Page 121 of Silent Target

Smoke fills the opening.

The Inner Guard fires through it immediately.

Disciplined bursts tear across the corridor.

Rook returns fire.

Shark takes the left.

Falcon takes the right.

I move through the center.

The smoke clears through my thermal optic, revealing seven guards in the first rank and more behind them.

Forty highly trained operators.

Not three hundred.

Enough.

I fire at weapons, shoulders, and legs where possible. Men fall. Others replace them.

They move without panic.

One position collapses and the next closes around it.

A machine built from people trained to sacrifice themselves without question.

“Forward!” Rook orders.

We drive them back one section at a time.

The hallway becomes a storm of muzzle flashes, smoke, and red emergency light.

Fathom stays near Cobra, tracking Evie’s signal.

“I have her.”

“Where?”

“Control level. Twenty yards ahead and one floor below.”

“Alive?”

“Her transmitter is moving.”

Not good enough.

A man steps through the smoke.

Unlike the others, he wears no helmet.

Silver hair.

Black tactical uniform.

No rank or insignia.