Chapter 10

His sight was still blurry and his ears ringing as John came to a few seconds later. Ignoring various aches in his body which told him that he had been knocked about but wasn´t seriously injured John tried to sit up and only succeeded on the second try.

The house was still burning like crazy and he couldn´t help but shake his head at the sight, not believing what he was seeing. Next to him Lestrade seemed to be in a trance as well, his right hand over his mouth in shock. He acquired a small cut over his left eyebrow but seemed to be reasonably okay and John found himself looking for Sherlock.

The consulting detective had been on his other side and when John turned his gaze over to him, he saw him jump up, obviously trying to run towards the fire. He could hear his lover muttering "No. No. No." over and over again and with all the force left in his bones John made himself snap out of the shock he was in himself and made to run after Sherlock.

Barking at Lestrade to call for help he reached Sherlock before he could get to the fire and nearly tackled him down onto the pavement.

"Sherlock! Sherlock, damn it! Snap out of it. You can´t run in there." He screamed trying to shake it out of him and in a way he managed it as Sherlock stilled and stared at the crackling flames a few meters further.

"But they are in there. If they are in there..." the dark haired man rasped, obviously still in shock and John knew what he meant. If Sally, Mycroft and the others were still in there they were most likely dead since the small suburban house was in shambles from the explosion.

"We need to go around the back." Sherlock suddenly stated and was off running already before John could grab him once more. Knowing that they at least should try and see if anyone had made it out he looked over to Lestrade who seemed to be on his cellphone calling for help before going after Sherlock.

Running, John could feel the bile rise in his throat as the situation clicked more and more into place.

If Mycroft and Sally really were hurt or dead then...

No.

Now he had to make sure that this was actually the case first and he had to take care of Sherlock. This was no time for crying, kicking and screaming as much as he wanted to do that now.

Life wasn´t fucking fair.

Their life especially lately.

It took them roughly two minutes to run to the back of the house. Looking over the wall of the garden the house now looked more intact from this side as the façade was mostly still there. Copious amounts of smoke and the broken windows, filled with the licking flames on the ground floor showed that the house soon would be gone though.

"I can´t see anyone in the garden." Sherlock commented, looking around furiously. "Maybe we should try and...?"

"No." John barked. "We can´t go in. Even I can see that the house might collapse any minute. I´ve seen it often enough in Afghanistan believe me."

Sherlock shook his head. "John I can not-" his voice croaked "- I need to know if they are in there."

John nodded as the air far from them seemed to fill with sirens. At least the fire fighters were coming. They might stop the fire before it turned onto the other houses in the street, but this wasnt any consolation to him and Sherlock.

"Okay." he whispered then and swung his legs onto the wall to over so that the could go a little bit closer as he suddenly spotted something on the ground where he had been standing before.

"Wait. Sherlock, look!"

Once it was pointed out Sherlock saw it instantly, although it was still hard to see in the darkness. He went over the wall again, crouched down and picked it up, while John waited on the wall.

"Sally´s earring!" Sherlock was smiling. "She lost it on purpose. She´s alive." And with that he was already off leaving John to follow behind him just as Lestrade rounded the corner running into the alley.

"Firemen are here now." he informed them out of breath and nodded at Sherlock who was looking around the ground for more clues.

"We found Sally´s earring. They might have escaped." John answered and they followed Sherlock who had started to wander down the alley, looking for more clues.

They went exactly 15 meters north before the consulting detective stopped again and ran back to climb over the wall once more. John could barely call out before his friend vanished into the garden and he and Lestrade ran behind him to keep up.

"There! Yes! I should have known!" Sherlock exclaimed, more to himself, than to the others, and John was glad he wasn´t running towards the burning house but to some bushes to the left of the garden. Climbing in, Sherlock vanished again only a second later and John cursed. Why couldn´t he wait just once?

Just for a damn second so that they could keep up with him?

He shook his head and swallowed his anger. No, that wasn´t the time for this. He´d grump at him later.

If they survived all this, damn it.

A few seconds later he and Lestrade were both in front of the bushes and when they climbed in they suddenly realized where Sherlock had gone: There was some kind of tunnel right in front of them. Next to it was a heavy looking door, which must have covered it, as it looked like it was part of a tree trunk that fit right into the bushes.

An escape tunnel, John realized.

Of course. This was a safe house- it shouldn´t be surprising that there was this kind of get away.

Had Sherlock known about this? He asked himself as he climbed in, Lestrade following directly behind him. Probably not, he guessed, as his lover had run in the wrong direction at first.

Climbing down the ladder, John guessed they were about 5 meters under the surface when his feet touched ground again. He could barely see the rest of the tunnel as there was no light down there and he cursed as Lestrade came to stand behind him.

