Part 2
The Spin Ghar mountains didn’t just want to kill me; they wanted me to suffer first. For three agonizing days, I ghosted through the jagged peaks in negative fourteen-degree weather, my water freezing in its tube, my muscles burning with lactic acid and sheer exhaustion. Survival wasn’t a choice anymore; it was a stubborn refusal to die. Using my thermal optics, I bypassed their external patrols and tracked the faint, warm exhaust plumes venting from the mountain’s natural crevices—the respiratory system of Al-Fayed’s subterranean fortress.
I finally found the primary ventilation shaft on the third twilight. I repelled down a sixty-foot vertical drop in total darkness, my combat boots silently touching the steel grate above their central hangar. Peering through the mesh, my blood ran cold.
It wasn’t just a hideout. It was a fully operational command center, packed with black-market American tech. And strapped to a steel chair in the center of the concrete floor was Marcus. His face was a swollen, bloody mask, his uniform stripped of its insignia.
Standing over him was Tariq Al-Fayed. But the warlord wasn’t speaking Arabic; he was speaking perfect, unaccented English.
“Your command wrote you off three days ago, Captain,” Al-Fayed sneered, pacing around Marcus. “Just like our mutual friend in Washington said they would. You really thought this ambush was my idea? You got too close to the supply chain, Vance. This wasn’t an op. It was a housecleaning.”
My grip tightened on the steel grate. A mole. A high-level traitor inside our own intelligence network had sold Team 6 out to protect an illegal weapons pipeline. That was the twist. We hadn’t been outplayed; we’d been betrayed by our own blood.
Al-Fayed gestured to a corner of the room. A mercenary stepped forward, hoisting a heavy, professional-grade broadcast camera, pointing its lens directly at Marcus.
“We are broadcasting this live on the dark web,” Al-Fayed announced, a sickening grin spreading across his face. “The great American hero, executed like a dog, courtesy of the very weapons his country sold me.” He drew a massive, serrated combat knife, pressing the flat of the blade against Marcus’s bruised cheek.
I had to move. Now.
I crawled back up the shaft, breaking out onto the cliff face that overlooked the main hangar doors. The wind was howling, whipping up a massive, blinding sandstorm that was rapidly swallowing the canyon below. I dropped to my stomach on a narrow ridge, deploying the bipod of my SR-25.
I ranged the target. Eight hundred and forty yards. Through a narrow gap in the heavy steel blast doors.
The wind was a nightmare, gusting at twenty knots left to right. I dialed in my scope, factoring in the spindrift, the elevation, and the heavy crosswind. My breathing slowed. The chaotic roar of the storm faded into total silence. I visualized the trajectory.
I exhaled fully, pausing at the bottom of my breath.
Squeeze.
The rifle kicked my shoulder. A second and a half later, the 7.62mm round punched perfectly through the narrow door gap and exploded into the cameraman’s chest. He was dead before the camera shattered against the concrete floor.
Chaos erupted inside the hangar. Insurgents shouted in panic, sweeping their rifles wildly, thinking an entire strike force had just breached the perimeter.
“Find the shooter!” Al-Fayed screamed, ducking behind a stack of weapon crates.
Outside, the sandstorm finally hit with apocalyptic fury. Visibility dropped to zero. This was my element. I wasn’t just a sniper anymore; I was a ghost.
Slinging my rifle, I drew my suppressed MK23 pistol in my right hand and my fixed-blade Karambit knife in my left. I rappelled directly down into the blinding storm, landing softly just outside the blast doors.
Two guards rushed out, blinded by the blowing sand. I grabbed the first man from behind, clapping a hand over his mouth while driving the Karambit cleanly into his carotid artery. As he fell silently, I spun on my heel, firing two suppressed rounds into the second guard’s chest, catching his body before it could hit the ground and make a sound.
I dragged them into the shadows, the storm erasing my tracks in seconds. I was inside the wire. But as I slipped through the massive steel doors into the echoing expanse of the hangar, I realized the worst was yet to come. The execution was ruined, but Al-Fayed wasn’t leaving without a body count. I could hear his voice barking new orders over the intercom, preparing to burn the evidence.
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Part 3
The hangar was a labyrinth of stacked military crates, armored vehicles, and steel shipping containers. I moved through the shadows with lethal fluidity, a predator in the dark. Every footstep was calculated, every breath measured. I dropped three more guards in close-quarters combat—a snapped neck here, a suppressed double-tap there—leaving no trace of my presence until it was entirely too late for them.
I tracked Marcus’s drag marks to a reinforced steel container near the back of the facility. I peered around the corrugated edge, and my heart slammed violently against my ribs.
Marcus was slumped against the metal wall, semi-conscious. But the real nightmare was strapped directly to his chest: a massive block of C4 explosive, wired tightly to a digital receiver. Al-Fayed stood ten feet away, a dead-man’s detonator clutched tightly in his right fist. If he pressed the trigger, or if his grip relaxed, Marcus and half this hangar would be vaporized into ash.
