Chapter 6 - Betrayal from Within
“Wet cloth! Now!” Hannah shouted, sprinting toward the medical cabinet.
She tore open packs of sterile saline, soaking four surgical towels. She rushed to the sofa, pressing one damp towel over Emma’s nose and mouth, then another over Noah’s. The twins woke up instantly, choking and gasping as the acrid, invisible chemical began to burn their eyes and lungs.
“Breathe through the towel, Emma! Don’t take it off!” Hannah ordered, her own throat burning as the toxic vapor began to pool near the ceiling.
Vincent was at the heavy vault door, wrestling with the manual release wheel. The hydraulic pressure had dropped to zero.
“The bastards jammed the external locking pins,” Vincent said, coughing violently as he strained against the heavy steel wheel with every ounce of his massive strength. His veins bulged in his neck, his muscles tearing under the effort, but the mechanical interlocks were frozen. “They aren’t trying to force us out. They sealed the doors from the tasting room. They’re burying us alive in here!”
Hannah looked around the room, her tactical mind processing options at lightning speed. The ceiling was reinforced concrete. The floor was solid bedrock.
“The emergency drainage conduit,” Hannah said, pointing to an iron manhole cover beneath the oxygen recycler. “Where does the greywater pump out?”
Vincent looked at the plate, his eyes widening. “The estate’s storm runoff system. It empties into the drainage ravine five hundred yards south, near the old boathouse on the sound.”
“Is it big enough for the kids?”
“It’s a twenty-four-inch industrial drainage pipe,” Vincent said, coughing into his arm. His eyes were watering, the tear gas filling the upper half of the vault like an invisible poison cloud. “The kids will fit easily. You can squeeze through. But I’m too broad across the shoulders. I’ll get stuck at the first junction elbow.”
“Then we don’t use the pipe,” Hannah said, grabbing a heavy sledgehammer from the emergency equipment rack. “We use the inspection shaft behind the recycler. It runs parallel to the service tunnels. If we blow the secondary pressure valve, it will reverse the draft and draw the gas out!”
“There’s no explosive in here, Hannah!”
Hannah didn't hesitate. She dragged the twin oxygen tanks from the medical station, positioning them directly against the intake ventilation grate where the gas was pouring in. She grabbed the emergency defibrillator from the wall, ripped the leads off, and exposed the copper wiring.
“Vincent,” she said, her voice completely calm despite the toxic fog descending around them. “Get the kids behind the steel desk. Cover them with your body.”
Vincent saw what she was doing. “Hannah, an oxygen overpressure explosion in an enclosed vault will rupture your eardrums! The concussion—”
“Do it!” she screamed.
Vincent grabbed Emma and Noah, diving behind the thick steel administrative desk in the corner. He shielded them completely with his massive torso, pulling the heavy wool moving blankets over their heads. “Close your eyes, babies! Cover your ears!”
Hannah hooked the frayed electrical leads to the main battery backup, dragging the live wires across the brass valve of the compressed oxygen cylinder.
*Snap. Sizzle.*
A brilliant white arc of electrical fire ignited.
Hannah dropped to the floor, sliding under the steel desk beside Vincent. In the fraction of a second before the detonation, Vincent reached out with his left arm, pulling Hannah tightly against his chest, tucking her head under his chin, shielding her with the same ferocious, instinctual protection he gave his children.
*BOOM!*
The explosion was a deafening, concussive hammer blow. The shockwave tore through the room, blowing the ventilation shaft completely out of the wall, sending twisted ductwork and iron grates flying across the floor.
The sudden atmospheric displacement created a violent vacuum. The toxic gas was sucked upward into the shattered intake pipe, drawn out by the roaring draft of the fire that now burned inside the wall cavity.
The air in the room cleared instantly, replaced by the scent of ozone and scorched metal.
Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of burning wires.
Under the desk, Vincent slowly lifted his head. His ears were ringing violently, a high-pitched whine that drowned out the world, but his body was intact.
Beneath him, Hannah looked up. Her face was inches from his, her hair smelling of smoke, her eyes wide and luminous in the darkness. She was breathing hard, her chest pressing against his with every frantic heartbeat.
“You okay?” Vincent croaked, his voice thick with smoke.
“I’m fine,” she whispered. She reached up, her small, dirt-streaked hand resting against his jaw, checking him with an instinctive intimacy that neither of them questioned. “The kids?”
Vincent checked beneath his arm. Emma and Noah were coughing, terrified, but completely unharmed.
“We’re alive,” Vincent said.
Hannah rolled out from under the desk, immediately moving toward the gaping, blackened hole where the ventilation shaft had been blown apart. She shined her weapon light into the darkness.
“The blast cracked the masonry behind the wine cellar wall,” she called out, examining the shattered brickwork. “There’s an opening. We can climb through into the western maintenance corridor.”
Vincent helped the twins up. Emma clutched her father’s neck like a koala, while Noah held tightly to his belt.
“We go out through the ravine,” Vincent decided, his voice hardening into diamond. “My secondary safehouse is three miles down the shoreline, near the marina. My brother-in-law Marco has a forty-foot offshore cruiser docked there.”
“Can you trust Marco?” Hannah asked, reloading her magazine.
May you like
Vincent paused at the edge of the breach, his eyes blazing in the shadows. “Marco loved my wife. He’s spent the last eight months drowning himself in whiskey because he couldn't find who did it. When I tell him Marcone ordered the hit… he’ll burn New York to the ground to help us finish this.”
***
