Chapter 8 - The Hammer and the Anvil
The transition from absolute stealth to total kinetic violence is a switch that only a few men ever learn to throw.
I didn't sneak down the hill.
I stepped out of the rhododendrons onto the gravel track, raised the M4 carbine to my shoulder, and fired three rapid rounds through the massive high-voltage transformer mounted to the utility pole at the entrance of the compound.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The fifty-five-grain rounds shredded the cooling oil tank and the primary step-down coils.
A blinding, cataclysmic explosion of electrical fire erupted forty feet in the air, lighting up the entire hollow in a violent strobe of sapphire-blue and emerald sparks. The heavy power lines snapped with the sound of cracking bullwhips, hissing and dancing across the gravel like molten copper snakes.
Every light in the compound died instantly.
The sudden, absolute blackness was accompanied by the high-pitched shriek of chemical exhaust fans shutting down mid-spin, followed by the confused, panicked shouting of the eight men below.
"What was that?!" "Generator's down!" "Grab the rifles! Somebody's on the gate!"
"Rex," I commanded, dropping my left hand to his collar. "Break contact. Clear the flank."
Rex was gone before the words cleared my teeth.
I didn't fire at the men near the burn barrel. I fired a controlled three-round burst into the dual rear tires of the refrigerated box truck.
POP-POP-POP.
The heavy Goodyear commercial tires exploded under twenty-two hundred pounds of pressurized air, the massive vehicle dropping three inches onto its rims with a concussive thump that shook the loading platform.
Their getaway vehicle was dead.
"Over by the gate!" a biker screamed, leveling a Romanian AK-47 toward the access road, spraying twenty rounds of 7.62x39 into the dark.
The muzzle flash was brilliant, blinding, and completely ruined his night vision. He was firing on full automatic, his rounds chewing through the birch trees thirty feet above my head, spraying me with shredded bark and pine needles.
I didn't return fire with the rifle.
I stepped laterally, six paces into the shadows of the sorting shed, pulled an M84 stun grenade from the tactical vest, and yanked the cotter pin with my thumb.
Three-second fuse.
I cooked it for one second, then skipped the heavy aluminum cylinder across the concrete sorting platform like a bocce ball.
It rolled between the legs of the two men near the burn barrel.
FLASH.
A blinding, one-million-candlepower burst of white magnesium light, accompanied by a one-hundred-and-seventy-decibel concussive overpressure wave that rattled the metal siding off the drying sheds.
The shockwave knocked both men off their feet, their inner ears instantly liquefied, their balance destroyed. They fell to the concrete, clutching their ears, vomiting from the violent vestibular disruption.
From the shadows behind the drying shed, Rex made his entrance.
He didn't need light. His olfactory senses and his night vision guided him with terrifying accuracy.
The third biker—the one with the AK-47—was trying to clear a jam in his receiver when eighty-five pounds of airborne fury struck him in the chest. Rex hit him at thirty miles an hour, driving the man backward over an iron sorting carriage.
The titanium canine clamped onto his dominant shooting hand, the sound of fracturing metacarpals lost beneath the biker's shrill, agonizing scream.
Rex pinned the man’s wrist to the concrete, his front paws planted on his ribs, his yellow eyes glaring down with cold, clinical dominance.
"Good boy!" I shouted, rounding the corner of the platform, the M4 tucked tight against my collarbone.
The fourth man lunged out from behind the burn barrel, holding an iron crowbar with both hands, swinging it in a murderous, overhead downward strike meant to split my skull.
I didn't back up.
I met the strike with the muzzle of the carbine, the heavy birdcage flash hider driving straight into his sternum before the iron could reach its apex.
The impact took every cubic inch of air from his lungs.
He folded like a cheap card table, dropping to his knees, gasping for breath like a stranded fish. I spun behind him, caught his collar, and slammed his forehead down onto the concrete floor.
Four down. Two paralyzed by the flashbang.
That left Butch.
I looked up at the second-story deck of the administrative shack.
The big road captain had dropped his cigar. He was leaning over the wooden railing, holding a short-barreled Cobray M-11 nine-millimeter submachine gun in his one good hand, spraying an erratic, desperate arc of lead across the compound.
BRRRRRRR-IP.
Thirty rounds of nine-millimeter ripped through the sheet metal around me, pinging off the heavy sorting machinery, throwing up sparks and razor-sharp metal shavings.
"I'll kill you!" Butch screamed, his voice cracking into absolute madness. "I'll kill you and that damn dog! You hear me, soldier?! You're dying in this holler!"
He dropped the empty magazine, reached awkwardly into his pocket with his one working hand, trying to retrieve a fresh stick mag.
I raised the M4.
I didn't aim for his chest.
I aimed for the three-inch load-bearing pine timber supporting the northeast corner of the wooden deck.
I dumped ten rounds of 5.56 into the weathered wood.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
The high-velocity rounds chewed through the rotted timber like an electric saw. The pine support splintered, buckled, and sheared under the four-hundred-pound weight of the deck and the massive biker standing on it.
With a horrific, groaning wrench of pulling iron nails, the entire northeast corner of the balcony collapsed.
Butch shrieked as the floor dropped beneath his boots.
He slid down the tilting deck like a sack of wet coal, tumbling twelve feet through the air to crash through the fiberglass roof of an aggregate bin below, landing flat on his back in six tons of crushed limestone.
The submachine gun flew from his grip, clattering down the corrugated iron chutes into the darkness.
Silence returned to the compound.
The only sound remaining was the hissing of the ruptured power lines on the road and the distant, rhythmic wail of federal sirens howling down Highway 9.
I lowered the rifle, resting the barrel against my thigh, and walked slowly toward the limestone bin.
Rex fell in beside my left leg, his tail up, his steps measured, his breathing steady.
We reached the edge of the aggregate bin and looked down.
Butch lay sprawled in the crushed white stone, covered from head to toe in limestone dust, looking like a statue pulled from an ancient tomb. His plaster cast was shattered, his good shoulder was dislocated, and his lone working eye was wide with the terrifying, absolute realization that his entire universe had just been pulverized into dust.
He looked up through the shattered roof at me.
He looked at my boots. He looked at the rifle. And then he looked into the face of my dog.
May you like
Rex stepped to the edge of the chute, lowered his snout, and let out a single, sharp, deafening bark that echoed off the mountain ridges like a gunshot.
Butch closed his eyes and began to weep.
