| |
Neither Maddock nor Bones had any desire to see if they’d be able to get out of whatever predicament awaited them on Issachar’s torture equipment. Together the two ex-SEALs moved as one.
Maddock whirled, grabbing the man guarding him and spinning him about. He ducked as the man in front of them opened fire, the bullets smacking into his comrade, held in Maddock’s vice-like grip. At the same time, Bones grabbed the man guarding him, controlling his gun hand, and drove him backward like a lineman setting a block.
The man on Bones had only an instant to realize what was happening before Bones drove him back into the spiky iron maiden. He let out a shriek of sheer pain and terror before the door slammed on him.
Maddock took the dead man’s fallen gun and rolled to the side as Issachar’s last remaining gunman fired his final bullet. The round sliced across Maddock’s thigh and he rolled into a crouching position. He squeezed off two rounds, taking the man down with a wheezy gasp.
Bones was a blurry specter flashing past him as he gave chase to Issachar, who fled through a doorway on the rooms’ far end. Maddock was about to go with Bones, but Lina’s panicked voice cut through his nervous system.
“Help me!” To Maddock’s horror, Issachar had set the blade swinging, and now it glided only inches above her bound wrists.
Just as Bones reached the main exit to the torture chamber, a spiked gate slammed down, very nearly impaling him. Bones tried to raise it, muscles straining until he thought he would rupture something, but to no avail.
“Forget the gate, Bones! Help me stop this thing!” Maddock eyed the monster blade as it swung like a scythe, ever nearer to Lina’s pale exposed flesh. Then he whirled around, looking for anything that might help him shut off the deadly mechanism. He spotted two unlabeled levers, but had no idea which one to pull.
“Maddock!” Lina screamed. “Do something, please! Anything!”
Stomach lurching, Maddock reached for the lever on the left, hoping it was the right one, meaning that it somehow shut off the swinging blade. His fingers touched it, but before he could pull it, a metallic crunch sounded from behind him. He turned around to see that Bones had jammed a suit of armor between Lina and the blade, which embedded itself deeply into the metal over Lina’s trussed body. She exhaled heavily with the impact, and no doubt it didn’t feel good, but it spared her the blade.
“Nice one, Bones.” Maddock moved to Lina and together, he and Bones cut the museum curator free and helped her out of the rack.
Bones looked around the room, at the bodies of the dead guards strewn about on the floor. “What about Issachar?”
Maddock also briefly surveyed the grim space. “He’s probably gone, but we’d better keep on the lookout just in case.”
After taking a few minutes to collect some of the fallen men’s guns, they tried the lever Maddock had been about to pull to try and stop Lina’s blade. The gate that had nearly impaled Bones rumbled open. Maddock looked over at the dented suit of armor that had saved Lina’s life and shook his head. “Let’s go.”
The three of them left the grisly scene behind, trekking into the sewer.