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“A little birdie told me. How do ya think?”
“Clover?” Darting back into the room, I slid on my knees, through the pool of blood surrounding the dead Russian, over to Jack. Clutching her arms, I locked eyes with her, forcing her to give me her full attention. “You’ve seen her?” I asked. “She’s okay?”
“She’s worried fuckin’ sick about ya, is what she is. Her and your ma.”
“My what?”
“I’ll explain in the tunnel. C’mon.” Jack stood and helped Paul to his feet. The flashing red light made him wince and dry-heave.
“I can’t leave,” I shouted.
“Listen to me.” Jack draped Paul’s big arm over her shoulders and lifted her ski mask to reveal her very annoyed, very tired face. “I wanna kill that son of a bitch just as bad as you. We all do. Right?” She raised Paul’s limp hand, and he grimaced. “But I’d like to do it before I have to burn all my shite and start goin’ by the name Jacqueline Cuntapova the Great.”
“Stop!” a male voice shouted in Russian.
Raising my hands over my head, I turned and found a Russian soldier pointing a gun at us, but staring at the face of his fallen comrade on the floor.
His expression turned murderous as he lifted a bulky military phone to his head and barked, “I’ve got them, sir. They’re with the VP—”
A red hole appeared between the man’s eyes before I even registered the whisper of the silencer.
“Hold him, will ya?” Jack huffed, lowering her weapon as I scrambled to catch her friend.
Walking across the room, she plucked the phone out of the second dead soldier’s hand and held it up to her ear.
“Hello?” she shouted, clamping her free hand over her other ear to block out the sound of the alarm. “Shite. You speak English? English.” She cupped her hand over the microphone and glanced at us. “Paul, I need ya to translate.”
Paul’s head swayed, and his cheeks puffed out as if he was gonna be sick.
“I think he’s got a concussion,” I said, guiding him over to the bed so he could sit.
Jack’s attention fell back to the phone in her hand. “Do … you … speak … English? Ah, grand. Here’s the situation. A group of concerned patriots have killed yer men at St. Patrick’s Hospital, and—let me finish, fucker! And they’ve kidnapped your VP.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear as angry Russian shouting came pouring out of it.
“Hey! I don’t speak Russian, arsehole. Listen. Listen!”
Letting go of Paul with an apologetic glance, I stepped over both dead soldiers and stood at the open door. I tried to listen for footsteps or voices in the hallway, but I couldn’t hear a damn thing over the blaring alarm and Jack shouting into the phone.
“If President Alexi wants his son back, he can pick him up tomorrow at noon, in person, in the middle of the Ha’penny Bridge, but only after he announces that the new treason laws have been canceled. That’s right. We want to keep our flags, and our language, and our bleedin’ names, ya fuckin’ cunts.”
Taking a deep breath, I peered out into the hallway and jerked my face back just before a bullet whizzed past it and shattered the doorframe behind my head.
The soldiers from Heuston Station had arrived.
Tapping Jack on the shoulder to get her attention, I held up six fingers and jerked my head in the direction of the hallway.
“Shite,” she hissed. “Hey, I gotta go. Remember, Ha’penny Bridge, tomorrow, noon, Alexi can come get his boy in person, or yous all can pick him up in a body bag. Yer choice.”
Pocketing the phone, Jack and I helped Paul to his feet. His pupils were blown, but he was lucid enough to stand and hold a gun, so we propped him against the wall out of the line of fire and hidden around the corner from the entryway.
Then, I got an idea.
Holding the metal rod with a white pillowcase tied around the end of it out the door, I shouted over the alarm, “Don’t shoot! This is Vice President Lenin Abramov! Do not shoot!”
My father had given me that name the moment I’d stepped foot on Russian soil. Said the name Damien Hughes was “too fucking Irish.”
“They’re all dead! Don’t shoot!”
