Chapter 47 - Ambush in the Catacombs
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"Get down!" Elias roared, tackling me behind an overturned heavy oak table just as a hail of bullets shredded the velvet sofa.
Luc Fontaine wasn't so lucky. A barrage of high-caliber rounds tore through his chest. The French broker collapsed instantly, the titanium hard drive skittering across the bloody floor and coming to a stop near my boots.
I blinked through the ringing in my ears, grabbing the drive and shoving it into my trench coat pocket. I raised my pistol, firing blindly into the smoke-filled doorway. Victoria hadn't trusted her own broker; she had sent a cleanup crew to silence him and eliminate me in one stroke.
"We are boxed in, Boss!" Elias shouted over the deafening gunfire, reloading his shotgun behind the shattered bar. "There’s at least ten of them in the hall!"
I glanced around the destroyed VIP room. My eyes landed on an old, rusted iron grate set into the floor behind the liquor cabinets. It was a maintenance hatch leading to the ancient Parisian catacombs.
"The floor hatch!" I yelled, firing three suppressive shots to keep the gunmen pinned in the corridor.
Elias grabbed a heavy crowbar from behind the bar and wedged it under the iron grate. With a massive heave, he ripped the grate from the stone floor, revealing a pitch-black tunnel below.
"Go! Go!" Elias commanded.
I slid into the narrow, damp darkness, dropping ten feet down onto a pile of ancient bones and mud. Elias followed a second later, pulling the heavy grate back into place just as the mercenaries breached the VIP room above us.
We were plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness. The air smelled of decay and wet earth.
"Jax," I gasped into my earpiece, flicking on a small tactical flashlight. "Do you read me?"
"I read you, Emily," Jax replied, his voice breaking through the heavy static. "I heard the gunfire. Are you okay?"
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"We survived," I said, wiping grave dirt from my cheek. "But Luc is dead. I have the Genesis Code. We are in the catacombs beneath the club. We need an extraction point."
"Rerouting," Jax typed furiously. "Follow the tunnel north for two miles. It connects to the old subway lines. But hurry, Boss. Victoria’s men are blowing the grate. They are coming down after you."
