The Russian that Duff fought with was strong and well trained in hand-to-hand, stronger and better trained than Duff, but the American had a lot of fight in him, and he retained the presence of mind to realize the man was trying to get his hand down to the pistol on his hip because Duff now had both hands on the Russian’s rifle.
They fell backwards; Duff slammed the man up against the bank of buttons there, and immediately the door began to close.
With Duff’s hand around the muzzle, the Russian fired his rifle; the barrel went hot in Duff’s hand and he let go briefly, but only to lunge back towards the man to get a hand on the pistol that the Russian had simultaneously pulled from his drop leg holster.
Duff’s rifle was pressed between him and the man, pointing to the floor; the Russian’s rifle was over Josh’s left shoulder at his neck, and he couldn’t retract it enough to put the muzzle on Duff’s face, so a pistol was the only option for either of the two combatants.
Duff couldn’t go for his own weapon, however, because his opponent already had his hand on his gun, and Duff had to try to control it before he was shot dead.
As they pressed together, the Russian fought his way back to his feet, his hand still on his pistol, which was pointed at the floor, with Duff’s viselike grip restraining its movement at the wrist.
Behind him, Duff heard the desperate noises of a vicious struggle between Gideon and the young-looking rebel, and it sounded like the president’s bodyguard was in a similar predicament as Duff himself was, slamming from wall to wall, both men shouting and crying out.
Duff saw blood smeared on the wall, and he thought it belonged to the man from the President’s Own Guard Regiment.
The Russian managed to thumb off the safety of his Beretta and squeeze the trigger; the bullet slammed into the floor of the car and ricocheted up into the wall to Duff’s right.
The American tried a head butt that missed; a knee to the groin landed but still didn’t seem to have much effect on the incredibly powerful man.
There were no words between the four, all fighting for their lives in a space only three meters wide and four meters deep. But even in the panic of this moment, Duff registered that the elevator was moving.
Duff missed with a punch and was grappled by the Russian around his shoulders, but he pushed back on his prosthesis, pulling the bigger man with him, still holding the man’s gun arm with all his might.
Lev Belov and Vadik had been covering the ladder just a few meters from the freight elevator with the lone Dragon rebel when they all heard the boom of a rifle below them.
They then ran back to the freight elevator and immediately heard the sounds of a vicious struggle, maybe twenty-five meters below.
A pistol cracked now, and the Russians looked at each other.
Vadik said, “Is it coming back up here?”
Belov said, “I don’t know. I’ll take the ladder down and engage any enemies if it’s there; you two stay here in case it comes back up.”
The Sentinel deputy commander raced for the ladder, leaving Vadik and the young Dragon behind.
Vadik Tarasov hefted his weapon now and pointed it at the door, and then with a free hand he reached down to the frag grenade hanging from his utility belt.
I’m not taking any chances, he thought. He’d toss the grenade in as soon as the door opened, no matter who was inside.
Inside the freight elevator, Duff had the wind knocked out of him when the larger man slammed into his chest with his body armor, banging him up against the door. To Duff’s surprise, the Russian mercenary let go of his pistol and it fell to the floor. Duff saw this as an opportunity to put both hands on his own rifle to try to push the man away from him so he could get a shot off, and he let go of the man’s wrist to do just that, but as soon as he did so, he realized he’d been tricked.
The Russian’s now-free right hand reached down for something on his hip; he pulled it, and before he even looked down, Duff knew it had to be a knife.
He pulled the man to him and tried another head butt; this one connected, and then both men separated a little from each other.
Neither had his hand on the rifle that hung from his chest; however, they were still too close to get the barrel in front of their target. Instead the Russian swung the knife at Duff’s face; he ducked away from it, but a second sweep at his midsection made contact with the nylon sling holding his rifle, cutting it away and dropping Duff’s weapon to the floor. The man struck out, stabbing with the shiny blade, and to avoid it Duff fell to the left. The point of the weapon nicked Duff’s shoulder, then stuck in the elevator door, embedding it there.
The Russian saw the American on the ground now, so he left the knife in the door and went again for his rifle, but Duff sat up, leaned forward, grabbed the man’s boot, and pulled it to him, flipping him onto his back.
Duff grabbed the Russian’s gun barrel to control where the weapon was pointed, and both men kicked out at each other, but neither caused any damage. They sat and faced each other, and now the Russian hefted his gun and, as he did so, he kicked again to push the American back into the door.
Duff slammed hard into the freight elevator door again, and as he did so, he knocked the knife loose from where it had been embedded just above him.
