They gave a female captain a scarred, Vietnam-era rifle with a cracked scope to humiliate her, until she unscrewed the optic and chose iron sights.

They pushed deeper into the complex, descending the marble staircase toward the reinforced basement vaults where the embassy staff had retreated during the initial assault. The air grew thicker, choking with the smell of burned thermite and hydraulic fluid.

Near the entrance to the secure communications vault, Elena stopped, raising her clenched fist.

The squad froze.

Through the thin haze of smoke, Elena noticed something wrong. The floor near the vault door was covered in clean white plaster dust from the breached walls—except for three faint, circular depressions in the dust, spaced evenly across the threshold.

"Tripwires," Elena whispered, pointing with the muzzle of her rifle. "Monofilament lines connected to directional claymores behind the door frame. They’re not trying to keep us out. They're waiting for us to hit the door so they can detonate and bring the ceiling down on the hostages."

From behind an armored security booth thirty yards down the corridor, a voice echoed out over an acoustic megaphone.

"Captain Vance!" the voice sneered in fluent American English. "You should have stayed on the tarmac in North Carolina! Your career was already dead—did you really need to die in this basement too?"

Elena remained pressed against the concrete corner, her heartbeat slow, measured, and cold.

"Apex Tactical," Elena called back, her voice steady as stone. "You're operating under direct contract for Senator Thomas Rourke. Your operational security is burned. Your offshore accounts were flagged by JSOC an hour ago."

A cold, mocking chuckle echoed from the booth. "Rourke doesn't care about the money anymore, Captain! He cares about the hard drives in that vault! Once this annex burns, nobody will ever know whether those analysts died from our bullets or from an uncoordinated Army rescue attempt! Throw down your weapons, and maybe I let two of your men walk out to tell the story!"

"You talk too much," Elena muttered under her breath.

She glanced at Torres and held up two fingers, then pointed to the ventilation duct running along the ceiling directly above the mercenary leader's bunker. Torres nodded instantly, unhooking a canister of CS gas and preparing his launcher.

"On three," Elena whispered.

"One."

"Two."

*Three.*

Torres launched the CS canister into the duct. The gas hissed violently as it pressurized the ventilation shaft. Inside the armored booth, the mercenary leader began to cough violently, his tactical gas mask knocked askew as he stumbled out through the reinforced door, firing wildly down the corridor with an automatic shotgun.

Heavy 12-gauge slugs tore through the drywall inches from Elena's face, showering her in white dust.

Elena leaned out from the corner. She didn't have time to acquire a modern laser lock. Her cheek slammed into the walnut comb. Her eye aligned the front blade in a fraction of a second.

She fired once.

The heavy bullet punched through the mercenary leader's shoulder, spinning him around and slamming him against the concrete wall. Before he could hit the floor, Miller and Torres were on him, pinning his arms and stripping his weapons.

Elena walked over to the wounded commander. She looked down at him through the smoke, the muzzle of her grandfather's rifle smoking faintly in the cold basement air.

"Where is the vault keycard?" Elena demanded.

The mercenary looked up, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips, his eyes wide with disbelief as he stared at the scarred wooden rifle pointing at his forehead.

"You're crazy..." he wheezed. "You came across the ocean... with a Vietnam rifle... to kill us?"

"I came across the ocean to finish what you started," Elena said coldly. She reached down, ripped the master electronic keycard from his tactical vest, and slid it into the security panel beside the vault.