Chapter 16 - The Hunter's Dawn
The operator's finger tightened on the trigger.
From sixty yards above, lying prone on the rim of the limestone shelf, Cole did not adjust for windage; the air in the gorge was dead, heavy with the moisture of the river. He placed the red-dot optic of the captured carbine directly on the seam between the mercenary’s ballistic helmet and the base of his skull.
He exhaled half a breath. Squeezed.
*Pfft.*
The suppressed round struck with the dull slap of lead meeting bone. The mercenary crumpled instantly, his rifle clattering onto the river stones as his body fell forward into the shallow water.
Cole didn't pause to observe. He shifted his aim thirty yards to the left, where the third operative—Bravo—was descending the rocky pathway into the ravine. Bravo reacted with incredible speed, dropping behind an iron flume support and returning fire, sending a burst of 5.56mm rounds chewing through the rock ledge right where Cole lay.
Stone fragments sliced Cole's cheek. He rolled backward away from the edge, signaling Ranger with a flat hand gesture: *Stay low.*
"Walker!" Nora’s voice echoed from below, fierce and desperate. "There's a second one behind the sluice gate! He’s planting an area denial charge!"
Cole scrambled twenty yards along the ridge, angling for a crossfire position. Through the earpiece, the British voice returned, hard and furious:
"Bravo, break contact! The SEAL has high ground! Blow the gorge wall and extract to the secondary LZ! The extraction bird is inbound!"
They weren't trying to capture Nora anymore; they were going to collapse the entire limestone face of Devil’s Throat, burying Nora, Miller, and Cole beneath forty thousand tons of rock.
Cole reached to his tactical vest, pulled one of the captured fragmentation grenades, and pulled the pin with his teeth. He held the spoon down, counting the seconds.
"One... two..."
He vaulted over the edge of the limestone ledge, sliding down the thirty-foot scree embankment on his boots, throwing the grenade with a quarterback’s precision straight into the sluice gate opening behind the mercenary.
"Fire in the hole!" Cole roared.
The mercenary turned, saw the olive-drab cylinder rolling between his boots, and opened his mouth to scream.
*BOOM.*
The detonation ripped through the enclosed wooden sluice, vaporizing the operative and detonating the unprimed C4 charges he had been preparing. The explosion tore a massive hole in the flume structure, throwing a geyser of water, splintered timber, and gray rock into the canyon air.
Cole hit the gravel floor of the ravine, rolling to his feet, carbine tucked into his shoulder. The air was thick with black cordite smoke and floating ash.
He cleared the immediate area with rapid, sweeping steps.
Both operatives were down. Miller was alive, sitting propped against a boulder, his hand pressed against a through-and-through gunshot wound in his shoulder, groaning but conscious.
Cole ran to Nora.
She was sitting where he had left her, shivering violently, her clothes soaked with cold river spray. When she saw Cole through the smoke—blood running down his face, his clothes torn, but standing tall—her breath hitched in her chest.
"You're alive," she whispered, her voice breaking.
Cole knelt beside her, dropping his carbine to the stones, and pulled her into his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder, her hands gripping the rough fabric of his vest with a ferocity that shook her entire frame.
"I told you I wasn't leaving you behind," Cole said softly, his hand resting gently against the back of her head.
Ranger trotted down the scree path, his tongue lolling, his tail giving a single, exhausted wag before he sat beside Nora, resting his massive head against her knee. She reached down with a trembling hand, burying her fingers in the dog’s thick fur.
"Thank you, Ranger," she murmured, tears finally breaking past her defenses and streaming through the dust on her cheeks. "Thank you both."
Above the gorge, the distant, rhythmic thumping of heavy rotor blades began to reverberate through the mountains.
Cole stood, retrieving his carbine and looking up through the narrow opening of the canyon toward the sky.
It wasn't a county rescue helicopter.
The black, unmarked silhouette of a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk crested the northern ridge of Black Ridge, banking steeply over the river valley. On its undercarriage, Cole caught the faint glint of a stabilized thermal imaging turret tracking their position.
Through the dead contractor’s earpiece, which was still dangling against Cole’s chest, a new voice came through the channel—not the British squad leader, but a deeper, smooth, chillingly familiar voice that made Nora freeze in Cole's arms.
"Well played, Chief Walker," the voice purred through the static. "Marcus was an idiot who thought this was about thirty million in estate bonds. He didn't understand that Nora's father built the guidance architecture for the entire sixth-generation orbital defense grid. And now, thanks to your heroic little rescue, you've brought her right to the extraction zone."
Cole’s eyes narrowed into slits of ice as he looked up at the circling black gunship.
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"Who the hell is this?" Cole demanded into the mic.
A soft chuckle rattled in the speaker. "I'm the man who signed your medical retirement papers five years ago, Cole. Now, step away from the girl, or I turn that ravine into a mass grave."
