Chapter 24 - ECHOES IN THE FIRING PIN
The three rounds punched through the operative's neck seal in a tight triangular cluster, severing his cervical spine. He dropped straight down, his armor clattering against the gravel.
Claire didn't wait for the second man. She scooped up the dead soldier’s carbine with her left hand, looping the sling tightly over her shoulder to compensate for her ruined right arm. She jammed her right hand into her belt, wrapping a strip of canvas webbing around the bleeding wrist with her teeth, pulling the knot taut until the agony throbbed in time with her ragged breathing.
She burst out of the shattered shed into the teeth of the mountain storm.
The quarry had become a slaughterhouse of shadows. The floodlights from the hovering aircraft swept the ground, casting grotesque, elongated silhouettes across the limestone cliffs. But something had changed.
Down at the southern gate of the quarry, where the access road wound down into the valley, the sirens that had been distant five minutes ago were now deafening.
A convoy of four heavy Oshkosh tactical trucks—the Wyoming National Guard unit alerted by the base perimeter alarms—had arrived at the perimeter fence. Their heavy spotlights illuminated the outer wire, catching the three unmarked black aircraft in their glare.
"Attention unidentified aircraft!" a loudspeaker boomed from the lead National Guard vehicle, bouncing off the canyon walls. "You are in restricted federal airspace! Power down your engines and drop your weapons immediately!"
The response from Vance's units was immediate and merciless.
The port-side rotary cannon of the nearest stealth transport swiveled sixty degrees on an automated turret. Without warning, a solid stream of 20-millimeter high-explosive rounds tore through the lead National Guard truck.
The vehicle exploded into a blinding fireball of diesel and magnesium, its cab flipping thirty feet into the air before crashing onto the secondary humvee behind it. Screams echoed across the radio channels as secondary ammunition inside the Guard truck began to cook off in a cacophony of uncontrolled explosions.
*They're drawing the perimeter into a bloodbath,* Claire realized, pressing her back against the wet rock face. Vance didn't care about witnesses anymore. He was burning everything to the ground. The supply clerk, the National Guard, the range supervisor—none of them were meant to survive the night.
Through the rain, Claire saw Elena.
The range supervisor was pinned beneath the overturned chassis of her tactical truck fifty yards away, her service sidearm barking desperately into the dark as an Apex operative advanced on her position with steady, deliberate steps. Elena’s face was covered in soot, her uniform soaked in hydraulic fluid, but her eyes were wide with pure, stubborn fury. She was firing one-handed, her other arm trapped beneath the crumpled fender.
The operative raised his arm brace, the pneumatic loading cycle whining softly as he lined up a kill shot to her forehead.
Claire raised the captured carbine with her left arm.
Her non-dominant hand. A wind speed of thirty-five knots gusting from the northeast. A driving rain that bent the ballistic curve by two inches per hundred yards. And eighty yards of dark, smoke-filled air between her muzzle and the operative’s visor.
Her brain didn't calculate with numbers; it calculated with the deep, scarred intuition that Vance had beaten into her mind twenty years ago. The five shots from the range returned to her—the ghost of the dead center, the empty bullseye that had concealed the true target.
She breathed out, the cold air burning her throat.
She squeezed the trigger.
She didn't fire one shot. She fired four in a sustained burst, walking the barrel upward against the recoil using the sheer muscular force of her left shoulder.
The first round struck the operative's carbine barrel, deflecting his aim into the dirt inches from Elena's face. The second round shattered the composite armor of his right shoulder. The third round skipped off the top of his helmet, disorienting his balance.
The fourth round found the throat seal.
The operative collapsed backward into the mud, his limbs locking in an involuntary extensor response before going utterly still.
Elena stared through the rain, her gaze locking onto Claire standing against the rock wall—blood-soaked, her right hand tied off with canvas, a smoking weapon in her off-hand.
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"Get up, Supervisor," Claire's voice sliced through the roar of the wind. "The army doesn't know who they're shooting at, and Vance doesn't leave loose ends."
***
