Chapter 58 - The Siege of the Victorian House
"They found us," I said, drawing my Walther PPK and chambering a round with a sharp, metallic click. "How?"
"It doesn't matter how," Anthony replied, pulling a heavy tactical shotgun from the emergency cache hidden beneath the floorboards. "What matters is that we don't have a way out through the front."
Heavy footsteps pounded up the front porch steps, followed immediately by a deafening crash as the front door was kicked off its hinges, splintering wood flying everywhere.
"Clear the rooms!" a gruff, tactical voice shouted from the hallway.
"Through the back!" Anthony yelled, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the kitchen as the first wave of armed Vanguard operatives surged into the living room.
We burst through the back door just as a volley of submachine gun fire chewed through the kitchen cabinets, sending ceramic plates and glassware shattering into a million pieces. We sprinted across the overgrown backyard, leaping over a wooden privacy fence just as floodlights illuminated the entire area in a blinding white glare.
"Over there! In the alley!" someone shouted behind us.
Bullets whined past our ears, chipping off pieces of brickwork as we dove behind a row of industrial dumpsters in the narrow alleyway. I returned fire, squeezing off three rapid shots that forced our pursuers to duck back behind the fence line.
"Anthony, we're trapped!" I yelled over the sound of approaching sirens in the distance.
"Not yet," Anthony said, pointing to an open manhole cover near the base of the brick wall—a municipal drainage access point leading into the London underground storm system.
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Without a second thought, Anthony lifted the heavy iron cover, and I dropped inside into the dark, rushing water below, Anthony sliding in right behind me just as a fresh wave of Vanguard agents rounded the corner of the alley, their flashlights cutting futilely through the rising mist.
***
