Chapter 35 - THE SIGHT OF AN OLD WARRIOR
Torres plunged his combat knife into the main transformer box.
With a deafening hiss and a shower of orange sparks, the low-wattage yellow bulbs lining the pen died instantly. Absolute, impenetrable darkness swallowed the cavernous chamber.
For ordinary men, the world had vanished. For Graves’s men, the sudden shift plunged their high-gain night vision into temporary blinding whiteout, their automated sensors struggling to rebalance against the sudden arc-flash of the transformer.
In that half-second of electronic paralysis, Elena Vance stood completely upright.
The open iron sight of the M14 did not require battery power. It had no glass to glare or distort in the mist. Elena’s eyes, already acclimated to the gloomy cavern, aligned the broad silhouette of the front post within the rear protective wings. She saw the minute red LED emitter of an Apex sniper's laser illuminator perched on the gantry above.
*Crack-thump!*
The unsuppressed 7.62 round roared through the subterranean vault, a thunderous shockwave that tore through the quiet. The red emitter snapped upward as the sniper fell through the iron railing, plunging fifty feet into the black water below.
Elena cycled her focus immediately, pivoting three degrees to the right. A second operative fired a wild burst of suppressed 5.56 toward her muzzle flash. The rounds chewed into the concrete bulkhead beside her ear, showering her in grit. Elena did not flinch. She tracked the faint blue muzzle flare of the enemy weapon, brought the front post down to center mass, and squeezed.
Another massive detonation rattled the catwalks. The second operator was lifted off his feet by the sheer kinetic violence of the full-power rifle cartridge, dropping instantly behind an iron stanchion.
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"She’s using iron sights!" an Apex operator screamed in panic over their open comms. "She's not showing up on thermal! Suppress the pillar! Suppress the—"
Elena moved. She did not remain where she had fired. She sprinted silently along the rusted iron rails, her boots finding traction on the grease-stained metal with the effortless agility of a predator born to the terrain.