Well at least the tunnel seemed solid, big enough for them to be standing up in, John told himself and was just about to run into the darkness when suddenly something behind him illuminated at least a few meters of the tunnel.

"There are Mc Lite´s here," Lestrade commented and handed him one, pointing to a small shelf next to him on the wall and John was inwardly shaking his head at himself.

How had he missed this? The last dreadful weeks were wearing down on him he guessed. Nevertheless there wasn´t time for dwelling on this and so he took a lamp from Lestrade and they started running.

#

They had been running for a few minutes and taken a few tuns when John felt the ground rising below them. They were going upwards now, a few centimeters every meter and he guessed they weren´t too far from the exit.

Another 2 minutes and one turn left later he saw he had been right as he and Lestrade found themselves running out of the dark of the tunnel into the dark of the night once more.

Outside their view wasn´t much better. Wherever they were, there were no street lights there, andfrom the looks of it they had come out in some kind of park or maybe a forest. John stopped and held up a hand to slow Lestrade down as well, and his friend seemed to understand instantly.

Walking through the trees and bushes carefully, they made sure they didn´t produce too much noise and John covered half of his light with his hand. He wished that he could have switched it off because they still could be seen a mile wide, but the half moon didn´t provide enough light for them to not stumble and fall over branches or tree trunks and such.

Lestrade though, had switched his Mc Lite off and was walking carefully behind him, his presence reassuring John somehow.

Especially since Sherlock was nowhere to be seen.

Where the hell had he gone? Had he really run that much faster?

Or had they gone the wrong way when the came out of the tunnel? Maybe they should have spilt up when they entered this forest?

#

A while ago...

Sally was still trying to collect herself when they settled down around the table in the dinning room again. She couldn´t help that her hands where shaking, no matter how hard she tried them not too.

Looking around she saw that at least Mycroft was still assessing the situation as well: If they all worked together, they could overpower Svenson, she was sure of it.

But what if that would trigger the bomb? Should they risk it anyway?

The second after they sat down, Svenson threw them a pair of handcuffs each. "Put them on. Hands in front of you." She commanded. "Quick, or I'll slit the little ones throat or do something you´ll regret even more."

Sam and his wife put the cuffs on immediately while Mycroft seeme to think for a second, but then choose to do so as well.

Sally followed their example, if not just because she couldn´t think of a way out of it at the moment.

"Good, good." Svenson said while putting cuffs on Kyra as well. The little one complied instantly, as she was still completely terrified. She even continued to stand stock still next to Svenson, when the woman rummaged through her jacket, producing as strange device which kind of looked like a grenade, but unlike one Sally had ever seen and laid it onto the table. Being the size of a black tennis ball, it had numbered buttons from 0 to 9 on it. A small red light was blinking steadily every second, telling Sally that, whatever it was, had been turned on.

Sally could faintly hear Mycroft take a deep breath next to her and then she knew it had to be bad.

"Care to explain to the class, Mr. Holmes?" Svenson teased and Mycroft grimaced but complied, to Sally´s surprise.

"It´s a count grenade, especially designed for intelligence work. You arm it by pressing a 3 digit code into it. If you don´t repeat the code again in a certain timeframe the grenade will explode. The timeframe can be set anywhere between 30 seconds and 20 minutes and if you are off more than 10seconds the grenade will explode as well. It can only be stopped by another 6 digit code the owner puts into it before he arms the grenade."

He must have noticed Sally WTF? Look, so he continued. "It´s used for making people talk. If it explodes it will take at least half the house with it."

Sally couldn´t help but groan which seemed to make Svenson grin at her. "Don´t you love Intelligence? They always produce so many nice things to play with. It´s so much fun."

She grinned at Sally, like she was a child who just had been given the biggest chocolate bar in the world, but Sally decided she could care less and tried to ignore her glee.

"Nevertheless you know what´s at stake now. So don´t try to run and wait for Dr. Watson with me." Svenson then said, more serious now and put the grenade into her jacket pocket of all places. Well at least they had a few minutes until she needed to press the code again, Sally guessed. The knife though was dangerously close to Kyra again, who was still standing front of Svenson, obviously terrified. Sally was just about to say something when she noticed Mycroft was moving his fingers rhythmically.

It couldn´t be?

Wait. Yes! By barely clenching and uncleching his fingers of his right hand, Mycroft was "writing" a word in morse code. She noticed Sam observing it as well before he looked at Svenson again.

"So instead we wait until Watson comes here and then you blow us up?" he enquired and Sally saw his angry outburst for what it was: a ruse to get the attention away from her and Mycroft.

