Chapter 34 - THE IRON HAMMER OF HALLOWAY
The newcomers were not confused Navy conscripts. They moved with the synchronized, deadly precision of Apex Corporation’s top-tier liquidation teams. Their suppressed rifles were fitted with high-end thermal scopes and laser designators, their movements silent, deliberate, and relentless. Leading them was a tall, heavily muscled operative in sterile gray combat gear—Apex's premier wet-work specialist, known on international manifests only as Commander Graves.
"Vance!" Graves’s amplified voice echoed through the vast hollow of the submarine pen, bouncing off the damp concrete walls and multiplying into a disorienting chorus of intimidation. "You’ve made your point, Captain! You proved you’re your father’s daughter! But this is the end of the line. The General has already secured the perimeter above. In twenty minutes, a flight of Strike Eagles will level this fortress with bunker busters. Your names will be entered into the history books as traitors who sold out their country. Walk out with the drives, and I promise your men an honorable grave."
Inside the pillbox, Miller checked his magazine. "I'm counting at least twelve hostiles, Captain. High ground, night-vision superiority, and they have thermal optics sweeping the catwalks."
"They have the technology," Elena said softly, her breath steady, her fingers running across the grooved steel of her rifle’s windage knob. "Which means they rely entirely on batteries and digital contrast. In this damp air, their thermal units will produce false blooming against the steam vents. They expect us to fight like a modern unit. We won't."
She looked at Torres. "Torres, the moment I open fire, short out the secondary breaker panel behind the generator. Kill every remaining work light in this bay. Turn this into a dark room."
May you like
"And how are you going to hit anything without night vision, Captain?" Torres asked.
Elena lifted the scarred M14, aligning the front sight blade with the faint silhouette of Graves’s forward scout standing on an iron gantry sixty yards away. "Because I don't look for the heat, Torres. I look for the space where the dark doesn't belong."
