Chapter 10 - The Mountain Ambush
Six men exited the vehicles, their movements fluid, tactical, and disciplined. They wore white winter camouflage, night-vision goggles, and carried suppressed carbines. These weren't local street thugs; Lucian Vane had hired professional mercenaries, seasoned hunters from Eastern Europe who specialized in wet work.
Falcon lay motionless in the snow, the cold leaching into his belly, his breathing slow and measured to prevent frost from fogging his optic scope. Crosshairs settled on the chest of the lead tracker who was inspecting the fresh footprints around the cabin porch.
Crack.
The rifle spat fire. The lead mercenary collapsed into the snow without a sound, a dark hole punching through his chest rig.
Before the body hit the porch, Falcon chambered another round and fired again. The second man took the bullet through the knee, screaming as he rolled behind an SUV. The remaining four men scattered into the tree line instantly, returning fire with controlled bursts that chewed the logs of the cabin and the granite rocks around Falcon’s perch into splinters.
Falcon rolled down the reverse slope of the ridge, abandoning his position. He knew he couldn't hold a static line against a coordinated four-man fireteam. In the mountains, survival belonged to the hunter who kept moving.
He moved through the trees like a ghost, flanking the cabin perimeter. He had rigged the surrounding brush with tripwires during their first winter. As two mercenaries advanced through the creek bed, one tripped a low tension wire. An overhead deadfall—a three-hundred-pound pine log lined with sharpened iron spikes—slammed downward, crushing the first man into the frozen gravel.
The second man spun, raising his carbine, but Falcon emerged from the mist behind him. A heavy blade flashed in the moonlight, slicing through the mercenary's throat guard before he could scream. Falcon lowered the body quietly to the snow, stripped the man’s tactical vest for fresh magazines, and checked the horizon.
One SUV was still idling in the yard. In the front passenger seat sat a man wearing a thick shearling coat, smoking a cigarette, completely unfazed by the carnage around him.
May you like
Lucian Vane himself.
Falcon leveled his sidearm through the pines, his finger tightening on the trigger. But before he could fire, the heavy barrel of an assault rifle slammed into the back of Falcon’s head from behind, knocking him into the frozen dirt as the world went black.
