The steam cleanout pipe above the holding annex gave way with a deafening, metallic shriek.
Jonah Price threw his weight into the eighteen-inch pipe wrench, his teeth bared, his muscles straining against the rusted iron flange until the gasket blew out in a blinding cloud of white vapor. Two hundred pounds of scalding wet steam roared into the ceiling crawlspace, hissing through the expanded metal grating directly above the guard catwalk.
Down in the holding room, someone screamed. Boots clattered on the iron stairs.
“Now!” Mara shouted.
Gideon hit the padlocked service door with the ten-pound sledge. The hardened bronze hasp sheared clean off its carriage bolts on the second swing, the door bursting open with a crash that echoed through the concrete vault.
Mara came through the steam behind him, her flashlight beam cutting through the vapor.
Two guards were scrambling for the exit door at the far end of the room, their uniforms soaked in hot condensation, coughing and shielding their eyes from the boiling fog. Gideon fired one blast of rock salt into the plaster ceiling above their heads; the guards did not look back. They shoved through the fire door into the corridor and slammed the crash bar behind them.
