place, wishing she had a surgical kit, and settled for binding it tightly with a strip Maggie had already cut from her shirt.

“We need to move,” Sarah said. “Can you walk?”

“I’m a bit light-headed, but I’ll manage.”