#

In the end the plan was devastatingly simple and maybe even stupid, but they had no other choice anyway. Mycroft gave a sign and went for Svenson, while Sam went for Kyra and Sally started for the door to the garden, simply because the other one was blocked by Mycroft fighting Svenson. Sam´s wife understood at once and simply followed Sally, who managed to get the locked door open after retrieving the key from the shelf next to the TV- where she knew it would be. She motioned for Kyra and her mum to run outside and they immediately complied.

Sam was about to go back towards Mycroft but Sally shook her head. "He´ll be all right. We need your help with the entrance, you know that."

She looked back and Mycroft was indeed handling himself well, no matter how he always said he wasn´t good with field work.

"Sam, you´ve got orders!" She told the man as he hesitated again and that brought motion into him. Both of them ran into the garden and Sally took one of her earrings to throw it in front of the wall where it could be seen. Sam had run to the bush on the side and began searching. She hoped that Svenson would be distracted and think they had gone over the wall- it was at least worth a try.

If the woman ever came out that is. She hoped Mycroft would knock Svenson out and then the bloody house would explode with her whenever the countdown ended. Damn the bitch.

Swallowing all her fear and anger for the moment she ran over to the bushes Sam and the others were in and saw that Sam and his wife were carefully trying to lift the heavy lid from the secrettunnel. Doing in manually sucked, as according to Anthea who had briefed her when she had been in the house the first night, there was normally a mechanism for this, but the button for it was locacted in the kitchen and there had been no way to get there.

At least this way out had been only somthing she, Mycroft and Anthea had known about. It was much safer than to simply run out of the front door, as she still suspected Svenson wouldn´t be alone. Hell, Moriarty´s and Moran´s goons and lovers seemed to be appear from all corners so she was better safe than sorry because who knew if there´s wasn´t a firing squad waiting for them on the street?

She felt a bit bad for leaving Samson, but they had no choice really, especially since she had no idea if the epipen had been one of the "stun- ones" or "kill immediately- ones". At best they would have had to carry him, as the stun-epi pen at least lasted 30 minutes without an antidote. Sending a small prayer to the heavens she hoped he would be all right and focused back onto the task at hand.

With some effort they lifted the heavy lid and hid in the bushes, still careful that it couldn't be seen from the garden. It was way too heavy for one person to lift and even with Sandra´s help and Sally´s help from her unhurt arm – as best as this was possible while still being cuffed- they still struggled.

Then Sandra, Sam´s wife, started to climb down. Sam kneeled down to take Kyra on his back, which must have been a bit uncomfortable since she could only hook her still cuffed hands over his head and then went down after her. Sally hesitated for a second, but then resisted the urge to peek for Mycroft and went down into the dark as well.

Please to god, let him make it, she prayed and was rewarded for once: She was about 3 meters down when she saw Mycroft above her, climbing down as well and let out a sigh of relief.

They´d be safe. She was sure of it.

Then only a few seconds and a meter down later she nearly fell off the ladder as the house exploded above them.

#

Sally was glad when they happened to find the way out of the tunnel only a few minutes later.

The air in the tunnel had been incredibly stale and it had been hard to breath. Not to mention that she couldn´t stand the darkness and the hollow sounds of their steps in the tunnel as they ran. Her arm seemed to hurt from the exertion and she willed the pain away, which of course didn´t work that well.

Still shaking from the explosion and the running after, she took a deep breath and looked around. They were in some kind of forrest, all really shaken but mostly unharmed. Mycroft had a bloody lip, where Svenson must have gotten him in the fight but otherwise he seemed all right. Sally wanted to ask just to be sure, but he simply nodded, probably already guessing what she wanted to know.

"I´m all right. I manged to knock her out and ran. We should be safe now." he said and she could have sworn she saw him grin for second which made her grin as well. So much for not liking leg work Mister Holmes, she thought, and vowed to tease him about it later.

Nevertheless their plan had worked.

Svenson had probably expected for Sam to do the attacking as he was the well trained agent and the one protecting Mycroft, but little did she know that Myc still trained regularly.

He complained a lot about field work and running but that didn´t mean he hadn´t still got it.

Sally was proud.

Grinning and not caring of Myc´s slight uneasiness at such open admiration. she listened as he told them that they wouldn´t have to go far to get to another safe house. From there they would call the MI 6, the Yard and John.

They started to walk north and were about 50 meters away from the tunnel as suddenly they heard something cocked behind them. Sally, who was walking in the back with Sandra and Kyra in front of her, had no time to take cover as she felt a gun pressed into her neck.

She didn´t need to turn around as she knew who it was.

Svenson.

That bitch had survived, damn it!