Chapter 9 - The Siege of Pine Ridge
The ceiling rattled as dynamic breaching charges detonated on the floors above. Plaster and dust showered down through the ventilation grates. Heavy, coordinated bootsteps echoed through the building—these weren't Sterling's hired mercenaries. These were professional assault operators executing an aggressive clear-and-sweep.
Marcus grabbed Sterling by the collar of his suit jacket, dragging the unconscious billionaire like dead weight toward the cellar’s rear emergency exit.
""Federal badges or black-ops cleaners?"" Ava asked, clutching an abandoned sidearm with surprisingly steady hands.
""Doesn't matter,"" Marcus replied grimly. ""If Hayes knows that flash drive exists, nobody leaves this basement alive to testify.""
Marcus kicked through an interior utility door that opened into an underground wine cellar connected to the estate’s drainage culvert. Behind them, the blast door of the vault blew inward with a violent shockwave.
Tactical lights cut through the smoke. ""Clear left! Target not acquired! Look for the hard drives!"" a voice barked through a gas mask.
Marcus threw a smoke canister back through the doorway, blinding the incoming squad. He shoved Sterling down the steep concrete chute of the drainage culvert, then grabbed Ava's hand. ""Jump!""
They slid twenty feet down the slick corrugated pipe, splashing into four feet of rushing mountain runoff water at the base of the ravine. The cold was shocking, instantly stealing the air from Marcus’s lungs. He pulled Ava to the surface, dragging Sterling's half-drowned body out onto the muddy embankment.
Above them on the ridge, spotlight beams scanned the woods, sweeping through the trees like hunting blades. A helicopter gunship thrummed in the clouds above, its forward-looking infrared pod scanning the canopy.
""They're deploying drones,"" Ava said, shivering uncontrollably as the freezing rain mixed with the runoff water on her skin. ""We won't make it to the main road on foot.""
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""We aren't going to the road,"" Marcus said, pointing downstream toward an abandoned timber mill nestled beside the roaring river. ""We go down into the gorge. Lin has an old safehouse three miles past the rapids.""
A sniper round snapped through the branches an inch from Marcus’s ear, showering his cheek with bark. The cleaners had found them.
