Page 52 of Yankee in the Wind

“Michelle, the damn power is back on!” Fox yelled.

“They’ve got backup generators. I’ve gotta come in,” Michelle replied, breathing hard as if she was already running toward the building.

Jack jumped up, heading through the plastic curtain. More gunshots came from the area where the oversized MRI machine was located. Simultaneously, he heard through his earpiece how somebody cried out in pain. He didn’t know whether it was Fox or Ace, but he knew his friends were in trouble.

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Lilly raced toward the building alongside Michelle.

“Jack is gonna be furious,” Michelle warned.

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna deal with that later. Right now we have to help him and the others.”

She’d heard the shots from inside the facility, and knew they’d come from their enemies, because they were too loud to come from guns with silencers.

“I have to find the backup generators,” Michelle said. “Help me with the search on the outside of the building.”

“I can’t,” Lilly said, “I have to get Tiger out of the machine, or he’ll suffer permanent brain damage.”

Arriving at the front entrance, Michelle let out a harsh breath. “Be careful. Or Jack will have my head too.”

“Find the generator. Go!” Lilly said and opened the unlocked front door.

Inside, she looked around. She’d heard the men talk about quadrants and their various directions on their comms, but northwest and southeast meant nothing to her. Couldn’t they just have said front left or back right? No, they had to use cardinal points, as if she knew her way around a compass!

Pallets stacked up high blocked her view to the back of the building. Letting her eyes roam to her left and right, Lilly made her way to the left edge of the pallets, where a path led deeper into the interior of the building. At the corner, she peered past the pallets. She saw the top of the MRI machine behind a forklift truck and a few metal shelving units. From behind them, there were grunts and other sounds indicating that several men were involved in hand-to-hand combat, though she couldn’t see much. Glass and metal items shattered, and again there was a gunshot. She caught a glimpse of Jack being thrown against a metal rack, and a man dressed in black diving after him.

Shit! She had to help Jack and the others, even though she knew she had no chance if one of the bad guys was coming after her. But with Ace, Fox, and Jack fighting their opponents, she was the only one who could disconnect Tiger from the machine.

Lilly ran down the narrow path between the stacks of pallets, staying low so that nobody would see her approach.

“Ace, on your left!” she heard Jack’s voice in her earpiece.

Hearing Jack’s voice meant he was gaining the upper hand on his opponent. But she had no time to look for him or Ace or Fox to see if they were doing okay. She headed straight for the MRI machine. She could see it clearly now. In front of it, a man in a white coat lay on the ground, bleeding profusely from a chest wound.

On the gurney lay a black man. She couldn’t see his face since his upper body was inside the machine. He was dressed in green scrubs, and barefoot. His wrists, feet, and waist were chained to the gurney with leather straps. Lilly had to assume that his head and shoulders were equally restrained. On the top of his left hand was an IV port, which was connected to a drip hanging from an IV pole.

Next to the MRI machine was a console, a server tower, and two computer monitors that looked like they were recording brain waves, as well as another panel with buttons. She had to assume that this was the electronic equipment which controlled the machine. She cast a look to her left and saw Fox fighting with a man in blue overalls, tossing him against a door. Behind Fox another guy lunged for him.

“Fox, behind you!” she yelled into her microphone.

She saw Fox whirling around on his heel, but the guy was already grabbing him.

“Lilly?” Jack said through the earpiece, sounding winded. “Get the fuck out!”

“I’ve gotta get Tiger out of the machine,” she said and turned back to the control panel. She placed her gun on the table, while she searched frantically for an off switch, but there was none. There were several buttons with symbols on them.

Fuck! She hated guessing. She took a breath. Four buttons had arrows. She pressed one of them and looked at the gurney. It moved farther into the machine.

“Crap!”

She pressed the button with the arrow pointing in the other direction. The gurney moved in the opposite direction. Lilly breathed a sigh of release as she saw Tiger’s chest, and finally his head coming out, while the MRI machine was still droning on and continuing its circular motion. Tiger’s head was locked in a brace. It almost looked like a helmet, though it was made of plastic. She rushed to his side.

“Tiger, I’m here to get you out,” she said quickly and examined the locking mechanism.

A look at his face told her that he was semi-conscious.

“Stay with me, Tiger,” she said softly. “Stay awake.”