Chapter 13 - The Firefight in the Mist
The shockwave rattled my teeth, plaster dust showering down from the wooden rafters like gray snow. The red glare of flash-bang grenades erupted through the living room, strobing across the stone walls in deafening, disorienting pulses.
They expected me to be pinned behind the sofa or crouched in the kitchen corner. But I was already in the stone hearth, tucked behind the massive granite mantlepiece my grandfather had cut from the creek bed with his own hands.
Two operators pushed through the smoke, moving in a tight stack, their suppressed submachine guns sweeping low. Their weapon lights flickered on—blinding white cones cutting through the suspended dust.
The point man swept past my alcove. I stepped out behind him, grabbed the muzzle of his weapon, forced it down toward the floorboards, and slammed the butt of my Kimber into the side of his helmet. The carbon-fiber shell cracked with a dull *thump*. He stumbled, and I spun him into the path of the second operator.
Three suppressed rounds coughed from the second man’s barrel, punching directly into his partner’s tactical vest.
I didn't hesitate. I drove my shoulder into the second man, taking him to the timber floor. We rolled across the splintered remains of the front door, fighting for leverage in the dark. He smelled of gun oil and wet nylon. His hand clawed for my throat, but I caught his wrist, twisted it back against the joint until the bone popped, and drove my knee into his ribs.
He grunted, dropping his weapon. I came up on one knee, weapon leveled at his visor.
"Who issued the detention order?" I demanded, the barrel pressed against the center of his forehead.
The man wheezed, spit flecked with red bubbling through the mesh of his mask. "You’re already burned, Sterling. The whole story... news breaks at 0600. Rogue female NCO steals defense ledgers... sells them to an offshore syndicate. You think Vance can save you? Vance is already under house arrest at Fort Belvoir."
A cold spike of dread drove straight through my gut. Vance was the rock upon which our entire counter-operation had rested. If they had neutralized a full-bird colonel on military soil, Evelyn Reed wasn't just defending her nephew—she was staging an internal purge to bury every shred of evidence before the congressional grand jury could convene.
The engine of a third vehicle roared from down the holler. High-powered spotlights tore through the shattered front windows, illuminating the dust in brilliant white columns.
"Surrender the hardware, Sergeant!" a bullhorn blared from the treeline. "The perimeter is sealed!"
I stood up, stripped the fallen operator of his spare magazines and his tactical communications headset, and slipped the earpiece into my ear. The channel was alive with chatter: *Team Two, hold the rear treeline. Cut off the creek bed. Do not engage with lethal fire until the encrypted drive is secured.*
They didn't just want me dead; they needed the hard drive that contained the unredacted master ledgers. The drive I had sworn to Colonel Vance I would keep safe until the trial.
I retreated toward the kitchen, pulled the iron ring on the cellar floor, and dropped through the hatch into the dark water of the crawlspace beneath the cabin. The cold creek water hit my waist, shocking the breath from my lungs. I moved through the subterranean culvert that fed the cabin's old waterwheel, dragging my waterproof pack behind me.
Above my head, boots hammered across the floorboards. Then the heavy, systematic thud of incendiary grenades hitting the pine timbers.
They weren't taking chances. If they couldn't search the house room by room, they were going to turn it to ash and sift through the wreckage for the steel-cased drive.
I kicked through the rotting wooden grate at the end of the stone tunnel, bursting out into the freezing currents of the creek fifty yards down-canyon. Smoke was already billowing into the night sky behind me, thick and black, carrying embers that caught in the hemlock branches. The cabin—the last safe harbor my family had owned—was vanishing in a roaring wall of orange flame.
I scrambled up the muddy embankment on the opposite side of the creek, mud clawing at my fingers, the icy water dragging at my clothes. Behind me, the silhouettes of three tactical vehicles sat idling on the logging road, their roof-mounted searchlights sweeping the burning ruins.
I adjusted my headset. Through the static, a calm, unfamiliar female voice cut across the private security frequency:
*Command, this is Undersecretary Reed's direct dispatch. Confirm target elimination. We have the press release queued for the morning cycle. The Department of Defense will announce the Sergeant’s dishonorable discharge and fugitive status concurrently.*
I reached the crest of the ridge, chest heaving, lungs burning from smoke and cold air. I didn't look back at the fire. I looked west, toward the dark, jagged spine of the mountains that led toward the Ohio river valley.
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They thought taking my name, my house, and my military record would break me. They had forgotten that before I was an abused wife, before I was an extraction target, I was a long-range reconnaissance sergeant trained to survive in hostile territory with nothing but a map, a compass, and an unforgiving will to hunt the enemy down.
***
