Chapter 8 - The Kitchen Ambush
Before Miller could pull me back, I stepped out from the pantry doorway, lifting the Walther PPK with both hands locked in a textbook combat stance.
"Drop the weapon, Alpha-One," I commanded, my voice cutting through the hum of the rain outside with razor-sharp authority.
The lead operative froze mid-motion, his tactical rifle swinging toward my voice with terrifying speed. But he hesitated for a split second—a fatal micro-second of human hesitation caused entirely by seeing an elderly woman with silver hair holding a gun instead of a frail grandmother begging for her life.
That fraction of a second was all Sergeant Miller needed.
Miller lunged out of the hallway, slamming his shoulder directly into the operative’s chest and driving him hard against the refrigerator. The man's rifle clattered across the tiled floor, sliding under the kitchen table.
The second operative instantly pivoted, raising his weapon toward Miller’s back.
I didn't hesitate. I squeezed the trigger.
The Walther barked once—a sharp, clean crack that pierced the night air. The round caught the second operative squarely in the reinforced ceramic plating of his tactical vest, spinning him violently off balance and sending him crashing into the kitchen island.
"Clear!" Miller roared, wrestling the first operative to the ground and slamming a knee into his spine while slapping zip-ties across his wrists.
The third operative, who had been lingering near the front hallway, didn't try to engage. Instead, the sound of a heavy metallic clatter echoed from the foyer—followed by a frantic hiss of escaping gas.
"He dropped a phosphorus thermal grenade!" I screamed, dropping low to the floor. "Out! Everyone out through the patio—now!"
We scrambled across the kitchen floor, dragging the bound intruders behind us as a blinding white wall of intense, chemical heat erupted from the front hallway, devouring the drywall and turning the living room into an inferno in less than three seconds.
We spilled out onto the back lawn just as the front windows blew outward in a shower of fiery glass.
Panting heavily in the pouring rain, coughing from the thick, acrid smoke, Miller stared back at the burning husk of my home. "My God... they actually did it. They burned the entire house to the ground."
May you like
"No, Sergeant," I said, wiping soot from my cheek with a steady hand, my eyes fixed on the black-painted tactical van screeching away down the street. "They didn't burn it to hide the evidence. They burned it because the master server in the sub-basement wasn't destroyed—it was missing."
---
