Chapter 6 - A Debt Unpaid
The knife arced toward Mark’s throat. Years of muscle memory took over; Mark brought his forearms up in an X-block, deflecting the blade into the wooden doorframe where it stuck deep. Mark drove his forehead violently into the operative's visor, shattering the casing and stunning the man for a fraction of a second.
Twisting out of the hold, Mark drove a series of short, brutal elbow strikes into the man’s ribs, feeling bone give way. The operative gasped, sweeping Mark’s legs out from under him. Both men crashed into the porcelain sink, shattering it in an explosion of cold water and shards.
Mark grabbed a heavy ceramic fragment from the floor and rammed it upward into the joint of the operative’s neck armor. The man stiffened, choked on a spray of blood, and slumped against the ruined bathroom counter.
Breathing hard, his knuckles stripped raw and bleeding, Mark retrieved his dropped pistol. He checked the magazine: four rounds remaining.
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He lunged back to the open window. Outside, the garage roof was empty. Far down the tree line toward the adjacent woods, he saw Sarah’s silhouette darting between the pines, carrying Leo.
He vaulted onto the shingles and dropped eight feet into the wet flower beds below. As his boots struck the mud, a pair of headlights flared at the end of the gravel lane. A convoy of three armored SUVs was barreling toward the property, cutting off the main road entirely.
