Chapter 3 - Three Seconds on Marble
The tension inside the Northstar Meridian lobby stretched to a dangerous, violent breaking point.
The second gunman, standing near the reception counter, panicked. Instead of taking a measured shot, he squeezed off three rapid rounds toward Brody. The suppressed thwack-thwack-thwack sounded like heavy raindrops hitting canvas.
Brody was already in motion before the first round cleared the barrel. He slid smoothly behind the heavy reinforced concrete column, the concrete chipping violently as the rounds slapped into the stone right where his head had been a microsecond earlier.
"Kill him! Kill him now!" the leader barked from the pillar, holding Marin even tighter against his chest as a human shield. "Flank the pillar! Go!"
The second gunman and a third attacker drew their weapons and began advancing on Brody’s position, moving in a tactical wedge to trap him behind the column.
Inside Brody's chest, his heart rate stayed at a steady, controlled sixty-two beats per minute. The combat high—the strange, icy calm that had kept him alive through dozens of firefights in the mountains of Afghanistan and the alleys of Ramadi—engulfed his mind. He wasn't thinking about the dangerous situation; he was executing a problem-solving routine.
He listened to the footfalls on the marble floor.
Click-step, click-step. Rubber tactical soles on polished stone. Three feet away. Two feet away.
Brody didn't wait for them to round the corner. He dropped low, sweeping his left leg out across the polished floor. His steel-toed boot caught the lead advancing attacker directly behind the ankle. The man swept off his feet, crashing heavily onto his back with a breathless groan.
Before the second advancing man could adjust his aim downward, Brody pushed off the column, rising violently. He grabbed the barrel of the man's weapon with his bare left hand, using his thumb to press the slide back a quarter of an inch—disabling the firing mechanism.
The gunman pulled the trigger. Click. Nothing happened.
Confusion flashed in the attacker's eyes for a fraction of a second. Brody didn't give him another. He drove a brutal elbow strike into the man's jaw, feeling the bone give way with a sickening crunch. He followed up with a sweeping head-butt that sent the man crashing unconscious into the reception counter.
Brody pivoted back to the man on the floor who was trying to raise his weapon. Brody brought his heavy work boot down with precise, calculated force onto the gunman's shoulder joint, dislocating it instantly. The gun clattered harmlessly across the marble floor.
Three down. Two left.
The entire exchange had taken less than ten seconds.
In the center of the lobby, the leader was sweating profusely now. His remaining soldier stood beside him, clutching a weapon with trembling hands, looking back and forth between the motionless bodies of his teammates and the calm, gray-shirted repairman stepping out from behind the column.
Marin Lockidge stared at Brody. Her breathing was shallow, her eyes wide with total disbelief. Who was this man? He looked like someone who spent his weekends fixing lawnmowers or watching high school football, yet he was moving through trained mercenaries like a ghost through fog.
"Who the hell are you?" the leader demanded, his voice cracking slightly. He pulled a heavy hunting knife from his belt and pressed the serrated blade directly against Marin’s throat, drawing a tiny bead of crimson blood. "Stay back! Step one inch closer and I open her throat right here!"
Brody stopped twenty feet away. He dropped his captured pistol. It clattered against the floor and rolled away.
The remaining gunman stared at Brody in shock. "He dropped his gun?"
"Listen to me very carefully," Brody said. His voice was calm, steady, and terrifyingly cold. It carried an authority that filled the entire forty-story atrium. "In exactly four minutes, the city police will breach those doors. In three minutes, the building's automatic lockdown shutters will descend. That gives you about ninety seconds to decide how you want this day to end."
"Shut up!" the leader roared, pressing the blade firmer against Marin's skin. "I'm taking her out of here!"
"You're not taking her anywhere," Brody said softly. He took a single, slow step forward. "You're holding a knife with a four-inch blade. Your shoulder muscles are tense, which means your reaction time is delayed by about two-tenths of a second. From this distance, I can break your knee, disarm your hand, and snap your collarbone before your brain registers that I've moved."
"You're bluffing!" the leader screamed.
"Try me," Brody said.
His eyes didn't show anger. They showed something far worse: absolute, unshakeable certainty.
The fourth gunman—the one holding the weapon beside the leader—looked at Brody's cold eyes, looked at his three unconscious comrades bleeding on the floor, and made a sudden, desperate choice. He lowered his weapon, turned, and sprinted full speed toward the side emergency exit.
"You coward!" the leader shrieked.
The distraction was all Brody needed.
Brody exploded forward. Twenty feet crossed in three blurring strides.
The leader tried to slash Marin's throat in a final act of spite, but Brody's hand caught his wrist in mid-air with the force of a steel vise. The knife froze an inch from her skin.
With his other hand, Brody grabbed the leader's tactical vest, pulled him forward, and slammed his forehead directly into the bridge of the man's nose. Bones shattered.
The leader screamed as his grip on Marin slipped. Brody pushed Marin gently behind him, securing her safely behind his back, while he twisted the leader's wrist around. The knife fell from his paralyzed fingers.
Brody swept the leader's legs out from under him, slamming the heavy man face-first onto the cold marble floor. Brody placed his heavy work boot firmly on the back of the leader's neck, pinning him instantly.
The lobby fell into complete, echoing silence.
The five attackers were finished. Three unconscious, one fleeing down an alley, and their leader pinned under the boot of a commercial refrigeration technician.
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Brody stood there, his chest rising and falling in slow, controlled breaths.
Behind him, Marin Lockidge slumped against the marble pillar, holding her bruised neck, staring up at the back of her savior in utter, awe-struck silence.
