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We dropped behind the truck wheels.

The charge detonated. The doors buckled outward. One tore free at the top but remained attached by the lower hinge.

Black smoke rolled through the opening. I reached it first. Heat struck hard enough to steal my breath. The interior was almost completely dark. Fire burned beneath the floor near the entrance, throwing a red glow across bodies pressed together at the far end.

Women.

Girls.

Some wore thin coats over nightclothes. Others were barefoot despite the cold. Plastic ties bound their wrists.

A young woman lay near the door with blood covering one side of her face.

“Get them out,” I shouted.

Raze and Zeno climbed inside.

Matteo remained at the opening, cutting restraints while we passed women down to the officers waiting on the road.

The first survivor stumbled into the morning coughing so violently she could barely remain upright. A female officer wrapped a blanket around her and led her toward the quarry wall.

Another followed. Then another. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.

Smoke thickened against the ceiling. At the far end, a girl crouched over another body and refused to move.

“She won’t wake,” she cried.

I pushed through the others. The unconscious girl could not have been older than fourteen. Her hair was matted with blood where her head had struck the wall.

I pressed two fingers beneath her jaw. A pulse fluttered against them, weak but present.

“She’s alive.”

The girl shielding her began to sob.

I lifted the injured child into my arms. Her head fell against my shoulder. The other girl clung to the back of my shirt as I moved toward the opening.

Fire spread beneath the floor and flared along one wall. The metal overhead groaned.

“Last ones,” Zeno shouted.

Raze searched both corners.

“Clear.”

We jumped from the container.

The moment my boots struck the road, a second explosion tore through the underside. The force drove us forward. I twisted as I fell and took the impact across my back, keeping the girl locked against my chest. Heat rolled over us.

The remaining door blew from its hinge and struck the road hard enough to split the asphalt.

Matteo seized my vest and dragged us behind the truck.

The girl in my arms didn’t move.

A medic ran toward us with a stretcher. I lowered her onto it. He fitted an oxygen mask over her mouth and checked her pupils.

Her hand slipped over the side. Small fingers. Blood beneath the nails.