“Over here.”
Yulia switched on her flashlight and Jet did the same, and they made their way to the back of the vault. The din from the pumps increased to a roar as they neared the rear of the room, where four men in prison garb watched them from behind a pressure tank. Yulia hugged each in turn and then introduced Jet. “This is Sandra. Sandra, meet Evgeny, Mikhail, Vlad, and Taras.” She looked around. “Now where’s this manhole?”
Taras pointed at a dark circle near the wall. “That’s it.”
The men lifted the heavy iron disk and shifted it aside. Yulia descended first, flashlight in one hand as she lowered herself down the slippery concrete steps to the tunnel below. When she was standing at the base, she called up. “Breathe through your mouths. It’s toxic down here.”
“The smell of freedom,” Taras said as he moved into the opening.
Vlad was next, and the others brought up the rear, Evgeny and Mikhail dragging the manhole back into place before joining them on the platform. Jet shined her beam along the tunnel, where a central canal with sewage coursing through it stretched as far as she could see. A cement walkway ran along one side, and they could all hear the sound of water pouring into the viscous fluid from chutes further down the tunnel’s length.
“This way,” Yulia said, and began making her way along the walkway. They hurried single file, the tunnel completely black except for their lamps. Evgeny stopped after a few moments to vomit, but the rest pressed on, leaving him to catch up. Jet’s eyes burned from the noxious fumes rising from the toxic canal, but she would have swum through the muck if it had been required to escape – and she’d been through worse.
They arrived at the first chute, where rainwater was pouring at high velocity, and they skirted the stream and continued along the passage, the water only somewhat diluting the river of waste. After three more rain chutes, Yulia stopped and pointed into the gloom at the faint outline of iron rungs stretching up into darkness.
“That must be it.”
Yulia went first and, when she reached the top of the ladder, shouldered the cement slab overhead aside, shifting it enough to pull herself through the gap, and the men followed. The rain falling from the opening onto their faces was the sweetest sensation imaginable after the claustrophobic foulness of the sewer. Jet was the last out of the hole, and she immediately killed her flashlight and whispered for Yulia to do the same.
“What now?” Jet asked the Ukrainian woman.
Yulia looked at her watch. “We’re to be met by a car. It’s supposed to be here. I coordinated with the guards.”
“One of your people or theirs?”
“Ours.”
“I don’t see anything, do you?”
The group peered through the curtain of rain that was soaking their clothes. Other than a scattering of utility buildings and a few scraggly trees, there was nothing to be seen but a row of bushes stretching along a rural street. Yulia cursed and shook her head. “The prison is pretty far from the city center. We’re on the very outskirts of Moscow, and everything south of us is countryside and farmland. There’s no place we can safely walk to – we’d be picked up once we were spotted.”
“But nobody knows we’re gone yet,” Jet countered. “I’d say trying to put some distance between us and the prison’s better than waiting for them to get wise.”
The men turned to Yulia for guidance. She frowned and took another look down the road. “Which way?”
Jet pointed through the rain at a distant glimmer of light. “Looks like a market or something.”
Yulia followed her gaze. “A filling station.
Taras and Evgeny exchanged a look. “We’re wearing prison clothes. One patrol sees us, and we’re dead,” Evgeny warned.
“Then let’s make sure nobody sees us,” Taras replied. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”
Yulia nodded and took off at a run and the rest tailed her through the downpour, the dark outline of the prison behind them, the klaxon barely audible from within its towering walls.
Chapter 31
Jet inched closer to Yulia as they surveyed the gas station’s empty pump area. Two attendants sat inside the tiny market on plastic chairs, watching a portable television; the likelihood of any customers arriving in the rain was slim.
“What do you think we should do?” Yulia asked under her breath.
“You and I go in and see if they have anything that can help us. Men won’t be as suspicious of women, so we’ll have a few seconds before they figure it out.”
Yulia fingered her gray prison jumpsuit. “Hard to mistake this.”