Chapter 23 - Shadows on the Deck
The wooden planks of the back deck groaned under the weight of two men moving with hurried confidence. Outside, the night was pitch-black, save for the weak amber glow of a municipal streetlight three hundred yards away, filtered through the thick curtain of pine trees.
Through the cracked slat of the blinds, Damon observed them. Both men carried short-barreled tactical shotguns loaded with breaching rounds—a clear indication that their strategy was violent, overwhelming entry through the secondary sliding glass door. They had their night-vision tubes flipped up, relying instead on high-lumen weapon lights affixed to their forends, expecting to blind their target with sheer photonic dominance upon entry.
It was an amateur mistake born of arrogance. Against a sleeping civilian, photonic shock was effective. Against a former operator who had conducted night raids in Abbottabad and Ramadi, a weapon light was nothing more than an illuminated bullseye pointing directly back at the shooter's chest.
Damon did not wait for them to breach the door. The moment the point man stepped within three feet of the double-pane tempered glass, Damon stepped out from the shadows of the living room, raised his rifle to his shoulder pocket, and squeezed the trigger twice through the drywall adjacent to the doorframe.
The suppressed *thwip-thwip* of the subsonic rounds was quieter than a staple gun, but the kinetic energy delivered downrange was devastating. The two rounds punched cleanly through the exterior siding and struck the point man’s left shoulder and thigh, bypassing his front armor plate entirely.
The man screamed—a strangled, wet gasp—and tumbled backward over the deck railing, crashing into the rhododendron bushes six feet below.
The second contractor on the deck reacted with frantic instinct. He whipped his shotgun around, flooding the deck with a blinding twelve-hundred-lumen beam of white light, and unleashed three rapid blasts into the glass patio door.
The sound shattered the rural quiet like thunderclaps. Tempered glass exploded inward in a glittering hail of diamond-shaped fragments. Buckshot tore through the dining room curtains, shredded the plaster wall, and obliterated an antique clock on the mantelpiece.
Damon had already dropped to the floor before the first blast cleared the muzzle. Rolling across the shattered glass, he came up on one knee behind the heavy oak dining table. Through the smoke and flickering dust, he saw the second man stepping across the threshold, shotgun raised, desperate to clear the room before Damon could re-engage.
Damon didn't fire his rifle. To fire a carbine now would invite stray rounds into neighboring properties across the lane. Instead, he lunged upward from behind the table, closing the distance before the contractor could lower his barrel.
With a sweep of his left forearm, Damon deflected the shotgun’s burning hot barrel toward the ceiling. The contractor pulled the trigger in panic; the round obliterated the plaster chandelier, showering them both in white dust and copper wire.
Damon stepped inside the man's guard, his body mechanics operating on absolute economy of motion. He drove the heel of his palm upward into the bottom of the contractor’s ballistic helmet, snapping the man’s neck back, then grabbed the collar of his tactical vest with both hands and wrenched him violently forward into a vicious, bone-shattering knee strike to the sternum.
The contractor’s breath left him in an explosive wheeze. The ceramic chest plate cracked under the concentrated hydraulic force of Damon’s strike. Damon didn't let him recover. He spun him around, wrapped his right arm around the man's neck in a tight, inescapable rear-naked choke, and applied thirty pounds of sustained pressure to the carotid arteries.
The contractor clawed weakly at Damon's forearms, his boots scraping frantically against the broken glass on the floor.
"Shh," Damon whispered in his ear, his voice completely level, completely detached from the violence of the moment. "Go to sleep."
Five seconds later, the man’s limbs went slack. Damon lowered his body gently onto the floor, stripped his weapon and communications gear, and stood tall amidst the smoking debris of his home.
Over the radio earpiece, a frantic voice cut through the static: *"Bravo! Charlie! Report! Shots fired at the rear! Alpha, what is your status?!"*
Damon pressed the push-to-talk button on his captured radio. He didn't disguise his voice.
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"Bravo and Charlie are down," Damon said smoothly. "If you want to stay alive, tell your employer that his time is up."
***
