One falls to a bullet of mine. Another catches my elbow in his windpipe and flails backwards as he struggles to draw in a breath he’ll never catch. The third, when he rises up to take aim again, gets my knife hurled into his open mouth.
But it’s not enough. Not fast enough, not soon enough, not enough enough—because I still don’t have Polly.
I leave the corpses behind and keep rushing down the hallway in the direction of her scream. The last door is closed. I put my shoulder into it, but it doesn’t yield. So I back up, unload a clip into the locking mechanism, and then try again.
This time, it gives way.
I burst into the room in an explosion of wood splinters and hot metal fragments. I’m just in time to see Oleg Agapov throw one foot out an open window. He’s got an arm wrapped around P
