Exit, Part 2

“We’re locked in here… and there’s a bomb,” the voice said from the other side of the door. A high-pitched but quiet female voice said something to the man, and he shushed her quietly.

Jez and Rick looked at each other before Jez spoke up. “Get to the far side of the room, against this wall.”

“Who are you?” The man asked.

“Now!” Jez barked. They heard feet shuffling and footsteps. Rick lifted and aimed his gun at the door, while Jez turned and kept watch down both directions of the hall. The muffled gunshot still rung through the hall, as did the crash as Rick kicked the door in.

There were three people inside. The speaker was a tall blond man in a navy blue suit. His tie was loose and his hair was sticking up in an unintentional way. He had blood on his face and his shirt. He’d been punched or hit with something, and the way his nose was bent, it was probably broken. Standing behind him was an older woman whose hair was mostly grey. She looked rumpled but healthy. She seemed calm, but was probably dazed. One hand was clenched on reading glasses that dangled from a chain around her neck. The other person was huddled against the man’s side, trembling with silent sobs. She turned her face towards Jez and Rick and her beautiful face was wet with tears. She had long straight, shiny black hair and huge glistening brown eyes. Her plain white blouse was damp around the collar. Jez was shocked at first by how young she looked, and after a minute realized the woman was only a couple of years younger than herself. The young woman had a wide-eyed innocence, even as terrified as she was, that Jez hadn’t had for a long time, if ever, that made her look even younger than her mid-twenties years.

The room had no shortage of the emergency lights, making it easy to see the large bomb on the table in the center of the room. Jez studied it quickly from where she stood. It was the size of a large shoe box, something that a pair of boots would come in. The size was surprising, and she briefly wondered how it had been smuggled up here. More importantly, though, was the timer on the top. Thirteen minutes, thirty-two seconds and counting.

Rick took her arm with his free hand pushed her a step toward the door. “Take them out. I’ll get the bomb.” He slid his gun into the holster at his back and stepped closer to the table.

Jez looked at the bomb again. Bombs were generally simple things. The more complicated they became, the more chance of something going wrong. This thing, though, was a monster. There were entirely too many wires, and at least two places that could conceivably be a radio transmitter at first glance. And the timer continued ticking down. Rick followed her gaze and met her eyes briefly.

In that split second, with the sixth sense of communication that made them as good at their jobs that they were, that made them legends in a small, select community, they both knew it was hopeless. It would be impossible to untangle the Gordian knot of wires correctly in thirteen minutes. They also knew that if they failed, people would likely be hurt or possibly killed when this second, larger bomb went off.

Jez stopped and held her ground. She looked from the table, back to Rick and shook her head. “No. You go. I got this,” she nodded to the bomb. Unspoken was the knowledge that Jez was cooler under pressure, and more familiar with explosive devices, both the building of and the defusing of bombs. She was much more likely to be successful, upping the odds from impossible to unlikely.

Rick clearly wanted to argue. He grabbed her arm again and began to shove her toward the door, but stopped and glanced at the table, at the timer on the bomb. He looked back at her and nodded grimly. He reached to his back and pulled his gun again, not yet releasing her arm.
Jez turned her gun in her hand and offered it to Rick, butt first. Rick had lost his back-up gun when they’d been climbing over debris downstairs. He always carried two, while Jez relied on her blades for back-up, three throwing knifes and a fighting dagger in each boot.

Rick shook his head. “You might need it on your way out.”

She swallowed and nodded. “Be careful.”

He flashed her a quick, blinding grin before stepping away. Jez took a step toward the table and Rick motioned the three others out the door ahead of him. Jez moved toward the table but glanced back to see Rick coming back to her side. He grabbed her by the back of the neck hard enough to bruise and kissed her quickly, leaning his forehead against hers ever so briefly. “See you outside,” he said before hurrying back out the door and herding the three others down the hall.

