Chapter 8 - Fire on the Nevada Flats
The interior of the kill house was blacker than the grave.
The mercenaries had barricaded the heavy entrance doors with steel ammo lockers, killing what little moonlight filtered through the ceiling vents. Five survivors remained, breathing hard in the darkness, their rifles aimed at the only breach point.
In the center of Room Two stood Lucas Vargas.
He was fifty years old, broad as a grizzly bear, with a thick gray beard and a scar running from his left ear to his throat. He held a modified FN SCAR heavy rifle, his eyes darting between the monitors of his handheld tactical receiver.
“Where is the rest of the team?” Vargas hissed into his radio.
Static answered him.
“Hendriks? Van Zyl? Report!”
Nothing. Only the soft, whistling wind blowing through the shoot-house ventilation baffles.
Then, above them, came a sound so faint it could have been a rat on the rafters: the click of a carabiner against a steel girder.
Vargas looked up.
A flashbang dropped through the ceiling grate.
It didn't detonate in the air. It hit the rubber floor, bounced once, and exploded with a blinding, ear-shattering concussion that rattled the teeth in Vargas’s skull.
BANG.
Before the smoke could clear, a figure descended from the ceiling on a fast-rope, hitting the ground with zero sound.
Mara Keane didn't use her rifle. The space was too tight, the engagement distance measured in inches.
She stepped into the first mercenary before he could recover from the flashbang, her left hand deflecting his rifle muzzle toward the wall while her right hand drove a six-inch combat knife upward under the lip of his ballistic vest.
The man gasped, his eyes bulging, as she stepped through his momentum and sent him to the floor.
The second shooter turned, firing wildly on full automatic. Rounds chewed through the rubber blocks, spraying acrid black dust into the air.
Mara dropped to one knee, slipped under the fire arc, drew Markham’s Beretta from her hip with her left hand, and fired three rounds into his center-mass: Pop-pop-pop.
The shooter fell backward into the doorway of Room Three.
Vargas dropped his rifle, pulling a heavy tactical sidearm from his chest rig, lunging toward the exit door leading to the catwalk.
Mara rose from the crouch like a spring uncoiling.
She caught him at the base of the metal stairs. Her boot struck the back of his right knee with surgical, bone-cracking force. Vargas roared in agony, his leg collapsing beneath him as he crashed onto the steel steps.
He spun on his hip, raising the pistol toward her face.
Mara didn't shoot.
She kicked the weapon straight out of his hand, the heavy steel pistol flying across the room and shattering against the far wall. Then, she planted her combat boot directly onto Vargas’s throat, pressing down until his eyes bulged against the veins in his temples.
Vargas stared up at her.
Through the darkness, the red laser of her holographic sight sat motionless between his eyes.
He looked at her face—the hazel eyes, the scarred jaw, the absolute absence of fear.
The recognition hit him like a physical blow.
“You...” Vargas choked out, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. “The cave... in the Shahi-Kot.”
“Staff Sergeant Mara Keane,” she whispered. “Callsign Wraith.”
“We... we buried you,” Vargas rasped, his hands clutching weakly at the leather of her combat boot.
“You missed,” Mara said.
The exterior doors of the shoot house were blown off their hinges with a hydraulic ram.
Master Chief Reigns and Commander Vance poured into the room, their weapon lights cutting through the lingering smoke, illuminating the three dead mercenaries and the wounded giant pinned beneath Mara’s boot.
Behind them, hovering tentatively in the doorway, were six trainees from Bravo 12, led by Corporal Miller. They carried flashlights, their faces pale, their eyes wide with absolute, horrified awe.
They took in the room.
The three dead tier-one contractors who had tried to wipe out the base.
The smoking brass on the floor.
And Staff Sergeant Mara Keane, standing over the most dangerous mercenary in the Western Hemisphere, completely untouched, her uniform coated in dust, her eyes steady as the North Star.
Vance stepped up to Vargas, pulled a pair of steel flex-cuffs from his belt, and kicked the mercenary onto his stomach with a sharp jerk of his boot.
“Package secured,” Vance said into his radio. “Federal authorities can begin their approach.”
Mara stepped back, lowered her rifle, and let out a long, quiet breath that seemed to carry four years of buried ghosts out into the desert night.
Miller looked at her, his voice trembling so hard he could barely form the words.
“Sergeant Keane...” Miller whispered. “You... you saved us.”
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Mara looked at the nineteen-year-old kid who had spent two weeks watching her fail.
“Get back to the mess hall, Corporal,” she said gently. “The range is closed for the night.”
