An arrogant kickboxing champion challenged a quiet plumber to a full-contact fight—and realized his mistake the second his fist missed.

Beneath the surface of Clearwater Lake, the world was zero-visibility blackness.

Damon swam using long, rhythmic dolphin kicks, his rebreather emitting no bubbles to betray his position on the surface. The water was forty-five degrees, cold enough to paralyze an untrained swimmer within ten minutes, but Damon’s body was conditioned to endure extreme hypothermic stress. He focused his mind entirely on the mental blueprint of the industrial gravel dredge two miles out.

The barge was a relic from the 1980s—a floating iron monstrosity three hundred feet long, used decades ago to dredge gravel from the lake bottom. It had high steel bulkheads, a crane deck, and an enclosed engine house. For a black-budget director looking to set up an off-grid tactical operations center, it was an impenetrable floating fortress.

Twenty minutes later, Damon’s hand brushed against the slimy, barnacle-encrusted steel hull of the dredge.

He surfaced beneath the shadow of the port-side conveyor belt. The sound of a heavy diesel generator thrummed through the hull, masking any subtle noise he made as he pulled his upper body out of the water.

Damon unslung his suppressed carbine, shook the water from the receiver, and hoisted himself up onto the lower catwalk.

The deck above was lit with low red tactical lights. Through the grating, he could hear the murmurs of radio chatter.

"...Assault Team One is completely non-responsive," a voice reported from inside the operations room. "We lost their transponders twelve minutes ago."

"Did Viper check in?" a second, deeper voice asked.

"No, Director. His biometric monitor showed a massive heart rate spike followed by zero telemetry. Team One was wiped out."

A calm, dry sigh echoed through the open door of the engine house.

"I told Arthur he was underestimating him," Director Mercer said.

Damon recognized that voice instantly. It was the same cultivated, aristocratic voice that had spoken to him on Kowalski’s phone forty minutes ago. Mercer was a man who had sent hundreds of young men to die in unmarked graves from behind a mahogany desk in Langley, sipping twenty-year-old scotch while signing off on wet-work orders.

Damon slipped through the hatchway like an apparition.

Two private military contractors in digital camouflage stood beside the communication console, their backs to the door. Damon stepped forward without a sound. With two lightning-fast chops to their cervical vertebrae, both men collapsed silently to the linoleum floor, unconscious before they hit the ground.

Damon stepped over them and walked into the primary cabin.

Director Mercer was standing before a bank of illuminated monitors, his back to Damon. He was wearing an expensive cashmere overcoat over a tailored suit, completely out of place on a rust-covered dredge. In his right hand, he held a crystal tumbler filled with amber liquid.

"You took your time, Damon," Mercer said without turning around.

"Turn around, Mercer," Damon said, his suppressed rifle leveled squarely at the center of the director's shoulder blades.

Mercer turned slowly. His hair was silver, perfectly coiffed, his face aristocratic and smooth despite being well into his sixties. He looked at Damon’s dripping wet gear, the blood smeared across his cheek, and the cold, unyielding iron in his eyes.

"You really are an extraordinary piece of engineering, Ghost-Six," Mercer murmured, taking a sip from his glass. "Seven years of fixing leaky pipes, and you dismantle my best assault team in twenty minutes. It’s almost a shame to destroy you."

"The contract ends tonight," Damon said. "Tell me who else has my family's file."

Mercer chuckled softly. "Oh, Damon. You still think like a soldier. You think there’s a paper file in a manila folder somewhere?"

Mercer set his glass down on the console and pointed at the large central screen.