Chapter 26 - BREACH AT THE SEAWALL
Elena scaled the rope hand-over-hand, her boots digging into the crumbly sea-limestone. When her eyes crested the lip of the cliff, she found herself staring directly into the lens of an automated thermal surveillance camera mounted on the lower perimeter fence.
Beside the camera, a lone sentry stood under a concrete shelter, shivering in the rain. He wore unmarked black combat fatigues and carried an Israeli-made Tavor bullpup rifle. He had an electronic vape in one hand and was leaning against the railing, his attention focused on the inland road.
Elena crested the ledge in absolute silence. With a movement as fluid as water, she drew her combat knife, closed the five yards between them in two soundless bounds, and took him from behind. Her left arm locked across his mouth, muffling his gasp, while the blade found the seam between his neck and his plate carrier. She lowered his body into the mud behind the generator housing without a single splash of sound.
"Perimeter breach clear," Elena whispered into her throat mic. "First squad, establish security on the south courtyard. Second squad, prepare charges on the chancellery back door."
Suddenly, a blinding beam of light sliced through the rain.
From the central watchtower sixty yards away, a high-intensity xenon spotlight flared to life, sweeping across the mud. An alarm siren began to wail—a shrill, automated howl that split the Mediterranean night.
The sentries had picked up the grappling hooks on their ground-radar sensors.
"Contact watchtower!" Torres yelled, hitting the dirt as a burst of 7.62mm fire from an RPK light machine gun in the tower chewed up the gravel around them.
Two operators behind Elena were pinned, the heavy rounds punching through the perimeter fence and throwing sparks into the wet air. The spotlight beam tracked directly toward Elena’s position, threatening to illuminate her entire squad and turn the beach landing into a slaughterhouse.
Through the heavy rain and blinding glare of the spotlight, modern digital night-vision optics flared out into white phosphor blindness. Torres raised his M4, squinting into his thermal red-dot optic, but the xenon beam burned the digital sensor into total uselessness. "I can't see the gunner! Optic is completely washed out!"
Elena didn't hesitate. She ripped her night-vision goggles off her helmet, letting them hang on the mount.
She dropped to one knee in the deep mud, planting her combat boots firmly against the limestone rock. Her left elbow locked beneath the wooden stock of the M14. Her cheek pressed into the cold, rain-slicked walnut cheekpiece.
She ignored the blinding light. She ignored the bullets whiplashing over her helmet with supersonic cracks.
Her right eye looked straight through the circular aperture of the rear iron sight. She aligned the serrated steel front post with the center of the blinding xenon glare. She factored in the twenty-knot coastal crosswind, drifting the front post two inches to the left, exactly as she had learned on the wind-swept ridgelines of Fort Bragg.
*Deep breath. Exhale half. Squeeze.*
*CRACK.*
The unsuppressed battle rifle roared with an authoritative, concussive thunder that drowned out the alarm. The 175-grain Sierra MatchKing round tore through sixty yards of rain, punched clean through the armored glass lens of the spotlight, shattered the bulb, and drove straight into the chest of the machine gunner behind it.
The light died instantly. The machine gun fell silent.
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"Watchtower neutralized!" Elena shouted, chambering another round as the spent brass casing bounced smoking into the mud. "Move! Breach that door before they fortify the interior!"
***
