Chapter 6 - The Sniper's Perimeter
The rain had started again, a cold, slate-colored downpour that turned the gravel of the old brewery yard into a soup of mud and coal dust. Damian emerged through the hatch behind a stack of rotting timber pallet crates, his body instantly blending into the shadows of the machinery.
Across the courtyard, parked directly under the rusted skeleton of the grain hopper, sat a matte-black Mercedes Sprinter van with reinforced steel plating over the windows. The roof of the vehicle was bristling with high-frequency antenna arrays, their green indicators blinking through the dark.
High above, on the third-tier catwalk of the old concrete silo, a tiny sliver of blue light flashed—the lens reflection of a night-vision scope swinging across the yard.
Crack.
The sound of a high-velocity rifle round shattered the night, the bullet burying itself into the oak pallet six inches above Damian's head, sending a shower of yellow splinters into his face. They knew the hatch was a potential exit. They were waiting.
Before the sniper could chamber a second round, a deafening blast from Vane’s Remington shotgun ripped through the northern side of the yard. Vane hadn't fired at the silo; he had fired directly into the main transformer box on the power pole near the fence line.
The transformer exploded in a magnificent cascade of white sparks and green fire, instantly plunging the entire block into absolute, pitch-black darkness. The snipers’ night-vision scopes, overloaded by the sudden thermal bloom, went completely blind.
"Move!" Vane roared from the darkness.
Damian sprinted across the open gravel, his boots kicking up mud as he closed the eighty-yard distance to the armored van. He didn't fire his weapon. He needed Marcus alive, and he needed him before the local police units—alerted by the transformer explosion—could block the exit routes.
Two guards stepped out from the rear doors of the Sprinter, their automatic weapons swinging blindly through the dark. Damian dove low, tackling the first man around the knees and driving him hard against the steel bumper of the vehicle. The man’s rifle discharged into the gravel before his jaw connected with Damian's forehead, knocking him unconscious.
The second guard turned, his barrel clearing the doorframe, but a sudden flash of silver steel from the darkness caught him across the forearm. Vane had reached the vehicle from the flank, his combat knife moving with a terrifying, practiced efficiency that could only have been learned in the deepest pits of the syndicate's training camps.
The guard dropped his weapon, clutching his wrist as he fell back into the mud.
Vane stood by the open door of the van, his shotgun dripping rain, his chest heaving as he looked into the brilliantly lit interior of the command center.
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Sitting in a leather captain's chair, surrounded by flat-panel monitors and encrypted communication arrays, was Marcus Vale. He looked immaculate in a gray silk suit, a glass of mineral water in his left hand, and his right hand chained via a steel cable to a rugged aluminum case on the desk in front of him.
"Julian," Marcus said, his voice entirely devoid of panic as he looked at the man he had raised as an assassin. "You always were the quickest of the litter. Tell me... did you brought me the flash drive, or do I need to clear the rest of your biological family out of the cellar?"
