Chapter 13 - The Shot from the Dark
The heavy .38 round caught the team leader squarely in the right shoulder, spinning him violently off his balance. The suppressed carbine slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the gravel as he fell hard against the rusted leg of the water tower, clutching his bleeding joint with a ragged gasp.
Marcus spun around instantly.
Standing in the smoking doorway of the maintenance shed was Sarah. Both of her hands were locked around the wooden grip of the small silver revolver, the barrel still smoking. Her knuckles were white, her eyes wide and terrifyingly clear, her feet planted firmly apart.
Behind her, inside the safety of the dark shed, Lily sat quietly, clutching her stuffed rabbit, hidden from the carnage outside.
""Nobody touches my family,"" Sarah whispered, her voice carrying an edge Marcus had never heard in the ten years they had shared together.
The team leader lay against the iron pillar, groaning as he struggled to breathe through the shock of the gunshot. He looked up at Sarah, then at Marcus, realizing the operation had devolved into complete catastrophe. His men were neutralized, the helicopter had pulled out of the immediate valley due to the smoke and restricted visibility, and the civilians he had been ordered to quietly erase were standing armed over him.
Marcus walked over, kicked the fallen carbine twenty feet away into the burning brush, and knelt beside the wounded officer. He reached into the man’s tactical vest, retrieving his secure military radio and his cryptographic authentication token.
""Raven Three to Black Hawk lead,"" Marcus spoke into the radio, his voice ice-cold. ""Your strike team is down. Your command files are public domain on forty civilian network nodes. If that aircraft doesn't clear this valley within thirty seconds, the decryption key for the Pentagon domestic surveillance logs goes live to the Associated Press and the Department of Justice.""
A long, crackling silence followed on the channel. Marcus knew that thirty miles away, in an underground operations center, senior officers were staring at red screens flashing unauthorized data leaks across high-level security clearances.
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Finally, a tired, defeated voice answered: ""Aircraft is RTB. Extraction team is standing down. Cole... you have five minutes before the local sheriff responds to the fire. Whatever you do with those keys, you can never go home again.""
""I was never going home anyway,"" Marcus replied, and crushed the radio under the heel of his boot.
