Chapter 135 - Echoes in the Sump
The suppressed rounds struck the lead operator dead center. Even through his reinforced dive armor, the shockwave punched the breath from his lungs and hurled him backward off the grated platform, sending him crashing into the churning waters of the moonpool below.
The other two operatives instantly scattered, diving behind high-pressure nitrogen tanks. Automatic gunfire erupted across the cavern, the suppressed 9mm rounds chipping vicious shards of granite from the bedrock wall behind my head. Ricochets whined off the submarine's titanium hull, ringing like church bells in the enclosed space.
"He's behind the primary keel clamp!" the second man yelled, unpinning a flashbang from his tactical harness.
I didn't give him the chance to throw it.
I dropped low, sliding across the wet concrete floor beneath the nitrogen manifold. Coming up on his blind flank, I drove the butt of my sidearm upward into the base of his helmet, shattering the plexiglass visor. He stumbled backward with a muffled cry, and I drove my tactical knife cleanly through the exposed shoulder joint of his tactical suit, severing the brachial artery. He collapsed against the steel valve, painting the manifold with dark arterial blood.
The third operator lunged forward, swinging his carbine around to pin me against the pump housing. I caught the barrel with my left forearm, wrenching it upward as a three-round burst obliterated the overhead fluorescent strip, plunging our corner of the pier into strobe-lit chaos.
I closed the distance, driving my knee into his abdomen, followed by an elbow to his jaw that snapped his head back. We crashed into the safety railing overlooking the subterranean docking bay. His hands went for my throat, his combat gloves wet and smelling of lake sediment.
"Who sent you?" I growled, digging my thumb into his pressure point beneath the ear. "Who authorized a strike inside Whispering Pines?"
"The... Admiral..." he choked out, his eyes widening behind his cracked mask. "Not your mother... the Board... they're collapsing the entire lineage..."
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Before he could elaborate, the gantry above us shuddered. A heavy thermite charge flared into blinding white life at the main shaft hatch, raining molten steel onto the dock.
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