Chapter 55 - The Wrath of the Ghost
The breach didn't come from the doors. It came from the sky.
A four-hundred-pound thermite breaching charge detonated directly above the hangar’s central gantry, vaporizing the steel beams in a blinding shower of molten iron. Before the debris could hit the concrete floor, two concussion canisters dropped through the smoke, exploding with the deafening roar of a lightning strike.
The mercenaries on the catwalks were hurled backward, their night-vision tubes overloaded by the blinding thermal flash.
Through the hole in the roof, descending on a single high-tensile fast-rope into the heart of the smoke, came Claire.
She didn't drop like a soldier. She dropped like an angel of death.
Her suppressed HK416 fired before her boots even touched the concrete.
*Thwip-thwip-thwip!*
Three mercenaries on the catwalk were dead before their bodies hit the safety rails, dropping thirty feet to the hangar floor. The moment Claire’s combat boots struck the concrete, she rolled forward, coming up into a low crouch behind the engine block of a black SUV.
“Target in the center! Fire! Fire!” the contractor commander screamed.
A wall of automatic gunfire erupted, chewing through the sheet metal of the vehicles and sending sparks ricocheting in every direction. But Claire was already gone. She was a shadow moving between the muzzle flashes.
She closed the distance on the first fire team with terrifying, surgical brutality.
A mercenary turned his rifle toward the darkness, and Claire materialized from his blind spot. Her left hand seized his rifle barrel, redirecting the burst into the ceiling while her combat blade severed the femoral artery in his thigh. Before he could scream, she used his falling body as a human shield against an incoming hail of buckshot, drawn her sidearm, and put two rounds through the chest of the second shooter.
In less than twenty seconds, eight elite mercenaries lay dead in pools of their own blood.
The remaining contractors began to panic. These were men who had fought in the bloodiest covert operations across three continents, men who had never known fear. But they had never faced a living myth unleashed without rules of engagement.
“Fall back to the blast bunker!” someone screamed over the radio. “Fall back! She’s not human! She’s—”
A flashbang detonated at the doorway.
Claire stepped through the clearing smoke, her uniform shredded and stained with soot, her tactical blade dripping crimson onto the concrete. Her cold, gray eyes cut through the gloom like twin searchlights, locking directly onto the reinforced doorway leading down to the submarine pens.
Where Vance-Cross had dragged Maya.
Claire reloaded her rifle with a smooth, mechanical motion, slapping the magazine home with the heel of her hand.
May you like
“Maya,” Claire said, her voice cutting through the echoes of gunfire. “Close your ears, sweetheart. Auntie’s coming in.”
***
