Chapter 8 - Hell UnleashedThe explosion blasted the heavy oak doors off their iron hinges, sending shards of splintered wood and choking white smoke billowing into the master study.
Before the smoke could even begin to clear, three black-clad figures clad in full thermal-optic tactical gear poured through the breach, their suppressed carbines raised and scanning the room in synchronized sweeps. They moved with terrifying efficiency, their glowing green night-vision goggles cutting through the crimson emergency lighting like the eyes of deep-sea predators.
They expected a terrified old man and a defenseless woman.
They didn't expect Grant Whitmore waiting behind the mahogany desk, already firing.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
The muzzle flash of Grant’s assault rifle illuminated the darkened room in strobe-like flashes. The first operative took two rounds directly to his ceramic chest plate, spinning backward and crashing hard through the glass coffee table. The second operative instinctively dove to the side, returning fire with a rapid three-round burst that splintered the edge of the desk right beside Grant’s head.
“Flank left! Clear the perimeter!” a raspy, modulator-distorted voice barked over the squad leader’s comms.
The third operative rushed toward the open door of the panic room where Claire and Lily were huddled behind the heavy steel frame.
“Got the package,” the operative muttered, raising his carbine to sweep the threshold.
He never made it past the doorway.
From the deep shadows of the panic room, a massive black blur materialized out of nowhere. It wasn't a warning growl this time—it was a full-throated, blood-curdling roar of pure primal fury.
Atlas hit the armored operative with the kinetic force of a speeding locomotive. The one-hundred-and-eighty-pound mastiff drove his heavy paws directly into the man’s chest plate, sending the heavily armed mercenary crashing backward across the Persian rug with a sickening crunch of breaking ribs.
The operative’s weapon discharged wildly into the ceiling, raining plaster dust down onto the floor, before Atlas clamped his massive jaws down around the man’s tactical shoulder harness and flung him violently against the stone hearth. The mercenary went completely limp, knocked unconscious before he even hit the stone.
“What the hell is—!” the squad leader shouted, pivoting his carbine toward the dog.
Grant didn't give him the chance to pull the trigger. Pushing up from behind the desk, Grant emptied the remainder of his magazine into the leader’s shoulder and thigh, dropping the man to his knees with a sharp cry of agony.
The room fell into a heavy, smoking silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the ragged breathing of the wounded mercenaries.
Grant stepped forward, kicking the assault rifle away from the squad leader’s twitching fingers, and pressed the barrel of his sidearm directly between the man’s eyes.
“Who sent you?” Grant demanded, his voice a lethal whisper that could cut glass. “Give me a name, or you don't leave this room alive.”
The squad leader coughed up a thick splatter of blood against the inside of his tactical mask, letting out a wheezing, broken laugh.
“You... you think we’re the only team?” the man wheezed, his visor flickering as his internal power supply shorted out. “Project Leviathan... has already activated the secondary extraction asset... inside the house.”
Grant’s blood ran ice-cold. He spun around toward the panic room.
Claire was standing in the doorway, her arms wrapped tightly around Lily, her face pale as paper. But she wasn't looking at Grant. She was staring in absolute horror at the shadowy figure standing silently at the end of the long hallway behind her—a figure that had somehow slipped past every security checkpoint in the estate without making a single sound.
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It was a woman wearing a heavy dark winter coat, holding a silent, compressed-air dart pistol aimed directly at Lily’s chest.
It was Elena Vance.
