"Copy! Lighting them up!" Ivan yells. He steps out and fires his rifle from the shoulder, ordering a dozen men to pour thousands of rounds directly into the bunker to keep the Italian gunner’s head down.
Under the cover of Ivan’s deafening fire, I lead eight men into the maze of industrial pipes lining the courtyard. It's dark, tight, and choking with the smell of sulfur. Steam hisses loudly from bullet holes in the pressurized valves around us.
We move like ghosts through the steel maze to flank the bunker. But as we round a boiler, we run right into a four-man Italian patrol rushing to back up the gunner.
We're too close for rifles.
The rifle drops to hang from its sling as the combat knife clears my chest rig in one smooth motion.
The monster my father built takes over.
The first Italian barely reacts before the six-inch blade drives up beneath his tactical vest and straight into his ribs. A wet gasp escapes him, blood bubbling over his lips.
The knife tears free. I pivot, seize the barrel of the second man’s shotgun, and wrench it downward so the blast punches harmlessly into the dirt. A heavy boot slams into his knee, snapping the joint backward with a sickening crack, and the blade sinks deep into his neck.
My men kill the other two in brutal hand-to-hand combat. I pull my blade free and wipe the hot blood on my tactical pants, my hands left bruised and bleeding. My chest heaves with exertion. But I can’t stop.
We push up the metal grate stairs to the bunker, taking the heavy machine gunner completely by surprise. I don't give him time to turn the massive weapon around. I draw my pistol and put a bullet through the side of his head.
The heavy gun goes silent.
"Gun is down!" I call out into the comms. "Push the processing floor! Break them!"
With the gun down, my men surge forward into the processing plant that separates the courtyard from the control room.
But the Italians are fighting like cornered rats. Just as we breach the processing floor, a rocket screams down from a high catwalk.
"Incoming! Get down!" I yell.
The rocket slams into a chemical holding tank on the left side of the warehouse.
The explosion is catastrophic. A fireball rolls across the ceiling, raining burning chemicals and shrapnel down over us.
The shockwave hurls me into a steel beam, the impact ripping the air from my lungs. A high, piercing ring floods myears. On the left flank, roaring flames cut off half my strike team, swallowing three of my men whole.
“Push through the fire!” The order tears from my throat as blood is wiped from my eyes. Blind shots are fired into the thick black smoke, tracking the muzzle flashes of Italian shooters.
The fight turns savage. Room by room. Pipe by pipe. Smoke and the metallic stench of blood clog the air, each breath a struggle. We’re bleeding out, and my magazines are running dangerously low.
“Boss.” Ivan’s voice cracks through the comms, sharp and frantic, cutting through gunfire. “Boss, the perimeter team isn’t answering.”
Everything goes still behind the concrete barricade.
My blood turns to ice.
“Repeat.”
"I'm calling the command truck," Ivan says, his voice tight. "Yuri and the perimeter guards aren't answering. I've got nothing but dead air."
No.
A wave of panic claws its way up my throat. I left ten of my best shooters guarding that truck. If they aren't answering, it means they were ambushed. It means the Italians flanked us.
It means they have Helena.
The cold tactician is gone. The desperate husband takes over.
"Covering fire!" I yell, stepping right out from behind the barricade. I don't care about the bullets flying past my head or the burning shrapnel. I raise my rifle and hold the trigger down, emptying the rest of my magazine in one long sweep that shreds the rest of the Italians on the floor.
