Chapter 32 - The Concussion Wave
The explosion did not level the mansion; it was a shaped charge, precise and surgically brutal.
A deafening *CRACK* ripped through the sub-floor beneath the marble entryway, turning the imported Italian tiling into a storm of pulverized shrapnel. The shockwave surged upward, blowing out the monumental crystal chandelier, which plummeted fifty feet down like a glittering iron cage.
The force of the detonation threw Viktor and his seven mercenaries off their feet. Men clad in three-hundred-pound tactical rigs were tossed like ragdolls into the mahogany walls and splintering stair risers. Dust, smoke, and burning gypsum filled the hall in an impenetrable, gray fog.
Marcus Vance shrieked, clutching his bleeding ears as he tumbled down the first tier of stairs, coughing on the sulfur-choked air. "God! Oh God! I can't hear! I can't see!"
Through the whirling veil of smoke, Damon moved.
He didn't leap recklessly down the stairs. He dropped off the balcony edge, catching the brass sconce on the landing with one hand to absorb his momentum, then dropped silently behind the disoriented point man of Viktor’s squad.
Before the mercenary could orient his weapon toward the sound, Damon’s right arm snapped around his neck. A vicious, lightning-fast jerk broke the man’s cervical vertebrae with a sound like dry kindling snapping underfoot. In the same fluid motion, Damon stripped the fallen soldier’s MPX and sidearm from their holsters.
"Sector two! Flank him!" Viktor’s voice roared through the blinding haze, distorted by a bleeding eardrum. "He's down here! Fire through the dust!"
Submachine gun fire erupted in furious, uncontrolled bursts. Suppressed rounds chewed through the wood paneling, shredding historical oil paintings and sending plumes of dry horsehair plaster raining into the foyer. But Damon was already gone. He used the smoke as living armor, sliding beneath the shattered frame of the collapsed chandelier.
A second mercenary swept his tactical light past the wreckage. The white beam caught Damon’s silhouette for a fraction of a heartbeat.
The operator opened his mouth to shout, but Damon surged forward from a low crouch. The palm of Damon's hand struck the bottom of the soldier’s muzzle, driving the weapon upward just as three rounds tore harmlessly into the ceiling. Damon stepped inside the man’s guard, his elbow driving upward with hydraulic force into the operator’s chin, snapping the helmet strap and driving the lower jaw into the skull.
The man collapsed like an empty sack.
Damon didn't pause. He grabbed the dying man’s combat vest, spun him around as a human shield, and squeezed the trigger of the captured MPX.
Three double-taps punched through the smoke. Forty feet away, two operators advancing along the left corridor grunted and collapsed, center-mass hits punching clean through their soft neck guards.
"Fall back to the courtyard!" Viktor barked through the comms. "Set a perimeter! Burn the structure!"
"Too late, Viktor," Damon's voice whispered from the dark, directly behind him.
Viktor spun, drawing a ten-inch serrated combat blade with his left hand while attempting to clear his secondary pistol with his right. He was fast—faster than any regular soldier Damon had faced since retiring. But speed without absolute stillness is merely wasted momentum.
Damon dodged inside the arc of the knife, letting the steel graze the canvas of his utility jacket. His left hand clamped onto Viktor's wrist, twisting the joint outward into a catastrophic dislocation. The knife clattered to the ruined floor.
Before Viktor could scream, Damon drove the heel of his steel-toed boot straight into the side of Viktor’s right knee. The joint bent backward at an impossible, sickening angle.
Viktor crashed to the ruined marble, gasping for air, blood pouring from his nose where the blast had ruptured his sinuses. He looked up, his tactical visor cracked and hanging loose, staring into the impassive, cold eyes of the retired SEAL.
"You... you died in Kunar," Viktor hissed through broken teeth. "The manifest said you burned in the bird."
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"The manifest was wrong," Damon said, kneeling down beside him. He rested the hot barrel of the MPX against Viktor’s throat. "Now tell me who gave you the coordinates to my boy's wrestling gym."
***
