Chapter 6 - The Crosshairs at the Tree Line
The red laser dot danced across the white dust of the bedroom floor like a living thing, steady and merciless.
Through the cracked glass of the rear window, the matte-black van sat half-swallowed by the thick Virginia pine shadows at the edge of the property line. On its roof, the long, menacing barrel of an anti-materiel rifle tracked slowly, adjusting its elevation to match the movement of the Federal Marshals swarming the front porch.
“Federal Marshals! Clear the perimeter!” a voice blared through a bullhorn outside, oblivious to the high-caliber death waiting fifty yards away in the timber.
My tactical instincts screamed in unison. I grabbed the unconscious operative by his tactical vest and hurled him behind the solid oak bedframe, using his heavy body as a makeshift shield just as a massive, thunderous crack shook the farmhouse foundations.
Boom.
The rear window didn't just shatter; it vaporized. A fifty-caliber armor-piercing round tore through the exterior siding, punched completely through the interior drywall, and obliterated the doorframe of the bedroom with a deafening screech of torn timber and metal. Plaster dust exploded into a choking white fog that filled the room in a heartbeat.
“Contact! Front porch! Sniper at the tree line, zero-eight-zero grid!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, diving flat onto the floorboards and pulling my encrypted cell phone from my tactical pocket.
“Commander Merrick? Report!” a voice crackled from the hallway as a pair of tactical-gear-clad Marshals rushed through the smashed bedroom door, weapons raised.
“Get down!” I barked, grabbing the lead agent by his Kevlar vest and hauling him down as a second heavy round slammed into the front porch pillars outside, spraying wood shrapnel across the yard. “They’ve got an overwatch position in the black van by the tree line! They’re setting up a kill zone!”
Marshal Vance—a weathered supervisory agent with graying temples—crawled across the floor beside me, his eyes wide as he processed the devastation. “How many?”
“At least two in the vehicle, professional grade,” I said, my voice dropping into the cold, flat cadence of an intelligence briefing. “They aren't local thugs. That’s a military payload. My father’s partners are trying to sanitize this entire location before the forensic audit hits the state police servers.”
Outside, the Marshals outside scrambled behind their armored SUVs, returning suppressive fire with automatic rifles toward the distant tree line, but the heavy tactical glass of the van absorbed the rounds like paper.
“We can’t stay in this house,” Vance shouted over the din of automatic fire. “The structure is too compromised. If they bring in incendiary rounds, this place goes up like a tinderbox!”
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“There’s an old root cellar hatch beneath the back porch,” I said, unlatching the stolen lockbox from the floor and securing it tightly under my arm. “And it connects to a drainage culvert leading straight out past their flank. Cover me while I move.”
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