A dark-clad man carrying a rifle was creeping across the track. Queen spared a moment to take careful aim and squeezed off two rounds. The man went down, but her attack was immediately answered by gunfire from over her left shoulder. She ducked down behind the protection of the wall and blindly fired off three shots in the attacker’s direction. She hoped that would buy Armina enough time to get away. She stole a glance toward Armina and was relieved to see her disappear into the tunnel. She turned back in time to see a muzzle flash in the distance as the Manifold agent took a potshot at the heels of the fleeing girl. The distance was too far and the cover too dense for an accurate shot with a handgun, so Queen held her fire, but now she had a bead on him.
The agent probably expected Queen to escape by the same path as Armina. He would be wrong. Remaining down and protected, she crawled along the bottom row of seats, picking her way through debris and trying to make as little sound as possible. She moved past the spot from which the last shot had come and crawled to the stairs on the opposite end. If the man had half a brain, he’d soon be growing suspicious that she had not yet tried to escape. She would have to do this fast.
She crept down the stairwell and peeked up over the railing. There he was, slinking through the darkness, careful to always keep a tree between himself and the spot where Queen had last fired. She picked up a chunk of concrete and flung it down to the far end of the stadium, where it bounced twice on the bleachers, the decaying wood muffling the sharp cracking sound before it clattered down the concrete steps.
Unable to see much in the darkness, the man open fired in the direction of the noise. Bullets sparked off the metal framework that supported the bleachers, and rotten wood splinters erupted like a geyser. The sound of her approach masked by the barrage of gunfire, Queen sprinted across the track and took him from behind. She buried her knife at the base of his skull.
Her victory was short-lived. She heard the thud of several booted feet coming her direction. With no time to spare, she grabbed the dead man’s Kalashnikov and dashed away.
Armina called to her as soon as Queen burst through the concourse. “Zelda, I’m over here!”
“Don’t use my name,” Queen muttered, as Armina beckoned from the blackness of a tunnel that led back underneath the stadium. “I can’t protect you and take care of business at the same time. You get back inside there and hide. I’ll make sure they follow me and not you.”
“But I can’t see anything back there. It’s pitch black.”
“Even better. They won’t be able to see you.” Armina had held it together surprisingly well up to this point, but now her lip trembled and Queen feared the girl would soon lose it. “Calm down. Look, I’ll come with you. Let’s go.” She shoved the girl back down the tunnel and flicked on her flashlight long enough to see sagging metal doors twenty feet back. They hurried down the tunnel and squeezed inside, leaving the doors ajar just as they had been.
They found themselves in a locker room. A bench ran down the center, and cage-like metal lockers, large enough for a person to stand inside, lined the walls on either side. An open doorway on the far end led to a shower room.
The clatter of footsteps echoed outside, and Queen heard muffled voices. They aren’t very good at keeping quiet, are they? She chalked it up to the dual arrogance of superior numbers and testosterone. In any case, she had no time to waste.
“Get inside one of these lockers and don’t make a sound until I come back for you.” She pushed Armina into the closest locker and hastily pushed the door partway closed. She hurried to the locker room doors, taking off her backpack as she ran. She peered through the open door to see the silhouettes of at least five men coming slowly down the passageway. Perfect!
She took out an F1 fragmentation grenade, nicknamed “limonka,” or “little lemon,” yanked the pin and released the spoon. Giving it a second to cook, she pitched it through the open doorway and dashed back into the locker room, praying she didn’t trip over or slam into anything in the darkness. The F1 had a four and-a-half second fuse, and the men in the tunnel had no time to react before it blew.
The sound was deafening, and the light from the flash gave Queen a quick glimpse of the shower room up ahead. She ducked inside and readied the Kalashnikov. She doubted she’d gotten lucky enough to take them all out, and she was proved correct when a flash of gunfire erupted from the far end of the locker room by the doorway. The guy was shooting blind, and the bullets spattered the wall outside the shower room. She responded with a quick burst of gunfire and then rolled to the side as a hail of bullets buzzed past her like angry hornets. She had given away her position, but that was by design. She wanted to draw them past Armina’s hiding place, and get them to pursue her instead.