Chapter 12 - Fire and Ice
The concussive wave threw Elena forward, slamming her against the steel security door of the rear utility exit. She hit the floor hard, taking the brunt of the impact on her hip and shoulder to shield Leo from harm.
The baby screamed in terror, the noise muffled by the thick winter fleece she had wrapped around his head.
Behind her, the warehouse was transforming into a roaring inferno. The ruptured nitrogen tanks had ignited an adjacent diesel fuel reserve, creating a spiraling tornado of white chemical smoke and roaring orange flames.
""Julian!"" Elena cried out, scrambling to her feet.
She looked at the culvert gate twenty yards ahead—safety, freedom, the open harbor road where she could disappear with the baby and survive.
Then she looked back at the roaring wall of fire.
""Not today,"" Elena muttered through clenched teeth.
She set Leo down inside a heavy steel tool locker near the rear exit, clicking the latch shut so he was shielded from smoke and falling debris. ""Stay quiet, little warrior,"" she whispered. ""I’m bringing your father back.""
Elena snatched a fire extinguisher from the wall and pulled her wet wool scarf over her mouth and nose. She plunged back into the burning warehouse.
The heat was blistering, scorching the hairs on her arms. Visibility was down to less than three feet through the swirling vortex of black smoke and freezing nitrogen vapors.
Through the haze, she spotted two assassins writhing on the floor, their extremities blackened by instant cryogenic frostbite. A third lay dead, crushed under a fallen iron girder.
""Julian!"" she shouted, coughing violently as the acrid fumes burned her lungs.
A weak groan answered from beneath an overturned steel workbench.
Elena sprinted over. Julian was pinned beneath a massive iron support beam, his face smeared with soot and blood. His left arm was dislocated at an unnatural angle, and a shard of jagged glass was embedded deep in his thigh.
""Elena... you fool... I told you to run..."" he wheezed, his vision swimming.
""Shut up and push!"" Elena snapped.
She wedged the heavy fire extinguisher under the beam like a fulcrum, throwing her entire body weight onto the lever. The iron shifted by two inches. Julian roared in agony, digging his good heel into the floor and dragging himself out from beneath the crushing weight.
Elena grabbed him under his uninjured arm, hoisting his massive frame against her shoulders with sheer, stubborn adrenaline.
""Lean on me!"" she screamed as the ceiling rafters began to buckle above them in a rain of burning timber.
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They stumbled through the suffocating smoke, bursting through the rear exit just as the entire roof collapsed inward with an apocalyptic roar.
Elena kicked open the tool locker, scooped Leo back into her arms, and dragged Julian into the muddy bank of the drainage culvert as sirens wailed in the distance.
