Chapter 15 - RECOGNITION OF THE MONSTER
Marcus pulled the ice bag away from his face, his uninjured eye widening. "Ray? You know him?"
Ray stood up from his desk, walking over to the reinforced steel window overlooking the underground combat ring below. Down on the illuminated canvas, two amateur fighters were hammering each other with wild hooks, surrounded by cheering patrons betting cash.
"In two-thousand-four," Ray began, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly tone, "I was doing security work for a shipping cartel in Eastern Europe. We were guarding a warehouse near the docks in Odesa. A fifty-man mercenary outfit had taken over the pier, holding three high-level intelligence assets."
Marcus and Jackson stayed silent, listening intently.
"At three in the morning," Ray continued, "the power to the entire district was cut. No gunshots. No explosions. No sirens. Just total, suffocating darkness. Twenty minutes later, the emergency generators kicked back on."
Ray turned back to face his men, his hands tucked deep into his suit pockets.
"All fifty mercenaries were unconscious or disarmed on the floor. Their weapons were stripped into basic components and piled in the center of the room. The three assets were gone. The military contractors who investigated the scene said it was executed by a single operative from a black-budget unit known only as Phantomas—the Ghosts of the Ridge."
Jackson swallowed hard. "You think... you think the guy in the pickup truck is one of them?"
Ray picked up the smartphone again, staring at the frozen image of Damon’s calm, unreadable face on the mat.
"Look at his left hand in the video," Ray directed, pointing his thick finger at the screen. "See that tiny crescent scar between his thumb and index finger? That's from an old close-quarters blade disarm technique used exclusively by Delta counter-terror units in the nineties. That man isn't just a former soldier, Jackson. He's a retired apex predator."
Marcus leaned back against the wall, his jaw aching worse than before. "What do we do, Ray? He disrespected us at the gym."
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Ray walked over to Marcus, leaning down until his face was inches from the bruised fighter.
"What do we do?" Ray repeated quietly. "We delete that video right now. We forget his face. We forget his truck. And if you ever see him or his kid in public again, you cross the street, look at the ground, and thank whatever God you pray to that he decided to be a family man instead of the monster he used to be."
