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And the lights went out. Nothing to reflect off the glass in the ceiling. Nothing to illuminate the underground station. And she was already moving. Bullets sparked where she had been standing moments before. But Cora knew that to succeed here she had to go on the offensive. A straightforward charge would bring her colliding with a wall of bullets. And so instead, she moved along the wall, stepping over the corpse of one of the guards she had shot earlier.
The patrons of the place were all quiet now, either cowering or having fled.
She didn’t like the idea of putting anyone in harm’s way. But she also knew that sometimes risks had to be taken. She had been careful to open fire only after the dance floor had been cleared. But now, in the dark, came the tricky part. Someone could easily get shot.
And though it grated her to give away her location, her conscience wouldn’t allow it. And so, she shouted, “Get flat on the ground if you want to live!”
The moment she said it she sprinted forward. Bullets rained towards the spot where she had been. By announcing this, she hoped that some of the patrons would take her advice and stay safe. But also, she had redirected the guards to aim as far away from the dance floor as possible.
She cast aside the nearly empty gun. Only one left in her holster. But the knife from her thigh was now in hand.
She used the flash from the guns to direct her. They didn’t see her. Someone was shouting for a light. More steps on the stairs behind her as the soldiers who had been dismayed by the death of their two companions now braved the dangerous corridor.
A flash from off to her left. She moved fast, knife out. She caught something. A yell, a slice. A body dropped.
More gunshots. She was already on the ground, though, anticipating this. Another shout. Someone had shot one of their companions.
Cursing. “Watch where you’re shooting!” someone screamed.
But that was the point. No one could. Suddenly, a flashlight erupted from a phone. She flung her knife. It buried in the man’s throat. Everyone turned to face the sudden light. It illuminated three more men. And she was smack dab in the middle of them. Her third gun emerged from the holster.Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three more dead. A final gunshot. She shattered the phone’s light, drowning them in darkness once more.
And she dove to the side. An eruption of gunfire from the stairs would’ve killed her.
Now, crawling on her stomach, moving hastily forward, and trying to avoid a puddle of blood, she crawled down the dance floor, onto the tracks, across the slick surface, and in the direction the guards had come from.
She was breathing heavily, but no one else was risking a light. They had already seen what happened when someone tried this.
She came to her feet, cautiously.
She whispered, “Tito?”
Hesitance. Then a voice, “Who is that?”
She had hoped to get attention by using a familiar name. It was a young voice. An angry voice. She heard the sound of a gun.
She fired towards it.
A dullthump. She stepped over another body in the dark.
Someone was shouting, directing the other guards towards the sound of the gunfire. But she moved through a small opening in the side of the tunnel. Brick around her, but a door built into the brick. She shouldered it open, stepping through. Immediately, she heard frightened voices.
This room wasn’t well lit, but it did have some amount of lighting. Not from flashlights, but from a television. And the television was showing a European soccer match.
And there, sitting in a large chair, reclining back with a glass of alcohol in one hand and a cigar in the other, a man was watching the game as if nothing was happening. He looked bored.
He raised the glass, took a sip, then muttered something in a foreign language to two men who were standing behind his reclining chair.
One of these men was still corralling the refugees into one corner of the room, keeping them far away from the man in the chair. By the look of things, he was asking for permission to shoot the dancers.
Cora obliged him first.
He hit the ground dead. The second guard yelled. She killed him as well.
And then, she lunged forward, gun pressed to the top of the balding head of the man in the lazy boy chair.
Despite the sensation, the sound of the two guards dying, Alex Karpov took another sip. He let out a satisfied sigh, puffed on his cigar, and then clapped his hands against the glass and the cigar, celebrating as a particularly good shot ricocheted off the goalie’s glove.