The Russian aimed at Duff’s chest from three feet away; Duff saw the knife drop into his lap and scooped it up while kicking the gun barrel away with his left. The rifle fired, and Duff rolled up to his knees, then dove forward.
Duff buried the knife in the Russian’s neck, just above his body armor, and arterial blood sprayed across the small space. The strong Russian climbed back to his feet, Duff slammed him into the wall, and then the gravely wounded man surged forward, crashing into the American, and Duff fell backwards, pulling the Russian along with him towards the floor of the elevator car.
The American landed on his back; the dying mercenary kept fighting him even though a knife’s hilt jutted from his throat and his life’s blood pumped away, but still, Duff had no idea whether he himself would be the first to give in to utter exhaustion.
Just then, he heard another handgun round crack off in the enclosed space. He looked back to see that Gideon had managed to wrestle a pistol from the rebel and fire into the boy’s stomach. The man in the RIVCOM uniform fell back against the wall of the car, his mouth open in shock, and then he slid down, leaving a blood trail on the wood behind him.
Gideon looked exhausted; he was wounded with a gunshot to the abdomen himself, but he began moving towards Duff to help him up.
As he did so, however, the elevator car lurched to a stop, the doors opened only a foot or so, and a hand grenade came sailing in.
It bounced on the floor, closer to Gideon, and Duffy grabbed the shoulder straps of the dying Russian on top of him and rolled him in the direction of the impending blast.
The elevator door stopped opening when the grenade detonated, leaving about a meter of space for Sentinel contractor Vadik Tarasov to peer through, but the smoke that poured from the car caused both Vadik and the Dragon in the generator gallery to hold their positions to the side of the door.
The Dragon, it was clear to the Russian, was terrified, and not of the men in the elevator car. There had been another rebel in there when Vadik threw the grenade, and for all the Russian knew the two were friends, but he didn’t give a fuck about this guy or his buddy, just like he hadn’t given a fuck about his own comrade. Vadik was a mercenary who was here to get it done and get paid, and a hand grenade had made that happen.
Listening through his audio-enhanced earplugs for the sounds of movement, he heard nothing, so he nodded to the Dragon across from him. Both men swung in, their rifles at their shoulders.
In front of them, through the thick haze of smoke, was a scene of utter carnage. Bodies lay in heaps, blood glistened off every surface, and human tissue and body parts littered the floor, the wall, even the ceiling.
One man, Black and big and wearing a Ghanaian military uniform, had had almost all his face blown off. Another body, facedown and mostly covered by Gresha’s still form, was completely blood-covered and missing a leg.
A Dragon rebel was slumped in a back corner, a smear of crimson showing where a bullet had gone through him and then where he slid down to the floor. His face, too, was shredded with shrapnel wounds. His jaw was clearly broken.
Vadik moved towards Gresha, who was also facedown, assuming that it was his own grenade that killed the man, but as he looked down at the other Russian more carefully, he saw the hilt of a knife protruding from his neck.
He kicked the foot of the white man under Gresha’s body and got no response.
Vadik clicked his radio button now to call Belov downstairs. “Bear? This is Shark. Over.”
“Bear to Shark, go ahead.”
“Gresha’s fucked, but all enemy are down.”
Belov responded. “Okay. I’m downstairs, I’ll take the ladder back up to you.”
“Roger,” Vadik said, and then he motioned to the Dragon still standing in the doorway to step back so he could get out of the car. He began to lower his weapon and turn away for the ladder, but just as he did so, he registered a sudden movement behind him.
Spinning his head back towards the bodies on the floor, he saw that the white man under Gresha had rolled over onto his side now, still under the bigger Russian. He held a pistol in his right hand, reaching around Gresha’s shoulder and back to do so. He was covered in blood, and his left leg was gone below the knee.
Vadik Tarasov didn’t understand what was happening, but he instinctively raised his rifle back up as fast as he could.
Next to him, the young Dragon panicked and fumbled for the rifle hanging off his chest.
The bloody man with the missing leg was faster. The first round hit Vadik’s chest plate, the second his right cheek, and, just as Vadik fired his rifle once, he caught a 9-millimeter round through the bridge of his nose that expanded on impact and shredded his brain, dropping him dead on his back in the doorway to the elevator shaft.
Only then did the rebel have his weapon up, but he was shot in the chest twice before he fired it, and he fell onto his back in the generator gallery.
