Their room was exactly as he recalled, the wooden floor worn smooth by decades of visiting feet, the bright comforters on the beds crafted from locally spun wool, he was sure. Jet had been enchanted by the timeless quality of the place, the feeling of suspended animation within the tranquil valley, and he suspected that had prompted her to select it as their refuge of last resort.
He set out a shirt he’d bought for himself that afternoon from a roadside market and laid a change of clothes on her bed for Hannah while she was using the bathroom. A morning rummage through the camper had revealed that Jet had stocked it with enough clothing for the little girl to last a week, for which he was grateful, even if the same attention hadn’t been paid to clothes for him.
Dinner was a quiet affair, only one other table served while they ate: a German couple with nothing but unhappy frowns about the service, food, and cost even as they cleaned their plates. Matt did his best to entertain Hannah with murmured stories he invented on the spot, but she wasn’t having any of it, her usual good humor replaced by a funk Matt more than shared.
When he tucked her in for the night, she threw her arms around his neck and held him for a long time, and when she released him, her eyes were moist. Matt had to look away when she whispered the words he knew were coming.
“Miss Mama.”
He cleared his throat and swallowed hard before meeting her gaze and nodding slowly. “Me too, sweetie, me too.”
Chapter 30
Moscow, Russia
Half an hour went by as Jet and Yulia waited in silence for the guards to return. Jet’s eyelids were drooping when a klaxon sounded through the cell block, jolting them to their feet. The siren was ear-splitting in the confined space, and they held their hands over their ears to keep from being deafened.
The cell door opened, and Yulia’s face lit up with relief. She leaned into Jet and yelled to her, “It’s him. One of our guards!”
The man backed away from the doorway and motioned for them to follow. They ran into the hall, where a second guard was casting his eyes about nervously.
The first guard screamed to them, “Come on. All hell’s breaking loose. We’ve got to move.”
They bolted down the hall to where the security door for the wing yawned open and, once through it, saw the reason the guards were so skittish. Hundreds of male inmates were milling around on the floor below, and several fights had broken out. A few of the prisoners were breaking the wooden tables in the center of the expanse and using the legs for weapons, settling scores with other prisoners or going after the hapless guards who’d been caught unawares by the sudden violence. A towering inmate with a tattooed, shaved head moved toward a guard who was blowing his whistle in a panic and slamming his truncheon indiscriminately into anyone nearby, and grabbed him from behind in a bear hug. Another convict punched the unfortunate in the stomach, sending the whistle streaking across the mob’s heads, and then they disappeared from view.
The guard who’d freed them selected a key from the ring at his belt and twisted a door open. He gestured for them to follow, and then they were rushing down a secured stairwell, the siren fading in the background, the pounding of their shoes on the stairs a rhythmic accompaniment to their labored breathing.
At the ground floor, Yulia paused expectantly, but the first guard shook his head. “No. You’ll never get out. Through the basement. Your men are waiting for you there.”
“How can we escape that way?” she demanded.
“The sewer. It’ll take hours to contain the riot. Nobody will realize you’re gone until it’s too late.”
The guard continued down another flight of steps and, once in the substructure, unlocked a heavy steel door. He pointed up at a security camera mounted in the corner. “That’s why we were late. We had to disable all the cams along the way, and we didn’t know about this one until we checked this evening and saw it on the blueprint. We’re normally never down here, just the maintenance staff.”
“Where do we go from here?” Yulia asked.
“Your men are in the pump room at the end of this corridor. Last door on the right. There’s a manhole by the back wall. Go down into the sewer and follow it until you reach a ladder about two hundred and fifty meters away. It lets out in back of an auxiliary building near a small street. From there, you’re on your own.” The guard handed them two small penlight flashlights. “Good luck.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Back to the front office. They’ll be organizing an offensive, and our absence will be missed.”
“What about the pair of guards in solitary?”
“They took off when the alarm sounded to lead the sex clients to safety.”
Jet was already down the corridor when Yulia caught up with her. “Let me go first, or my men might jump you. I passed word along you’d be coming with us, but I don’t want to take any chances.”
Jet nodded. “Fine by me.”
The pump room was unmarked, the door rusting at the edges, and when Yulia pushed it open, the room beyond it was dark, filled with the grinding hum of machinery supplying pressure to the facility above.
“It’s me. Where are you?” Yulia called out, and a male voice answered from the shadows.