Page 70 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

I fire twice over my shoulder without aiming. Suppressive, not targeted. The rounds punch into the smoke. It doesn't matter if I hit anyone. The muzzle flash marks my position and keeps them chasing.

The north door. The blast hole is still open, jagged aluminum framing the gray pre-dawn jungle beyond. I burst through, the metal edge catching my shoulder and slicing through the fabric of my shirt. The humid air hits my overheated skin.

Jungle. Mud. The gray light of almost-dawn filtering through dense canopy. I have maybe four seconds of lead on the pursuit team. A dancer's four seconds—an eternity and nothing at the same time.

I make it thirty meters into the tree line.

The tackle comes from the left. A blind side I never saw. A hostile positioned outside the facility specifically to catch runners. Two hundred pounds of body armor and trained muscle hits me at waist level and drives me into the mud.

The Beretta flies from my hand. The impact compresses my chest and steals every molecule of oxygen from my lungs.

I fight. Elbows, knees, the vicious thrash of a dancer's legs trained to generate force from impossible angles. I crack his face shield with a heel strike. He grunts, repositions, and a second pair of hands pins my wrists into the mud.

"Stop fighting." The voice above me is calm. Professional. Devoid of cruelty. English. Accented. "We are not going to hurt you."

A third operative binds my wrists behind my back with a zip tie. The plastic cuts into the skin. Another pulls the compass free from beneath the collar of the T-shirt, holding it up to the gray light. The silver casing catches the glow of the burning facility.

"Confirmed. It's her. And the device."

Rough black fabric drops over my head, sealing the world into darkness and the sound of ragged breathing.

The last image before the hood falls is the orange glow of the facility burning against the pre-dawn sky—and through the shattered north door, barely visible through the smoke, the glint of steel behind the armory crates.

Ivy. Still alive. Still breathing. Still holding her pistol. Still—inside.

Hands haul me to my feet. The mud sucks at my bare feet as they march me through the jungle, and somewhere in the distance, beyond the canopy, beyond the smoke, beyond the burning remains of the only safe place I've known since this war began—an engine screams.

The sound of a diesel Land Cruiser, pushing redline, tearing down a jungle road.

He's coming.

The thought burns bright behind the darkness of the hood. A promise made on a bed in a rusted room. A lesson still owed. A man who measures distance in windage, elevation, and heartbeats, racing to close the gap that might already be too wide.

He's coming, but it's already too late.

They push me into a vehicle. The door slams. The engine engages. The tires bite into the jungle road, and the vehicle accelerates away from the burning facility, away from the diesel scream growing louder in the distance, away from the man who taught me how to surrender everything and promised he'd earn it back.

17

The Siege

DAX

The Land Cruiser slides sideways in the mud, the rear end fishtailing as Rook slams the brakes. The diesel shudders to a halt thirty meters from the inferno.

The building is engulfed, the corrugated walls buckling in the heat.

I'm out of the vehicle before the engine dies. Boots in the mud. M4 up.

"Lily." The name is torn from my throat before tactical discipline can stop it. The smoke swallows the sound.

No response.

I breach the north doorway.

The door frame is gone—blown inward by a breaching charge, the jagged aluminum edges glowing orange. The interior is a shifting maze of flame and collapsed structure.

Smoke drops visibility to three meters. I pull the neck gaiter over my nose and mouth.