Chapter 7
The pantry door splintered inward with a deafening crash, showering the small room in white drywall dust and wood chips. Through the ruined frame, the silhouette of a tactical operative emerged, his weapon leveled directly at Arthur's chest. Without hesitation, Arthur slammed the heavy steel floor hatch downward, securing the manual locking bolt just as a muffled burst of gunfire pinged harmlessly off the reinforced exterior of the door below.
Arthur spun around, dropping into a low crouch as the operative stepped through the threshold. Reacting with brutal, trained efficiency born of a past he had long tried to bury, Arthur lunged forward, sweeping the man's legs out from under him and driving the heel of his hand upward into the operative's visor. The man collapsed heavily, unconscious before he hit the tiled floor.
Panting heavily, Arthur stripped the operative's tactical vest, securing a secondary sidearm and an encrypted radio handset before sprinting back toward the main kitchen. The house was burning now, a jagged column of black smoke billowing from the shattered living room where the second wave of mercenaries had set fire to the curtains. Sirens wailed in the distance, faint and distorted by the stormy night air—local law enforcement finally responding to the automated panic alarms, though Arthur knew the local police wouldn't stand a chance against a professional black-ops extraction unit.
He slipped through the ruined kitchen, keeping low beneath the line of thick smoke rolling along the ceiling. Marcus Sterling was nowhere to be seen, likely having retreated to the extraction chopper waiting on the front lawn. But one of Sterling’s senior lieutenants—a scarred man with a brutal, square jaw—was barking orders into a comms-link near the front entryway.
"The primary package is secured in the sub-level," the lieutenant lied smoothly, covering for the fact that Clara and Maya had slipped into the storm shelter. "Clear the remaining rooms and prep the secondary charges. We leave no digital footprint."
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Arthur gripped the stolen sidearm, his finger resting lightly on the cold metal of the trigger. He knew he couldn't take on an entire squad in a firefight, but he didn't need to win a war. He just needed to create enough chaos to buy Clara and Maya the twenty minutes they needed to reach the lake house tunnel.
He raised the pistol, aimed carefully at the main electrical breaker box mounted on the hallway wall, and squeezed the trigger.
