Chapter 22
The flight to Berlin was conducted in total operational silence. Cole utilized a network of untraceable military transports and private cargo planes, courtesy of the illicit slush funds Sarah had diverted before destroying the Vanguard’s servers.
He touched down in Germany under the cover of a dense, freezing fog. The city was a sprawling, gray labyrinth of historical monuments and modern espionage.
Donovan’s coordinates pointed to an abandoned railyard in the industrial sector of Lichtenberg.
Cole moved through the rusting, graffiti-covered train cars like a phantom. He wore a sleek, black tactical suit, heavily armed, his night-vision optics painting the desolate environment in a harsh, luminous green.
"I'm at the rally point, Sergeant," Cole whispered into his encrypted comms. "Status."
Static hissed in his ear for a long, agonizing moment.
"I'm pinned, Boss," Donovan’s voice finally crackled, strained and tight with pain. "North end of the railyard. Old switching station. I have three hostiles converging on my position. Heavy armor. Suppressed weapons."
"Hold the line," Cole ordered.
He sprinted across the rusted tracks, moving with explosive, terrifying speed. He didn't rely on the shadows; he became them.
He reached the dilapidated switching station. Through the shattered windows, he saw the thermal signatures of three heavily armed operatives advancing on a barricaded office door.
Cole didn't hesitate. He didn't fire from a distance. He drew his ceramic combat knife and vaulted through the window, landing silently on the concrete floor behind the advancing squad.
The trailing operative never knew what hit him. Cole clamped a hand over the man's mouth, driving the blade upward beneath the base of the skull, severing the brain stem instantly. He lowered the body without a sound.
The second operative sensed the shift in the air and spun around, raising his assault rifle.
Cole was faster. He stepped inside the rifle's guard, executing a flawless, bone-shattering joint lock on the man's wrist, redirecting the barrel toward the ceiling. With his free hand, Cole drew his suppressed 9mm and fired a single, devastating shot point-blank into the operative's chest plate, knocking the wind from his lungs, before finishing the engagement with a surgical strike to the throat.
The lead operative, realizing his squad was dead, panicked. He turned and opened fire blindly into the shadows.
"Donovan! Down!" Cole roared.
He dove behind a rusted control console as bullets chewed through the concrete walls. He popped up, aligning his sights, and fired two rapid, precise bursts. The operative dropped, neutralized permanently.
The railyard fell violently silent.
"Clear," Cole announced, reloading his weapon smoothly.
The heavy metal door of the office groaned open. Master Sergeant Donovan stepped out, clutching her side. Her camouflage jacket was soaked with blood, but her eyes were fierce and unyielding.
"You took your time, Bennett," Donovan grunted, leaning heavily against the doorframe.
"Traffic was terrible," Cole replied, rushing forward to support her weight. He quickly inspected the wound. A through-and-through gunshot graze to the obliques. Painful, but not immediately fatal. "Who were they, Rachel? Vanguard remnants?"
"Worse," Donovan grimaced, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the concrete. "They are Lazarus."
"Lazarus," Cole repeated, the name echoing with the dark warning Julian Croft had whimpered in London. "The assassination protocol."
"It's not a protocol, Cole. It's a specialized unit," Donovan explained, her breathing ragged. "The Vanguard was run by bureaucrats. Lazarus is run by the operatives the bureaucrats created. The ultimate black-ops syndicate. When you dumped the registry and burned the Vanguard, you didn't destroy their military assets. You just freed them from their corporate masters."
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"And they are hunting us?" Cole asked, his jaw tightening.
"They aren't hunting us for revenge," Donovan said, looking up at him with sheer, unadulterated terror in her eyes. "They are hunting us because the microdot Ethan died to protect didn't just contain blackmail files. It contained the source code for a localized EMP satellite network. And the leader of Lazarus just found a way to activate it."
