Chapter 25 - The Sierra Descent
I burst through the rear pantry fire door into the sub-zero mountain air, gasping down huge lungfuls of crisp pine-scented frost.
The rotor wash of the Black Hawk beat down against the deck, flattening the wild manzanita bushes along the cliff edge. Snow flurries whipped across the frozen flagstones. Down by the dock, two more armed men were advancing up the terraced garden path, flashlight beams slicing through the blizzard.
I had thirty seconds before the Halon cleared and the strike team regained their bearings.
Sliding down the icy slope toward the private boat slip, I stayed low against the granite retaining wall. The Tahoe water was black as ink, its waves slapping violently against the hull of my 32-foot Hacker-Craft runabout. But the boat was a decoy; they would have an interceptor waiting in the bay.
Instead, I cut left into the dense timberline where the estate bordered the state park boundary.
A volley of suppressed rounds chewed into the pine trunks around me, showering bark across my shoulders.
"Target breaking west toward the ridge!" a voice shouted through the trees. "Free fire authorized! Take her down!"
I sprinted upward, burning through the lactic acid in my thighs. Every winter since my commissioning, I had run these ridgelines with a forty-pound ruck. I knew every granite outcropping, every concealed ravine, every seasonal avalanche chute. The contractors had superior firepower and night optics, but they were weighed down by seventy pounds of tactical armor on treacherous, unplowed terrain.
Halfway up the rocky face of Eagle Rock, I ducked into a narrow fissure between two massive split boulders—a natural chimney hidden beneath a mantle of heavy snow.
I pressed my back against the frozen stone, slowing my breathing, listening to the hunt unfold below.
Down in the clearing, the villa looked like a dollhouse illuminated by the searchlights of three armored Suburbans. The heavy front door was wide open, casting yellow light onto the blood-spotted snow.
Then a fourth vehicle pulled past the security gates. A long, silver Maybach sedan.
The rear door opened, and a man stepped out wearing a camel-hair overcoat and leaning lightly on an ivory-handled cane.
Even from four hundred yards up the mountain, the silver hair and deliberate, arrogant posture were unmistakable.
Charles Hayes.
He didn't look like an old man devastated by bankruptcy. He walked with the effortless, calculating grace of a CEO surveying a newly acquired branch office. He stopped beside the rear bumper, reached out a hand, and embraced Sarah as she emerged coughing from the house.
He patted her back once, then handed her a fresh document from his leather briefcase.
My phone, tucked deep inside my waterproof tactical pocket, vibrated against my ribs.
I pulled it out, shading the screen beneath my collar. A single encrypted push notification appeared from an offshore relay server in Zurich:
*TRANSACTION COMPLETE: 100% OF HAYES MARITIME ASSETS LIQUIDATED TO TITAN DEFENSE HOLDINGS. AUTHORIZING OFFICER: ADMIRAL ROBERT STERLING.*
Sterling.
May you like
My former strike group commander. The man who had written my deployment orders himself.
***
