Chapter 56 - Blood on the Mountain Path
Before the tactical commander could relay the order, the night air exploded.
A high-velocity rifle crack echoed from the western ridge above the driveway, instantly followed by the wet, sickening thud of a round punching through the command van's windshield. The tactical captain was thrown backward onto the gravel, his shoulder armor shredded by the impact.
"Sniper! West ridge! West ridge!" Marcus bellowed, grabbing me by the tactical vest and dragging me behind the armored flank of the Suburban as more rounds tore through the sheet metal.
The blue lights of the police cruisers shattered in an explosion of polycarbonate glass. From the dark woods lining the long driveway, automatic fire erupted in controlled, disciplined bursts.
"It's an ambush!" Marcus yelled into his radio, pulling his sidearm while the state troopers returned fire, muzzle flashes strobing against the pine trees like miniature lightning storms. "They didn't come to extract her! Harlan is executing a sweep!"
The front doors of the Vance mansion suddenly burst open from the inside.
Not Evelyn.
Three men in dark tactical gear emerged onto the broad columned portico, carrying suppressed submachine guns and heavy thermal optics. They weren't federal contractors, and they weren't local militia. These were the private security operators Harlan had funded through his shell corporations in Delaware.
"They were in the house the whole time!" I shouted over the gunfire. "The cellar blind spot!"
"David, stay down!" Marcus fired three rounds through the gap between the vehicle tires, dropping one of the figures advancing down the stone stairs.
Through the second-floor library window of the mansion, I caught a glimpse of movement. A woman’s figure—Evelyn—standing behind the glass, waving a stack of papers, screaming silently behind the soundproof panes. She had finally realized the truth: the men advancing up the drive weren't her rescuers.
Harlan wasn't sending a cavalry to save her. He was tying off loose ends.
A flash of orange light bloomed from the treeline behind the mansion. A shoulder-fired thermite projectile struck the second-story roof directly above the library vault.
The roof collapsed inward in an avalanche of burning cedar shingles and shattered rafters. Evelyn’s silhouette disappeared in a blinding curtain of orange and black smoke.
"The ledger!" Marcus yelled. "If those operators get to that safe room, they take the documents and we lose Harlan forever!"
"Forget the ledger, Marcus!" I yelled, pulling my weapon. "They're circling our flank! If they pin us here on the access road, nobody leaves this mountain!"
A grenade skipped across the wet gravel, spinning toward the front tire of our Suburban.
"MOVE!"
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Marcus and I hurled ourselves over the low stone retaining wall bordering the ditch just as the grenade detonated. The blast wave lifted me off the ground, slamming my back into the frozen soil, the deafening concussive roar stripping the hearing from my ears in a high-pitched, ringing whine.
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