Chapter 22 - The First Blood
The four mercenaries moved swiftly into the living room, their night-vision goggles glowing with a faint, eerie green light. The leader signaled for them to split up: two moving toward the kitchen, two advancing down the main hallway toward the master bedroom.
Mateo waited, his heart hammering against his ribs. He let the first two men pass his position in the shadows, waiting for the absolute perfect moment.
He didn't have to wait long.
The mercenary advancing down the hallway stepped squarely onto the fourth floorboard—the one right outside the children's bedroom. It was the oldest, most warped board in the house.
CRACK.
The loud, protesting shriek of the old wood echoed like a gunshot in the silent house.
The mercenary flinched, looking down at his boots in surprise. In that singular fraction of a second, his focus was broken.
Laura lunged from the laundry alcove. She didn't hesitate. She didn't freeze. She raised the suppressed pistol and fired two rapid, precise shots directly into the unarmored gap beneath the mercenary’s Kevlar helmet. The man collapsed instantly, his heavy rifle clattering onto the hardwood floor.
"Contact left!" the second hallway mercenary roared, spinning wildly toward the muzzle flash, raising his automatic weapon.
Before the man could pull the trigger, Mateo stepped out from the living room shadows. He pumped the shotgun, the metallic clack-clack sounding like a death knell, and fired a devastating blast of buckshot at close range.
The heavy blast caught the mercenary squarely in the chest plate. The kinetic impact lifted the massive man entirely off his feet, throwing him backward through the drywall of the hallway, a cloud of white dust exploding into the air.
Two down. Two remaining in the kitchen.
"They're heavily armed! Return fire!" the squad leader screamed from the kitchen, abandoning all tactical discipline in the face of the brutal ambush.
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A hail of suppressed automatic gunfire ripped through the thin walls of the house. Vases shattered, family photographs exploded into shards of glass, and the colorful dinosaur drawings on the walls were shredded by hot lead.
Mateo and Laura dove to the floor, crawling rapidly through the debris, retreating deeper into the chaotic darkness of their home. The strike team thought they had the advantage, but Mateo knew every single inch of this house in the dark.
