Chapter 18 - The Fire in the Cold
The cellar hatch gave way with a deafening screech of tearing bolts.
The heavy iron door swung open, and three men dressed in black tactical gear, night-vision goggles resting on their helmets, scrambled up the narrow stone steps into the prep area.
They never saw Walter.
The old soldier fired twice from behind a stack of five-hundred-pound flour sacks. The heavy 7.62 rounds hit the lead mercenary in the chest plate, knocking him backward down the stone steps with the force of a battering ram.
“Intruders in the service bay!” Walter yelled, racking another round with mechanical precision.
The second man raised an automatic submachine gun, spraying a line of bullets across the ceiling, shattering the hanging copper racks. A heavy copper skillet dropped like a stone, hitting the floor with a deafening *gong*.
I stepped out from behind the industrial dishwashing unit, leveled the Remington twelve-gauge at the shooter’s center mass, and squeezed the trigger.
*BOOM!*
The recoil slammed into my shoulder like a mule kick, but the blast caught the mercenary full in the chest, throwing him five feet back against the stainless-steel prep island. He slid down the metal, leaving a broad streak of crimson, his weapon clattering across the tile.
The third man—a towering, scarred Russian with a tactical knife gripped in his left hand and a suppressed pistol in his right—lunged directly toward me.
He was too fast.
He knocked the shotgun from my hands with a vicious kick that sent the weapon skittering across the floor. His gloved hand clamped around my throat, slamming my back against the six-burner Garland range.
The iron burners bit into my spine. His fingers tightened like steel cables around my windpipe, cutting off my air, his dead blue eyes staring into mine with cold, emotionless satisfaction.
“Little kitchen girl,” he snarled in thick, broken English. “You burn first.”
My vision began to tunnel. Black spots danced across my eyes. My hands clawed desperately at his wrists, but his grip was unbreakable.
Then my right hand brushed against the side of the range.
Burner number four.
Sitting on top of the blue flame was a two-gallon cast-iron saucepan containing twelve pounds of melted, boiling sugar—caramel syrup I had started an hour before the attack for New Year’s pastries. It was currently at three hundred and fifty degrees: sticky, liquid napalm.
I didn't try to pull his hands off my throat.
I reached out, gripped the heat-resistant wooden handle of the saucepan, and with the last ounce of strength in my dying body, whipped the molten sugar directly into the side of his face and neck.
The scream that left that man’s throat did not sound human.
Molten sugar does not wipe off. It sticks to the flesh, burning through the dermis, the fat, and the muscle in a fraction of a second. He released my throat instantly, falling to his knees, clawing at his face as skin peeled away beneath his gloves, shrieking in pure, unadulterated torment.
I slumped against the range, gasping for air, clutching my bruised throat, coughing violently.
The heavy kitchen doors burst open.
Roman stood there, his rifle raised, his suit shredded, his eyes wild with terror. Behind him stood Bruno, leaning heavily on a crutch, a pistol gripped in his massive hand.
Roman saw the bodies on the floor. He saw the shrieking mercenary writhing in the boiling sugar. He saw me, slumped against the stove, bruised and covered in soot, but alive.
Roman dropped his rifle.
He crossed the room in two strides, dropped to his knees before me, and pulled me violently into his chest. His arms wrapped around me with a crushing, desperate strength, his face burying itself into my hair, his whole body trembling with an intensity that terrified me.
“Maggie…” he whispered, his voice breaking entirely, raw and ragged. “Maggie… God… I thought I lost you.”
I didn't push him away. I buried my face into his shoulder, gripping the fabric of his torn shirt, letting the tears fall freely onto his skin.
“I told you, Roman,” I gasped through my sobs, my fingers tangling in the back of his hair. “Nobody… nobody messes with my kitchen.”
Bruno hobbled over, looking down at the shrieking Russian on the floor. He raised his pistol, pulled the trigger once, ending the man’s misery, then looked down at Walter Briggs, who was quietly sitting on a flour sack, reloading his rifle.
“Old man,” Bruno grunted, wiping sweat from his eyes. “Remind me to buy you a bottle of scotch tomorrow.”
May you like
Walter winked through the gunsmoke. “Make it twelve-year single malt, son. Your Ma doesn't like cheap liquor in her pantry.”
***