Chapter 3 - Cold Mountain Steel
Nathan didn't answer. To answer an enemy from inside an exposed wooden structure was to surrender initiative.
Instead, he slipped out the cabin's rear laundry chute, dropping into the crawlspace beneath the floorboards. Crawling through the stone foundation vents, he emerged behind the cordwood stack eighty feet to the west, shrouded by dense laurel branches.
The mercenaries approached in a tactical wedge. The team leader with silver hair stayed back near the lead vehicle, coordinating two breach teams of three men each.
"Team A, breach the front door on three," the squad leader commanded into his throat mic. "Team B, rear perimeter breach. Non-lethal on the wife and child if possible—the client wants leverage."
Nathan watched them from twenty feet away in the brush. The moment Team A ascended the front porch steps, Nathan struck.
He raised his suppressed carbine and fired two rapid rounds into the point man's ceramic vest plates, knocking him backward off the steps. Before the second operator could pivot his barrel, Nathan drove a 5.56mm round through his lower thigh, dropping him into the dirt.
The remaining mercenaries scattered into the high clover, returning suppressed fire that chewed into the woodpile, sending oak splinters showering over Nathan's head.
"Flank left! He's in the woodline!" shouted a mercenary.
Nathan dropped his carbine on its sling, drew his combat knife, and rolled backward down the terrace bank into the rushing creek bed. The icy mountain water rose to his waist, numbing his legs, but it masked his heat signature against their thermal imaging scopes.
Using the rocky bank as dead ground, Nathan moved forty yards downstream behind Team B. He vaulted up the bank like a ghost, coming up behind the mercenary covering the rear kitchen door.
Nathan's left arm locked around the man's throat in a devastating choke, his right hand twisting the soldier's rifle upward to prevent an accidental discharge. He slammed the operative into the stone chimney, rendering him unconscious with a swift strike to the temple.
He picked up the fallen operative's radio, clicking the frequency button.
"You're down three men, leader," Nathan said calmly over the open channel. "Turn around and walk down my mountain, or none of you leave this ridge."
A low, mechanical laugh crackled through the earpiece. "Very impressive, Major Blackwood. Just like Aleppo. But while you're playing commando in the mud, check the roof."
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Nathan looked up at the cedar roof.
A high-altitude tactical drone was hovering silently fifty feet above the cabin's main chimney, a blinking red charge armed beneath its rotors.
