I caught them midair and took off. “Any prisoners?” I called over my shoulder.
“We need one alive for questioning,” Ryder replied. “Everyone else goes down.”
I sprinted for the stairs.
Room 11 gave me exactly what I needed: an unobstructed line of sight across the trees.
I unlocked and opened the window. Cold mountain air hit my face as I spotted a figure repositioning behind the brush.
Muzzle out the window, I steadied, exhaled, and then fired.
“One down,” I said over the radio. “Two more visible inside the fence line on approach. One’s circling northeast.”
“On it,” Ryder answered.
I tracked the lead target as he sprinted toward the garage entry in tactical gear with a suppressed weapon.
One breath and one shot. He dropped fast. The moment the body hit the gravel, I saw another blur of movement through the trees.
Someone was cutting low around the ridge, slipping through the brush on the west side. Too close to the lodge for a clean shot—not with the way he was using cover.
“Contact on the west side. Impending breach,” I said into the radio, getting nothing but static.
Shit.Comms were jammed. Hopefully only temporarily. Knowing Reed, he’d pull back to handle that and turn the tables on our marks. Kill their feed instead. Rescue ours. In the meantime, we were flying blind.
I yanked the rifle back inside, slung it over my shoulder, and drew my Glock.
I hit the stairs hard, boots pounding, and crossed the first floor in seconds. As I neared the back exit, I heard metal skimming gravel, followed by a hiss and smoke.
Gray tendrils curled across the yard, thick and rising fast. Classic conceal-and-breach tactic we usually used ourselves. I wasn’t used to being on the other side of things like this. Always the attacker, rarely the attacked.
Multiple tangos would be advancing, and we’d be in the dark until it was too late. I had to do something.
“Ryder,” I barked into the radio again. “They’re pushing in.”
Still nothing.
I burst out the back door and collided head-on with the bastard I’d seen circling from above.
We hit the deck, crashing onto the boards. The world turned into a swirl of smoke and fists. I lost my pistol in the chaos; then I scrambled into top position in time to block the blade he drove at me.
We grappled, and I ripped the knife from his grip, turned it fast, and buried it in his side with a hard twist. His body went limp, but I didn’t stop there.
I retrieved my Glock from the deck, switched weapons, and put one final round through his head to be sure.
A shotgun blast echoed from inside the house.Trevor?The only reason he’d be shooting would be because there’d been a successful breach.
My radio crackled back to life. “Tango down,” Trevor reported.
“We’re back online,” Reed said, stating the obvious. Thank God for that man’s tech skills.
Ryder announced the good news: “Looks like they’re falling back and using the smoke as cover for their retreat.”
“Do we have anyone alive, though?” I asked, doubling back toward the rear door, my breath burning hot in my lungs.
One by one, voices came over the radio: “Negative.”
So, all clear, but no survivors. And no survivors meant no answers or leverage. We needed both if we were going to keep Audrey safe.
