Part 2
The standoff on that wind-scoured granite ledge lasted only three seconds, but it felt like a lifetime. The air crackled with tension, louder than the distant echoes of enemy sniper fire.
“Step away from the sniper, Sterling,” Marcus growled over the tactical radio, his heavy machine gun trained directly on the CIA liaison’s chest. “She takes the shot. If you twitch, I’ll put a dozen rounds through your Kevlar before you hit the dirt.”
Sterling slowly raised his hands, his face pale with a mix of fury and terror as Logan shoved him back onto the gravel.
I didn’t waste a single millisecond looking back. My eye locked onto the scope. The world narrowed down to the crosshairs, the howling desert wind, and the rhythmic beating of my own heart. In the distance, eight hundred and forty yards away, the DShK gunner was reloading through the narrow concrete aperture of the bunker. Standing directly behind him, shouting orders, was Victor Kane himself. I could see the metallic glint of the dead-man’s detonator clutched tightly in Kane’s left hand.
I adjusted two clicks for windage, inhaled deeply, let half the breath out, and squeezed the trigger.
The McMillan Tac-338 kicked into my shoulder with a familiar, thunderous force. The .338 Lapua Magnum round tore across the valley at nearly three thousand feet per second. Through the glass, I watched the impossible happen. The heavy armor-piercing bullet smashed through the gunner’s chest, instantly neutralizing the threat, before continuing its lethal trajectory and burying itself deep into Kane’s right shoulder. The warlord spun backward, collapsing against the refinery wall as the detonator flew from his shattered grip and skittered harmlessly across the concrete floor.
“Target hit! Bunker silenced! Move, move, move!” I shouted over the coms.
The Alpha Squad moved like a well-oiled machine. With the heavy gun suppressed, Marcus and Logan led the assault, kicking down the reinforced steel doors of the main processing plant while two corpsmen dragged Commander Miller into cover to stabilize his wounds. I scrambled down from the ledge, keeping my sidearm drawn as I drove Sterling ahead of me at gunpoint toward the breach.
Inside the dim, chemical-stained facility, the remaining mercenary guards threw down their weapons, utterly demoralized by the sudden loss of their leader. We cleared the lower level in under four minutes. In the center of the room, secured to a structural pillar beside a lead-lined canister marked with radiation hazard symbols, was Agent Nathan Cross. He was battered, bleeding from a superficial head wound, but very much alive.
Logan slashed through Cross’s zip-ties with a tactical knife while Marcus secured the Cesium-137 canister.
“You boys sure took your sweet time,” Cross coughed, rubbing his raw wrists before his eyes darted toward the doorway where I was guarding our prisoner. The moment Cross spotted Agent Sterling standing between two armed private contractors, his face drained of all color.
“What the hell is he doing here?!” Cross screamed, struggling to stand, pointing a trembling finger directly at Sterling. “Get away from him! He’s the traitor!”
The entire room went dead silent.
“What are you talking about, Cross?” Marcus demanded, lowering his weapon slightly to stare at the liaison.
“The ambush! The stolen Cesium!” Cross yelled, his voice echoing off the metal walls. “Kane didn’t steal it on his own! Sterling orchestrated the whole damn thing! He sold the coordinates and the codes to Kane for ten million deposited into a Swiss numbered account! He set this team up to get slaughtered today so there would be no witnesses left to trace the leak back to Langley!”
I felt a cold chill spike down my spine. I looked at Sterling. The panic on the bureaucrat’s face had completely vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating sneer.
“You’re a smart man, Cross,” Sterling said coldly. “Too bad none of you are leaving this valley alive.”
Before I could raise my rifle, Sterling’s two security contractors suddenly ripped flashbang grenades from their belts and hurled them directly at our feet.
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Part 3
“Cover! Eyes down!” I screamed, throwing myself over Agent Cross just as the blinding white detonation of two flashbang grenades ripped through the confined industrial hall.
A high-pitched ringing pierced my eardrums, washing away all ambient sound. Acrid gray smoke plumed into the air, turning the refinery floor into a chaotic maze of shadows and gunfire. Through the haze, the sharp crack of suppressed automatic rifles echoed. Sterling’s private contractors weren’t just security; they were elite mercenaries hired to clean up a multi-million-dollar treasonous conspiracy.
A bullet ricocheted off the steel vat inches above my head, showering my neck in sparks. I rolled hard to my left, blinking away the temporary blindness, my vision slowly returning in jagged, blurred shapes.
