Chapter 6 - The Siege of Mountain Lodge
CRACK!
The heavy bullet slammed into the reinforced steel partition behind the driver's seat, showering the compartment with safety glass.
"AMBUSH!" Elena screamed, drawing her weapon.
"STAY DOWN!" Sarah roared, grabbing Julian’s gurney and dropping it flat onto the floorboards as a hail of automatic gunfire tore through the transport’s exterior armor.
Leo Vance’s men hadn't just tracked them—they had arrived first.
The perimeter guards had already been eliminated, and twenty heavily armed hitmen were currently surrounding the porte-cochère, their tactical flashlights cutting through the thick mountain rain.
"They brought a satellite jammer!" Elena yelled, checking her phone screen. "No signal! We can't call for backup!"
"We don't need backup," Sarah said, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm, mechanical register.
She reached down into the floor storage compartment of the armored transport, pulling out a tactical vest, two fragmentation grenades, and a short-barreled Colt M4 carbine that Elena kept in the vehicle’s emergency armory.
Sarah strapped the vest over her blue hospital scrubs, slapped three magazines into her chest rig, and racked the carbine's slide with a crisp CLACK.
She turned to Elena. "Can you move Julian inside the secondary security vault behind the kitchen?"
"Yes," Elena panted, holding her suppressed pistol. "The vault has an independent hydraulic lock. Once the door closes, nothing short of a bunker-buster bomb can open it."
"Get him inside," Sarah commanded. "I'll draw their fire toward the eastern terrace."
"Sarah, there are twenty of them!" Elena yelled over the roar of gunfire hitting the vehicle's armor. "You can't take twenty military contractors alone!"
Sarah looked at Elena, her amber eyes burning with a dark, lethal radiance that made the hardened security chief step back in awe.
"They're contractors, Elena," Sarah whispered, a cold, dangerous smile touching her lips. "I'm JSOC."
Sarah kicked open the rear doors of the transport and leaped out into the freezing mountain rain.
TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!
Her M4 carbine barked in the darkness. Three hitmen standing near the stone fountain dropped instantly, caught in a lethal three-round burst before they even registered her movement.
Sarah sprinted across the wet cobblestone terrace, using the heavy granite pillars for cover, moving with a lightning-fast, zig-zag pattern that completely confused the remaining shooters.
"SHE'S ON THE TERRACE!" a hitman screamed through the rain. "FOCUS FIRE ON THE GRAND STAIRS!"
A wall of lead chewed through the stone pillars overhead, showering Sarah with stone chips and sparks.
Sarah pulled a fragmentation grenade from her vest, pulled the pin with her teeth, held it for two seconds to cook the fuse, and hurled it over the balustrade toward a group of four hitmen taking cover behind a black SUV.
BOOM!
A blinding flash of orange fire and shrapnel tore through the lot, destroying the SUV’s fuel tank and launching a secondary explosion that lit up the dark mountain forest like daytime.
Inside the house, Elena used the chaos to wheel Julian’s gurney across the grand hall, shoving him into the reinforced steel security vault behind the kitchen, slamming the six-inch hydraulic door shut just as three hitmen burst through the front entrance.
On the eastern terrace, Sarah was out of carbine ammunition.
She ejected the empty magazine, dropped the heavy weapon onto the stone floor, and pulled a double-edged combat knife from her tactical vest.
The heavy rain soaked her dark hair, washing the sweat and stone dust from her face.
Two hitmen rounded the corner of the terrace, their assault rifles raised.
Sarah didn't retreat. She lunged forward in the dark.
She caught the first man's rifle barrel, ducked beneath his elbow, and drove the combat knife upward beneath his body armor, severing his subclavian artery. Before his body hit the floor, she grabbed his sidearm from his holster, spun 180 degrees, and fired three shots point-blank into the second hitman's chest.
POP. POP. POP.
Both men collapsed into the pooling rainwater.
Sarah stood on the blood-stained terrace, her chest heaving, holding the captured sidearm, her eyes sweeping the dark pine forest.
The heavy roar of gunfire had stopped.
The mountain was quiet once again, saved for the patter of rain against the granite walls and the crackle of burning vehicle wreckage in the driveway.
Sarah took a deep, steady breath, wiping the rain from her eyes.
May you like
She walked back through the shattered glass doors into the grand hall, stepping over the fallen bodies, heading toward the kitchen vault.
Standing in the center of the grand hall, holding an open satellite phone and a heavy gold-plated pistol, was Leo Vance.
