Chapter 35 - Breach at Clearwater
Before Sarah could fire, the world outside erupted.
A sound like an incoming freight train shattered the night air as a two-ton Chevrolet Suburban came barreling down the driveway with its lights off, slamming broadside into the rear-guard operator posted by the driveway gate. The impact was deafening—the heavy steel bumper caught the commando mid-stride, launching him twenty feet into the dense underbrush like a broken ragdoll.
The Suburban didn't stop. It plowed directly into the black Mercedes Sprinter van, shearing the van’s sliding door completely off its rollers in a shriek of tearing metal and bursting glass.
"Ambush! Rear security down!" a voice screamed outside the cabin.
Sarah lowered her pistol slightly, a grim smile touching the corner of her lips. *He's here.*
Damon kicked the driver's door of the ruined Suburban open. Before the crushed frame of the Sprinter could settle, he rolled out into the gravel, the HK416 already locked against his shoulder.
In the dark, Damon was not a plumber. He was an elemental force of violence.
The first operator emerging from the side of the cabin raised his weapon, his thermal optic searching for a target. Damon didn't use an optic; he shot by spatial memory and muscle intuition. Two rounds struck the operator’s pelvic girdle, dropping him instantly to break his mobility, followed by a third round through the visor of his helmet.
"Spread out! Pin him to the vehicle!" Viper’s voice bellowed through the woods.
Automatic fire tore through the fog. Tracers ignited the night, stitching lines of fire across the Suburban’s hood. Damon dropped flat, rolling beneath the undercarriage of the crushed Sprinter as bullets ricocheted off the frame inches above his head.
He pulled the pin on a flashbang, cooked it for one second, and banked it off the stone decorative well in the center of the lawn.
The grenade detonated with a blinding, ear-splitting crack of four million candela and 170 decibels.
For ordinary men, it was disorienting; for men wearing high-gain night vision goggles, it was an agonizing wall of pure sensory overload. Two operators shrieked, clawing at their night-vision mounts as the phosphorus flash burned their retinas through the tubes.
Damon emerged from beneath the chassis like a wraith rising from a swamp.
He closed the twenty-foot gap before the nearest blinded operator could even raise his muzzle. Damon's left hand locked around the barrel of the man's weapon, redirecting the muzzle into the earth while his right hand drove the heavy pipe wrench upward with bone-shattering force into the base of the operator’s jaw. The man went limp instantly, the wrench whistling through the air to catch the second blinded soldier across the collarbone, driving him into the mud.
"Damon!" Sarah’s voice rang out from the broken window of the living room.
A lone operator had breached the porch, raising a shotgun toward the front door. Sarah didn't hesitate. She fired three rapid rounds through the porch screen. The bullets punched through the operator’s side armor, sending him tumbling down the wooden steps where Damon met him with a lethal, close-quarters transition, snatching the falling shotgun and pumping a heavy slug into the last engine block of the remaining Sprinter.
The engine detonated in a fountain of boiling oil and sparks.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Out of the original eight-man assault team, seven lay broken across the gravel, the lawn, and the porch.
Only Viper remained.
Damon stood in the center of his torn-up driveway, rain washing the soot and blood from his tactical gear. He didn't check his weapon; he looked toward the dark tree line where the tire tracks entered the property.
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"Come out, Viper," Damon said, his voice quiet, carrying through the falling rain without an ounce of strain. "You're thirty seconds late. Your timer expired."
***