Across the room, Marcus was on one knee, blood streaming down his forearm where a grazing shot had bitten into his flesh. He was frantically trying to clear a jammed cartridge in his machine gun while one of Sterling’s mercenaries advanced on him, raising a customized carbine for an execution-style kill-shot.
There was no time to think. I didn’t have a clean line of sight from the floor, and standing up would expose me to the second contractor covering the exit. Instinct and thousands of hours of muscle memory took over. I scrambled backward, driving my shoulders against a metal scaffolding ladder, and hoisted the heavy McMillan Tac-338 to my eye.
The mercenary aiming at Marcus was shielded behind a thick, wire-reinforced observation window that separated the control booth from the main floor. He thought the thick ballistic glass gave him cover. He was wrong.
I aimed two inches above his center of mass to compensate for the glass deflection and squeezed the trigger. The .338 Magnum round shattered the reinforced pane into a million crystalline spiderwebs, punching cleanly through the barrier and catching the mercenary square in the chest. He collapsed instantly, his weapon clattering across the metal grating.
“Clear your left!” I yelled to Logan over the ringing in our headsets.
Logan pivoted on his heel just as the second contractor lunged from behind a shipping pallet with a tactical combat knife drawn. Logan dodged the initial thrust, grabbing the mercenary’s wrist and slamming his elbow violently into the man’s jaw. As the contractor stumbled backward, I transitioned to my sidearm, firing two rapid, controlled shots from my Sig Sauer that dropped him before he could reach for his holstered pistol.
With his hired guns dead, Sterling was entirely alone. He abandoned the radioactive canister and bolted toward the heavy reinforced exit doors, clutching a waterproof briefcase containing the offshore banking tokens and his escape codes.
He didn’t make it three steps.
Marcus, ignoring the blood running down his arm, lunged forward with terrifying speed. He tackled the CIA defector from behind, driving Sterling’s face hard into the concrete floor with a sickening thud. Sterling gasped for air, thrashing wildly, but Marcus was immovable. He grabbed the bureaucrat by the collar of his expensive tactical suit and hoisted him half-way off the ground before delivering a brutal, bone-crunching right hook to his jaw.
“That’s for Miller, you treasonous son of a bitch,” Marcus growled as Sterling went limp. He yanked Sterling’s arms behind his back, securing them tightly with heavy-duty zip-ties before patting him down for concealed weapons.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the hiss of leaking steam pipes and the heavy breathing of our squad. We quickly secured the Cesium-137 canister, applied a pressure dressing to Marcus’s arm, and hoisted the wounded Commander Miller onto a makeshift litter. Within twenty minutes, the rhythmic thumping of two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters echoed over the Syrian horizon, dust swirling around us as we loaded our people and the secured payload into the cabin.
Thirty-six hours later, we stood on the sun-drenched tarmac of Naval Amphibious Base Coronado in California. The salty Pacific breeze whipped across the runway as a heavily armed detail of Military Police escorted Richard Sterling out of an armored transport. He was shackled hand and foot, stripped of his suit, wearing a bright orange jumpsuit on his way to a federal military tribunal where he would spend the rest of his life in a maximum-security cell at Fort Leavenworth.
I stood near the tactical gear lockers, wiping down my rifle, when a tall shadow fell over me. I looked up. It was Marcus. His arm was bound in a clean white sling, and his usually stern, battle-hardened face looked uncharacteristically humbled.
For three years, this man had been the loudest voice in the room questioning my presence, arguing that the brotherhood of SEAL Team Six wasn’t built for a woman.
He looked at the rifle in my hands, then looked me dead in the eye. Slowly, deliberately, Marcus stepped to the side, clearing the walkway for me. He straightened his posture and extended his good hand.
“When Sterling had his hands on you out on that ledge,” Marcus said, his voice deep and steady, “I realized something I should have known the day you pinned that Trident on your chest. You aren’t just good for a woman, Morgan. You are one of the most lethal, disciplined operators I have ever had the honor of bleeding with.”
I took his hand, gripping it firmly. The mutual respect passing between us was worth more than any medal the Navy could award.
“We watch each other’s backs, Marcus,” I replied quietly. “That’s what Alpha Squad does.”
He nodded, a genuine grin breaking across his rugged face. “Damn right we do. Let’s go get a cold drink, operator. You earned it.”
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