Chapter 11 - Ghosts in the Scrub
Marcus moved without disturbing a single branch, his boots stepping lightly on the moss-covered granite boulders that lined the rear perimeter of the depot. He knew this terrain better than the men wearing twelve-thousand-dollar panoramic night-vision tubes. Night-vision restricted peripheral awareness and flattened depth perception; Marcus had hunted these ridges in the pitch-dark with only moonlight and intuition since he was twelve years old.
The lead operator moved toward the shed door, his weapon raised, scanning the interior through thermal imaging. But the corrugated iron of the shed reflected heat unpredictably, creating false cold spots that made precision identification impossible from outside.
Marcus circled wide, coming up behind the fourth man in the tactical stack—the rear security guard.
He didn't fire. A gunshot, even suppressed, would alert the helicopter circling overhead. Marcus closed the distance in three silent, bounding strides. He hooked his left arm around the operator’s throat from behind, clamping the windpipe while his right hand seized the man’s combat knife from his chest rig, wrenching the operator backward off balance.
They went down together into the damp loam. The operator fought fiercely, attempting to reach his secondary sidearm, but Marcus used his leverage, driving a sharp elbow strike into the man’s temporal nerve just below the helmet rim. The operator’s body went limp.
Marcus quickly stripped the man’s radio headset and clipped the receiver into his own ear.
A voice crackled through the bone-conduction earpiece: ""Team Lead to Raven Three. Shed is hot. Two heat signatures detected inside, likely primary targets. Moving to breach.""
""Negative, Team Lead,"" Marcus said into the throat microphone, perfectly mimicking the flat, clipped cadence of standard tactical communications. ""Rear perimeter breached. Point man down. Hostile moving toward your flank.""
The effect was instantaneous. The two operators at the front door paused their entry, pivoting instantly toward the woods to establish a defensive sector. That hesitation was all Marcus needed.
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He raised his carbine and fired two quick rounds into the heavy auxiliary generator sitting beside the maintenance shed. The rounds struck the fuel line; a deafening explosion ripped through the yard, throwing a sheet of orange flame thirty feet into the night sky.
The sudden thermal blooming blinded the operators' night-vision sensors, forcing them to tear the goggles from their eyes in agony as white phosphor burned their retinas.
