Chapter 7 - The Ambush at the Water
The drywall around me shredded into confetti as high-caliber rounds punched through the flimsy trailer walls. I stayed pressed against the concrete floor behind the heavy steel filing cabinet, counting the bursts in my head.
*Three shooters. Suppressed submachine guns. MPX or MP5s. Firing in three-round controlled bursts.*
Professionals. Not street thugs. Vance’s high-dollar private security contractors.
Across the room, Richard Carter lay slumped over his desk, his chest bubbling with frothy, bright-red blood. His eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling in terrified shock, his hands clutching weakly at the exit wounds beneath his collarbone.
"Ethan..." he gurgled, blood spilling over his lips. "Ethan..."
"Stay down!" I roared.
The firing stopped abruptly. The heavy rain pounded on the metal roof like gravel thrown against a tin drum.
"Walker!" a voice called through the shattered window. It was Carl, the heavy-set enforcer I had slammed onto the hospital floor. "We know you're in there, jarhead! You and the old man are out of moves! Throw your weapon through the window and come out with your hands up, and we make it quick! Otherwise, we drop two thermite grenades through the roof and burn you into grease!"
They were setting up a perimeter. They wanted the flight cases with the bearer bonds and the encrypted drives before they torched the scene.
I didn't answer. In the Marine Corps, you learn three primary rules of ambushes: *Survive the initial kill zone. Locate the flanks. Violence of action.*
I reached down and snatched a fallen brass desk lamp, wrapping the electrical cord around the base. With my other hand, I checked my Sig Sauer: fourteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber.
I flung the heavy lamp through the shattered window on the left side of the room.
*Crack-crack-crack!*
The shooters bit on the feint, unleashing a panicked burst toward the sound of broken glass.
The second their muzzle flashes lit up the darkness outside, I rose from behind the filing cabinet, stepped into the center frame of the main window, and acquired the first silhouette standing beside the corner of a shipping container.
*Front sight focus. Squeeze.*
Two rounds struck the first gunman in the center-mass triangle. He dropped instantly onto the slick gravel without a sound.
The second shooter pivoted toward me, but I was already moving, sliding across the wet floor toward the trailer door. His rounds chewed through the doorframe where I had been standing half a second before.
I burst through the rear exit into the pouring rain.
The cold water hit my face like ice, sharpening my senses into absolute clarity. I sprinted along the shadow of the rusted container, circling behind the second shooter’s position.
Carl was shouting through the storm: "Move up, Bishop! Flank the back door! He’s slipping out!"
The second contractor—a tall man in wet-weather tactical gear—rounded the container with his weapon raised at eye level.
He never saw me coming from the dark blind spot behind him.
I closed the distance in two strides, locked my left arm around his neck in a combat choke, and drove my combat knife upward under his tactical vest into the femoral cluster behind his thigh. He let out a muffled groan and dropped his weapon. I stripped the submachine gun from his sling, shoved his collapsing body into the ditch, and leveled the weapon down the pier.
Now it was just Carl.
The big enforcer was backing toward a black SUV parked under a flickering halogen dock light, his pistol held in two trembling hands, scanning the sheets of rain.
"Bishop?" Carl yelled, panic cracking his voice. "Miller? Where are you?"
"They’re not coming, Carl," I said, stepping into the yellow halo of the dock light twenty yards away, the captured submachine gun held firmly against my shoulder.
Carl spun around, leveling his pistol at my chest.
"Drop it!" he screamed, his face contorted in psychotic rage. "I’ll blow your damn head off, Walker! Drop the gun!"
"You like beating defenseless women, Carl?" I asked, taking two slow, deliberate steps toward him. "You like kicking a girl when she’s trapped on her own kitchen floor, begging for her life?"
Carl’s finger tightened on the trigger. "She wouldn't give up the drive! She asked for it!"
"Wrong answer."
Carl brought his gun up to fire.
I squeezed the trigger of the MPX.
A single controlled double-tap struck Carl in both kneecaps. The explosive impact shattered bone, dropping the two-hundred-and-fifty-pound enforcer onto the wet asphalt with a high-pitched, agonizing scream that pierced the storm.
His pistol clattered across the pavement into the bay.
I walked up to him, kicked his legs flat, and planted my combat boot directly onto his shattered right knee. He shrieked in agony, clawing at my boot with both hands.
"Where is Julian Vance right now?" I demanded.
"Go to hell! Kill me!" Carl sobbed, his teeth bared in pain.
I increased the pressure of my heel. The grinding of bone fragments was audible even over the rain.
"Where is he?"
"The private airfield!" Carl shrieked, tears and rain mixing on his twisted face. "Hangar 4! Vance’s Gulfstream is fueling up right now! He leaves for Dubai in forty-five minutes! That’s God's honest truth! Stop! Please, stop!"
I eased my foot off his leg, reached down, and ripped the zip-ties from his tactical belt, binding his wrists behind his back so tightly his fingers went numb.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Marcus.
"Ethan!" Marcus answered on the first ring. "We got movement at the hospital! A private security van just pulled up to the ambulance bay!"
My heart stopped. "Vance sent a second team to the hospital?"
"They’re trying to breach the ICU from the fire stairs," Marcus said, the muffled sound of shouted commands echoing behind his voice. "My boys are holding the corridor, but they have smoke grenades! We need local police backup now!"
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"Marcus, hold that door with everything you have," I roared into the phone, sprinted toward Richard's SUV, and wrenched the driver's door open. "I'm ten minutes away!"
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