Part 2
“Put the gun down, Sergeant!” The rookie’s voice cracked, but his hands were steady as he unholstered his own weapon, aiming it squarely at Riker’s back. “She’s trying to save his life!”
Riker’s jaw ticked. For a agonizing second, the pressure of his 9mm against my temple increased. I shifted my weight, calculating the exact angle to break his wrist and take his weapon, but the wail of approaching sirens echoed through the valley. Riker cursed, lowering his gun and shoving me away.
“This isn’t over, Vance,” he hissed, his eyes burning with a venom that went far beyond a bruised ego.
I ignored him, lunging back to Arthur. The tourniquet held. I kept pressure on his wounds until the EMTs swarmed the scene, loading him onto a stretcher. As the ambulance doors slammed shut, I looked back at the tree line. The man in the dark coat was gone, leaving only crushed grass where he had been standing. I memorized the tire tracks he left behind.
Two hours later, I was back in the harsh, fluorescent glare of St. Jude’s Hospital. I had showered, changed into fresh scrubs, and walked straight to the Intensive Care Unit. Arthur had survived surgery, but he was barely clinging to life. He was a mechanic from the local freight yard, a nobody in a quiet town. So why did a professional hitman want him dead? And why was a dirty cop providing the distraction?
I walked into Arthur’s darkened room, the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor the only sound.
That’s when I noticed the shadow moving behind the privacy curtain.
A doctor in a white lab coat was standing over Arthur’s bed. But something was wrong. His posture was too rigid. His boots were heavy, tactical leather—not hospital-issued clogs. And in his gloved hand was a syringe filled with a clear liquid, aimed directly at Arthur’s IV line.
“What are you doing?” I asked, stepping into the room and blocking the exit.
The man turned. It was him. The man from the tree line. Up close, his eyes were dead, devoid of any emotion. He didn’t say a word. He just dropped the syringe, reached into his coat, and pulled out a suppressed tactical knife.
He lunged at me with terrifying speed, thrusting the blade toward my throat.
Fourteen months of forced peace instantly evaporated. The SEAL Commander took over. I slipped inside his guard, deflecting his wrist with my left forearm while my right fist pistoned into his floating rib. The bone cracked like a gunshot. He grunted, stumbling back, but quickly recovered, slashing the blade across my ribs in a wide arc. The sharp steel tore through my scrubs, biting into my skin.
I didn’t feel the pain. I grabbed an aluminum IV pole, spun it like a bo staff, and smashed it directly into his kneecap. As his leg buckled, I closed the distance, grabbed the back of his neck, and drove his face ruthlessly into the heavy steel edge of a medical cart.
He collapsed to the linoleum, a bloody, dazed mess, the knife skittering across the floor.
I placed my boot heavily on his throat, applying just enough pressure to stop his breathing. “Who sent you?” I whispered, my voice dripping with ice. “Why do you want a mechanic dead?”
The assassin choked out a wet, rattling laugh. “You… you’re dead, nurse. You have no idea what you just walked into. The cops… the yard… we own it all.”
Before I could crush his windpipe, the heavy oak door to the ICU room clicked shut behind me.
“He’s right, Maya,” a familiar, gravelly voice said.
I turned my head slowly. Sergeant Riker was standing inside the room. But this time, there was no rookie to stop him. He raised his service weapon, aiming it dead at my chest, his finger already tightening on the trigger.
“You really should have just paid the five hundred bucks,” Riker smiled.
Part 3
“Arthur found the crates,” Riker said, taking a slow step into the room, keeping the gun leveled at my heart. “He was fixing a rig down at the freight yard and got nosey. Opened a shipment marked for automotive parts and found two dozen fully automatic rifles. We use this backwater town to move heavy ordnance because no one looks twice. I make sure of it.”
I kept my hands visible, my mind racing through tactical options. Riker was arrogant, but he wasn’t untrained. He had the distance. If I rushed him, I’d take a bullet to the center mass.
“So you staged a car crash?” I asked, keeping my voice steady, trying to buy time. “That’s messy, Marcus.”
“It was supposed to look like an accident,” Riker spat, glaring at the bleeding hitman groaning on the floor. “Until you showed up playing Super Nurse and kept him breathing. And now, I have to clean up this entire mess. I’ll tell the department this scumbag broke in to finish the job, and you tragically got caught in the crossfire before I could take him out. A hero cop saves the day.”
He shifted his weight to fire.
I dropped to the floor a fraction of a second before the gun went off. The bullet shattered the heavy glass window behind me. In the same fluid motion, I grabbed the fallen hitman’s tactical knife from the tiles and hurled it with everything I had.
The heavy steel handle caught Riker squarely between the eyes with a sickening crack.
He stumbled backward, firing a wild shot into the ceiling. I didn’t give him a second to recover. I launched myself off the floor, tackling him around the waist. We crashed hard into the corridor, shattering a tray of medical supplies. Riker roared, punching me brutally in the jaw. My vision flashed white, but I ignored the pain.
I grabbed his shooting arm, wrapping my legs around his neck in a flawless triangle choke, isolating his elbow. I pulled down with violent, snapping force. Riker’s elbow popped. He screamed, dropping the gun. I rolled into a mount, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed my fist into his nose. Once. Twice. The third strike knocked him entirely unconscious.
I sat back on my heels, panting, my knuckles bruised and bloody.
“Commander Vance! Hold your fire!”
I looked up. The young rookie cop was sprinting down the hallway, but he wasn’t alone. Behind him were six men in dark windbreakers with NCIS emblazoned in bright yellow letters across their backs, their assault rifles raised and sweeping the corridor.
The rookie looked at Riker’s unconscious body, then at the assassin bleeding in the room, and finally at me. “I… I ran your plates after the crash, Ma’am,” he stammered. “When I saw your active security clearance, I called the federal tip line. They were already investigating a weapons ring in this county.”
An older man with sharp grey hair and a stern face walked past the tactical team and extended a hand to help me up. “Special Agent Carter,” he said. “We’ve been hunting Riker’s crew for six months. We just couldn’t prove he was the inside man until his rookie flipped on him ten minutes ago.”
I took a deep breath, looking down at my bloodstained scrubs. “Arthur?”
“He’ll live,” Carter said, nodding to a medic who was rushing into the ICU room. “Thanks to you.”
Carter paused, his eyes dropping to the pocket of my torn jacket where the gold edge of my Trident was visible. “I read your file, Commander. Fourteen months is a long time to hide from the world. But looking at this hallway… I’d say your instincts are fully intact. The Navy needs its best operators back. What do you say?”
I reached into my pocket, pulling out the heavy gold Trident. I rubbed my thumb over the eagle’s wings. For a year, I thought this life was over. I thought I was broken. But as the adrenaline slowly faded, leaving behind a sharp, clear sense of purpose, I realized the truth. You don’t ever stop being a SEAL.
I looked Agent Carter in the eye and pinned the Trident to my collar. “When do I deploy?”
What do you think of this story? Please leave a like and share your thoughts in the comments. Your support means a lot to us and inspires us to keep writing more meaningful and powerful stories. Thank you! 👍❤️