“I know you’re in here, Viper,” Al-Fayed’s voice echoed, dripping with malice as his eyes scanned the shadows. He had accessed Marcus’s intel; he knew my callsign. “You Americans are so predictable. Always coming back for your strays. Come out, or I turn your Captain into red mist.”
I needed a distraction, something catastrophic enough to break his focus for a fraction of a second.
Thirty yards to my left sat the base’s indoor fuel depot—dozens of fifty-gallon drums of high-octane diesel. I holstered my pistol, unclipped an M67 fragmentation grenade from my chest rig, and pulled the pin.
“Catch,” I whispered to myself.
I hurled the grenade over the stacks of crates, aiming perfectly for the center of the depot.
BOOM.
A massive fireball erupted, blowing the steel roof off the depot and sending a shockwave of heat through the hangar. Flaming diesel rained down, igniting the surrounding supply pallets. The sheer concussive force knocked Al-Fayed off balance, his head whipping toward the inferno in sudden terror.
It was the only opening I would get.
I sprinted from the shadows, closing the gap in two explosive seconds. Before Al-Fayed could turn back, I launched myself into the air, driving my knees squarely into his chest. We crashed to the concrete floor, his finger desperately straining to push the detonator button.
He was a massive man, fueled by adrenaline and rage. He punched me hard in the ribs—right where the RPG blast had bruised me days ago. White-hot pain blinded me, but I didn’t let go of his right arm. He bucked violently, trying to throw me off, his thumb inching dangerously close to the red switch.
“Die, you bitch!” he roared, thrashing wildly.
I roared back, channeling every ounce of my agonizing three-day trek into my right hand. I drew my Karambit combat knife in a reverse grip and slammed it down with everything I had. The razor-sharp, curved blade punched straight through the back of Al-Fayed’s right hand, impaling flesh and bone, pinning his palm permanently against the hard plastic casing of the detonator.
He shrieked in absolute agony, his fingers locking into a rigid spasm. He couldn’t press the button, and because of the blade wedged into the plastic, he couldn’t let go.
Before he could reach for his sidearm with his left hand, I spun, wrapping my legs around his throat in a brutal triangle choke, and torqued my hips. A sickening crack echoed over the roaring fire. Al-Fayed went limp, his dead eyes staring blankly at the burning ceiling.
I scrambled off his massive body and rushed to Marcus. He coughed heavily, blinking through swollen eyes as he looked at me.
“Jenkins… I ordered you to leave,” he wheezed, managing a weak, bloodstained smile.
“You know I’m terrible at taking orders, Cap,” I breathed, drawing my wire cutters from my pouch.
I quickly analyzed the C4 rig. It was a complex anti-tamper circuit, but standard-issue black market tech. Red, yellow, blue, and black wires. I traced the main power feed directly from the receiver battery. Yellow. It had to be yellow. My hands were perfectly steady, despite the adrenaline flooding my system. I clipped the yellow wire.
The digital display blinked once, then went completely dead.
“Good girl,” Marcus whispered, his head rolling back.
“We’re not done yet. Up on your feet.” I hauled him over my shoulder, groaning under his dead weight.
The hangar was fully engulfed in flames now, the remaining insurgents scrambling to contain the blinding inferno. I dragged Marcus toward an idling MRAP—a heavy armored ammo truck parked near the blast doors. I threw him into the passenger seat, jumped behind the wheel, and slammed the transmission into gear.
The heavy diesel engine roared to life. I floored the accelerator, the massive steel bumper smashing through the closing blast doors and launching us out into the raging sandstorm. Gunfire pinged harmlessly off our ballistic glass as we barreled down the treacherous mountain road, smashing through a wooden barricade at seventy miles an hour.
With one hand on the steering wheel, I grabbed the truck’s satellite long-range radio.
“Any US asset on this net, this is DEVGRU Viper-Actual. I have VIP package intact. We are hot and taking fire at grid coordinate Alpha-Niner-Seven. Requesting immediate close air support!”
Static hissed, followed by the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
“Viper-Actual, this is Outlaw Two-One, Apache gunship. We see your headlights. Keep your heads down, we are rolling in hot.”
I slammed the brakes, drifting the MRAP behind a massive rock formation. Seconds later, a torrential rain of 30mm chain-gun fire and Hellfire missiles tore into the canyon behind us, utterly obliterating the pursuing vehicles and sealing the cave entrance in a catastrophic avalanche of fire, smoke, and rock.
I slumped against the steering wheel, my whole body trembling as the adrenaline finally crashed. Marcus reached over, resting a bloody, shaking hand on my shoulder.
“You saved my life, Sarah,” he said quietly.
“We fight out together, Marcus,” I replied, looking up through the shattered windshield as the Apache hovered above us, its searchlight piercing the mountain dust. “Always.”
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