Jez heard the footsteps retreating and took a deep breath. Twelve minutes. She risked a few seconds to retrieve a penlight from her boot and began tracing wires. The sirens and even the buzzing of the emergency lights set her teeth on edge. She took another breath and made a concentrated effort to block out the sounds. She heard a crash once, but made herself ignore it and started humming under her breath, gritting her teeth and forcing herself to concentrate.
Distantly, she heard gunshots, but left them mentally unremarked, concentrating on wires and trying not to count down along with the timer.

She held the penlight between her teeth and wiped sweat and blood off her hands onto her pants a few times. The pants were already ruined anyway, she thought to herself. She bent once to retrieve one of the small throwing knives from her boot, thinking she’d found the correct place to cut a wire. Checking again, she saw she was wrong. Almost fatally wrong.

Finally, she was almost sure she had it. In any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have done anything with the level of uncertainty she still had. Without looking at the timer, she knew she didn’t have time for second guessing. She carefully separated the two suspected wires and with a strong, sure stroke, cut them both at once. The air seemed to rush out of the room in the fraction of a second before the timer stopped. One minute and twenty-four seconds left. Jez let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and allowed herself to move, watching the bomb for a moment before stepping away from it. She hadn’t known how tense she was until she reached back to draw her gun and move to the door.

One of the emergency lights had burned out in hall, casting more shadows in this corner than there had been before. She stopped and listened, but heard nothing but sirens and the buzz of the lights. Quickly, but warily, she edged down the hall to the stairway door she and Rick had come through earlier.

From a distance, the things on the floor steps from the doorway looked to be shapeless lumps in the dim light. It didn’t take many more steps until it was obvious the lumps were people.

The older woman had been hit in the leg. Someone was a bad shot or had been jostled. The second shot had taken her in the right side of the head. She’d fallen on her back, and her unmarked eye stared at the ceiling. By the holes in his back, the blonde man had been shot at least twice in the chest. He’d fallen forward, though, and the holes in his back were large enough to put a fist through. The young woman had been shot once in her forehead. The small hole left only a small trickle of blood that trailed between her eyes and across her cheek. She’d fallen on her back, her head turned just ever so slightly, still hiding what must be a terrific mess at the back of her head. The blonde man had fallen across her legs, one of his hands had fallen so it almost touched her hand.

Closer to where Jez stood was Rick. His gun had fallen a few feet closer to the door. He, too, lay on his back and his head was turned. He stared in the direction where Jez stood. He’d been shot in his right arm. Probably when he’d lost the gun, Jez thought. He’d also been shot twice in the chest and once in the stomach. The red stains on his shirt almost blended together. The stains drew Jez’s attention. That much blood would never come out of anything in Rick’s perfect, dry-clean-only wardrobe. He’d have to throw it out.

The hallway grew darker…

…and the next thing she knew, she was outside, standing near two of the embassy’s security team and an ambulance.

“Ms. Lorezno? Angela,” one of the security team was staring at her questioningly and talking.

Jez stared back blankly before realizing he was talking to her. She’d never blanked on a code name before, not even during her very first assignment, and this name was one of her more commonly used. She puzzled out the cause slow enough that the second man looked up from his notepad and his conversation into his radio.

“You’re certain the bomb is deactivated?” The first prompted again.

She nodded slowly. She’d finished with the bomb, she was certain. And then she’d found the bodies. And then she’d remembered to come outside to inform the crews that the bomb was no longer a threat and they could go in after it and finish evacuating the building safely. She’d found the team leader and informed him of the bomb’s location and where to find the bodies. She knew she’d spoken clearly and concisely. One of the medics had been brought over while she talked, and cleaned and bandaged her hand quickly and thoroughly, but with little concern or interest. There were more seriously injured people.

She looked that security team leader who was still questioning her. He was staring at her with a mixture of impatience and frustration. She understood his position. She didn’t care.

She nodded once again; a quick, sure nod. “Good luck,” she told him. And walked away.