Chapter 4 - Breach and Clear
The crunch of cold snow under Ryan’s boots was the only sound in the dark pine forest surrounding his home, but inside his head, his mother’s strangled scream echoed like a gunshot.
He reached the crest of the ridge overlooking the estate.
Below him, the six-bedroom villa sat draped in shadows, a massive black monolith against the snow-covered valley. The main house was completely dark due to Ryan's earlier remote grid shutdown, but the driveway was illuminated by the harsh, blinding xenon headlights of two idling, unplated black Cadillac Escalades.
Through his green-tinted night-vision goggles, Ryan counted four figures moving around the perimeter.
Two men stood near the front porch, tactical rifles slung low across their chests. A third paced the length of the rear patio, scanning the tree line with a thermal monocular. The fourth—a broad-shouldered man wearing a heavy leather trench coat—stood inside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the great room, gesturing menacingly at Robert Mercer, who was kneeling on the floor with blood dripping from his nose.
Ryan drew his Sig Sauer, pulling the slide back a quarter-inch to verify a round was chambered, then silently eased it back into place.
He didn't approach from the main driveway. He knew every square inch of the property because he had designed its security infrastructure himself.
He moved silently around the northern perimeter, reaching the concealed subterranean drainage culvert that ran beneath the rear deck. The access hatch was buried under six inches of snow. Ryan cleared the powder with his gloved hand, punched a manual four-digit mechanical code into the backup keypad hidden behind a faux stone, and lifted the heavy steel grate.
He dropped into the darkness of the utility crawlspace beneath the house, his boots making no sound against the damp concrete floor.
He navigated the low-ceilinged tunnel, emerging into the climate-controlled basement corridor directly behind the wine cellar.
The basement was pitch-black. Ryan flipped his PVS-14 goggles down over his eyes. The world transformed into a crystal-clear, high-contrast green landscape.
Ten feet ahead, a guard was standing outside the heavy oak door of the wine cellar. He was wearing a tactical vest, holding a suppressed submachine gun, and lazily chewing on a toothpick while checking his glowing smartphone screen.
Inside the wine cellar, Ryan could hear the faint, muffled sounds of his sister Olivia crying, alongside the terrified whimpers of her six-year-old daughter.
Ryan didn't hesitate. He slipped off his tactical gloves, exposing his bare hands, and advanced down the hallway like a ghost.
The guard caught the subtle shift in air pressure half a second too late.
Before the man could raise his weapon or scream, Ryan stepped out of the shadows, clamped his left hand hard over the guard's mouth, and drove his right palm violently upward into the base of the man's jaw.
The guard’s head snapped back with a sickening crunch. Ryan wrapped his arm around the man’s neck, executing a precise carotid restraint. The guard thrashed frantically for three seconds, his heels scraping against the floorboards, before his eyes rolled back and his body went completely limp.
Ryan lowered the unconscious man silently to the floor, stripped his radio and weapon, and dragged his body into a nearby utility closet, locking the door behind him.
He turned to the wine cellar door. The keycard reader on the wall was dark due to the power outage, but the emergency mechanical override deadbolt was engaged from the outside.
Ryan turned the heavy steel lever. The deadbolt slid back with a loud clack.
He pulled the door open.
Olivia gasped, pulling her two young children behind her as she cowered against a rack of vintage wine bottles, holding a broken wooden table leg like a club.
"Get back!" she shrieked, her voice hysterically high. "Don't touch my children!"
"Olivia," Ryan said softly, lifting his night-vision goggles up onto his forehead so she could see his face in the dim ambient light filtering through the high window well. "It’s me."
Olivia froze. Her jaw dropped. The table leg slipped from her trembling fingers and clattered to the floor.
"Ryan?" she whispered, breaking into violent, uncontrollable sobs. "Oh God, Ryan... you came back?"
"Where is David?" Ryan asked, his voice steady and cold.
"He... he’s upstairs with Dad," she wept, falling to her knees and grabbing Ryan’s tactical jacket. "Ryan, I’m so sorry. I didn't know! David told me you agreed to give us the house! He told me you signed the papers! I didn't know about the loan... I didn't know about these terrible men!"
"Listen to me," Ryan said, kneeling down and taking his sister by the shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. "There is an emergency escape hatch behind the rear wall of the cellar. It leads directly out to the lower gazebo near the lake. Take the kids, run through the woods to the Miller family cabin half a mile down the shore, and lock yourselves inside. Do you understand me?"
"What about you?" she sobbed, clutching her children tightly. "There are four men upstairs with guns! They’re going to kill Dad!"
"They’re going to try," Ryan said.
He opened the concealed escape hatch behind a row of wooden wine casks, guided Olivia and the frightened children into the dark tunnel, and secured the hatch behind them.
With his family safe, Ryan turned back toward the basement stairwell leading up to the main floor.
He drew his Sig Sauer, stepped onto the bottom stair, and began his ascent.
Above him, in the great room, the sound of a heavy slap echoed through the open floor plan, followed by Callahan’s booming, lethal voice.
"You have two minutes left, Mr. Mercer. If the original deed isn't on this table by the time the clock turns, I will put a bullet through your son-in-law's kneecap, and then we will move on to your wife."
Ryan reached the top of the stairs, slipped into the shadowed vestibule behind the living room fireplace, and raised his weapon.
Through the crack in the doorframe, he saw Callahan standing over David, who was tied to a mahogany dining chair with duct tape, his face beaten bloody. Robert was sprawled on the floor nearby, clutching his broken ribs, sobbing hysterically.
Standing near the floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the snowy patio was Callahan's second-in-command, holding an assault rifle pointed at Susan, who was kneeling on the rug with her hands tied behind her back.
Ryan leveled his sight alignment directly onto the back of the second gunman's head.
He squeezed his trigger back to the wall, taking up the slack.
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Just as his finger began the final pressure to discharge the weapon, a blinding, deafening explosion shattered the floor-to-ceiling glass windows from the outside.
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