Chapter 15 - The Smoke and the Shadow
"The dumbwaiter," Hannah whispered, her voice tightening with sudden, desperate clarity. "The old service shaft behind Dad's dressing room. When we were little, remember? It leads straight down into the cellar beneath the original wine vault."
I remembered. Sinclair Manor had been built during the turn of the twentieth century, reinforced by bootleggers during Prohibition. If any part of this mansion could withstand an assault, it was the reinforced stone sub-basement.
"Move," I commanded, keeping my weapon leveled at the top of the stairs.
A flashbang detonated in the foyer below. Even shielded by the wall, the concussive boom rattled my teeth in my skull, leaving a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Black, acrid smoke began billowing up the stairwell, carrying the foul stench of burning cordite and melting upholstery.
We ducked into the dressing room. Hannah ripped open the false mahogany paneling, revealing the narrow wooden door of the old service lift. The counterweights groaned, but the steel cables held firm.
"You first," I ordered. "Slide down the maintenance ladder on the left. Don't touch the cables. Go!"
Hannah squeezed through the opening without hesitation. Her terror was still palpable, but beneath it, the same iron stubbornness that ran through my Vance blood was kicking in. She grabbed the rusted iron rungs and began her descent into the pitch-black shaft.
Heavy boots stomped onto the second-floor landing.
"Clear the rooms! Room by room! Primary target is the sergeant, eliminate the younger sibling on sight!" a man barked in a cold, merciless baritone.
I reached into my utility vest, pulled a flash-incendiary grenade issued for room-clearing operations, pulled the pin with my teeth, and hurled it out the dressing room door, banking it off the hallway wall toward the landing.
"Frag out!" a hostile screamed.
*BANG.*
The shockwave blew the dressing room mirrors into a million flying slivers. Amid the screams of the disoriented operators, I slipped through the service door, hooked my boots around the ladder rungs, and slid downward, the friction searing through my tactical gloves.
I hit the cold, damp concrete floor of the cellar ten seconds later, landing in a combat crouch. Hannah was already there, huddled behind a row of heavy oak wine casks, clutching her knees.
The mansion above us was alive with gunfire, shouting, and the creak of collapsing floorboards. But down here, surrounded by three-foot-thick fieldstone foundations, the air was dead and freezing.
"We can't stay here, Becca," Hannah whispered, shivering violently. "They'll toss grenades down the shaft."
"They won't have to," I murmured, turning my tactical flashlight toward the far wall of the vault.
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The heavy iron door that sealed the old root cellar was ajar. And painted across the rusted metal in fresh, luminescent spray paint was an arrow pointing into the subterranean tunnels, beneath the words:
*RUN, LITTLE SPARROWS. HE IS WAITING.*