Chapter 16 - The Ambush in the Pines
The Bavarian forest was blanketed in six inches of fresh powder. The air was minus four degrees, biting through our thermal undersuits as we lay prone along the ridgeline overlooking Route B85.
Below us, the two-lane highway snaked through a dense canyon of black pines, completely deserted at two in the morning.
Nathan lay to my left, peering through a long-range thermal spotter. Arthur was twenty yards to my right, his rifle resting on a snow berm, as calm and motionless as a stone gargoyle. Reyes was three miles down the road in an armored communications van, monitoring the Wiesbaden electronic relay.
"Target convoy is six minutes out," Reyes's voice crackled through our encrypted bone-conduction earpieces. "Three vehicles. Lead vehicle is an up-armored Mercedes G-Wagon with a heavy machine gun turret. Center vehicle is a modified six-wheel logistics transport. Rear guard is an armored Mercedes van. All transponders dark."
"Copy," I whispered. "Arthur, are you locked into the transponder relay?"
"Linked and waiting, Little Bird," my father replied softly. "Just like we used to practice on the training ranges in Georgia. On my mark, Reyes drops the electronic net."
Three minutes passed in agonizing silence. The only sound was the wind tearing through the pine needles and the faint crunch of freezing snow beneath our bodies.
Then, through the darkness, twin halogen beams sliced through the trees.
The convoy appeared, moving fast at fifty miles per hour. The heavy rumble of the six-wheel transport vibrated through the frozen ground beneath my chest.
"Mark," Arthur whispered.
Down on the road, the lead G-Wagon suddenly lurched as its engine management system seized under Reyes's cybernetic pulse. The brake lights flared violently, the heavy SUV sliding sideways across the icy asphalt before slamming into the guardrail.
The center transport swung hard to avoid the wreck, its tires skidding across the snow, coming to a dead stop in the center of the road.
"Now!" Nathan barked.
Arthur fired first. A single suppressed round shattered the windshield of the rear escort van, disabling the driver before the private contractors could deploy. Nathan followed with a coordinated burst into the G-Wagon's turret gunner, dropping the heavy weapon before it could swing toward the tree line.
"Move!" I shouted, sliding down the embankment on my heels, my rifle raised.
Snow exploded around our boots as Nathan and I hit the asphalt. Four contractors tumbled out of the side doors of the escort vehicles, their rifles raising, but their coordination was shattered by the total blackout of their communications headsets.
I brought my sights up, firing two controlled bursts into the center mass of the nearest shooter as he cleared the van's bumper. He collapsed into the slush. Nathan took out two more with rapid, surgical double-taps from his short-barreled rifle.
"Transport is secured!" Arthur called out, moving past us toward the rear cargo bay of the six-wheel truck with a breaching crowbar. "Claire, cover the southern ridge! We have incoming signals!"
I turned, my rifle scanning the dark trees above the road. The silence that followed the gunfire was suffocating.
Arthur slammed the crowbar into the cargo door's hydraulic latch, wrenching it open with a metallic shriek.
Inside, bathed in the red glow of emergency battery lights, sat a single steel shipping crate stamped with Department of Defense serial numbers. Sitting on top of the crate was an aluminum briefcase cuffed to the wrist of a dead courier who had taken a ricochet through the canvas siding.
"We have the core," Arthur announced, cutting the courier's cuff with bolt cutters. He snapped the briefcase open, illuminating a glowing cryptographic terminal. "And the full client registry. Sterling sold access to five foreign governments."
"Claire!" Nathan's voice screamed through the earpiece. "Look at the ridge!"
I swung my rifle up toward the tree line we had just vacated.
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Standing fifty yards above us on the crest of the hill, illuminated by the pale moonlight, was a squad of six men dressed in unmarked black winter parkas. But they weren't aiming at us.
They were aiming down into the canyon with a heavy anti-tank missile launcher.