Josh Duffy scanned for more threats, holding the Beretta pistol he’d taken from the floor with one hand while feeling over his body with the other, checking to see if he’d been shot. He wasn’t searching for blood—he was covered in it, after all—rather, he was searching for fresh holes. When he found no major wounds, he looked down at the dead Russian lying across his waist and legs. The rifle round fired by the other Russian had impacted the center of the man’s back, striking his body armor. The back plate did little good for the dead man—four inches of tempered steel knife blade was buried in the side of his neck, after all—but Duff’s small intestines had been on the other side of the prone body when the bullet impacted, so he knew the Russian’s armor had likely just saved his life, just as it had when the grenade detonated five feet from him and right next to Gideon twenty seconds earlier.
Playing possum had been a gamble, but he was disoriented from the concussion of the grenade, and he didn’t know how many enemy would be outside, so he’d smeared more blood from the Russian’s neck across his face, yanked off his prosthesis and flung it across the car, then turned his face down, lying on the pistol and waiting for the enemy to expose themselves before he targeted them.
Now he pushed the Russian with the knife embedded in him to the side, then eyeballed the other Russian in the doorway and determined him to be dead, as well. He crawled onto his knees and scooted around the body of Gideon, whose face was a sickening mangled mess from the blast from the grenade, and then he made his way to the wall of the big freight elevator, where he picked up his carbon fiber leg and foot.
He put the device back on the stump below his left knee, climbed back to his feet, and while still disoriented from the hand-to-hand combat, the gunfire, and the grenade blast, he began checking the backpacks of both dead Russians, hoping like hell one of them held the triggering device for the bombs planted one level below him.
When he found nothing, he hefted a rifle and slung it around his own neck. It was a South African Vektor R5 that Duff had only fired once or twice in his life, but a gun far superior to the obviously damaged AKs there lying on the floor in the blood and guts, because both AKs’ magazines and lower receivers were heavily cratered with shrapnel scars.
Josh Duffy stepped out into the now well-lit generator gallery, and he headed for the stairwell that would, according to the map he’d left back in the elevator, take him all the way to the top of the dam.
Just before he turned into the open stairwell he heard gunshots behind him, but they were in another room, or maybe the tunnel from the stairs to the control room that he’d traveled down several minutes earlier. He immediately thought of his wife, and he turned towards the sound, raising his new rifle as he did so.
Five meters behind Duff, Lev Belov climbed to the generator gallery level on the ladder, but he stopped before stepping out, hearing the sounds of fresh gunfire.
He didn’t know if Vadik, Gresha, and the Dragon were still alive, but he wasn’t going to stick his head out and check, because protecting them or engaging whoever the fuck was shooting wasn’t his mission. His mission was getting the computer with the detonation codes to Condor, and to do that he had to get out of this fucking dam.
The stairs would take him up; he’d studied the blueprints of this place daily for the past month, so he turned for the next ladder and began climbing again.
His leg hurt where he’d been shot over an hour earlier, but he ignored the pain like he ignored the exertion.
With his rifle slipped around to his back, Lev Belov began working his way up the steep ladder, coming to a landing every ten meters and turning, then taking the next ladder up.
It was going to be a long climb, and the wound in his leg wasn’t getting any less painful, but at least he’d accomplished what he’d come down here to accomplish.
The few surviving Dragons of Western Togoland who had been on or around the lot in front of the power house had descended to the turbine level minutes earlier, where they had run into the group from the three helicopters in the hallways between the stairs and the generator gallery, and now the Dragons fired on the security men of the three delegations while the security men fired back up the hall at a distance of thirty meters.
The President’s Own Guard Regiment security men were far superior to the rebels, as were the officers from the EU and the group from the U.S. embassy, but the Dragons had good cover.
While Chad, Ben, and Malike joined in the fight, Jay Costa and Julian Delisle moved the ambassador and the high representative into the gallery, positioning them behind the first generator. President Amanor was led there by two of his security men, as well. The unarmed junior diplomats and government functionaries, along with the media members and the hydroelectric dam workers, huddled behind the VIPs for safety, but Nichole Duffy had appointed herself as another bodyguard of Ambassador Dunnigan. She held the Browning pistol in one hand, and she kept her other hand on the ambo’s back, as did Jay Costa, while Dunnigan knelt behind the massive generator in the now well-lit room. Nichole listened to the fighting some twenty yards away, and she hoped like hell her side had enough ammo to keep the enemy back so they could continue on towards the exit the deputy plant manager had promised would let them out of this massive facility, picking up Josh and the others along the way.