Chapter 2 - Tactical Insertion
The dark matte-black MH-60 Black Hawk didn't hover at safe altitude; it dropped like a falling anvil into the narrow alleyway, its twin engines roaring so loudly the surrounding concrete walls trembled. The downwash from the rotors kicked up a hurricane of dust, spent shell casings, and shattered glass, blinding the distant shooter on the rooftop.
Before the wheels even touched the asphalt, four men in unmarked charcoal-gray combat uniforms repelled down fast ropes. They didn't move like corporate security or municipal SWAT. Their movements were precise, violent, and devoid of wasted motion.
"Keystone is down! Tension pneumothorax, left lung! Move, move, move!"
A giant of a man—Director Marcus Vance, head of the Federal Strategic Operations Task Force—landed two feet from my bleeding form. Beside him was Doc Reyes, the unit’s lead trauma surgeon who double-timed on covert extractions.
"Kalin! Stay with me, kid," Marcus barked, his heavy hands instantly coming down on my shoulder. His eyes flicked to the occlusive dressing Clara had deliberately misapplied over my sucking chest wound. "Dammit, who sealed this without a chest seal valve? She’s suffocating on her own trapped air!"
Reyes didn't hesitate. He pulled a fourteen-gauge needle from his tactical vest, located my second intercostal space along the mid-clavicular line, and plunged it straight into my chest cavity.
A long, violent hiss of trapped air and blood escaped the needle.
The suffocating pressure crushing my heart and remaining lung vanished instantly. I gasped, a ragged, burning breath flooding back into my body as cold oxygen hit my system. Tears of agony leaked from the corners of my eyes, but my vision cleared.
"Decompression successful!" Reyes yelled over the deafening rotor wash. "Get the chest tube in! We need to move her NOW!"
"Marcus..." I choked out, blood spilling over my lower lip as I grabbed his sleeve. "The... the feed..."
"We got every single frame, Kalin," Marcus said, his face hardening into carved granite. His thumb brushed the hidden insignia inside my collar, which was still pulsing with a faint blue encryption LED. "Audio, video, biometrics, GPS positioning, and telemetry. We saw what he took. We heard what she whispered."
He looked toward the alley exit where Julian’s SUV had sped away toward the primary extraction point.
"Julian Croft thinks he just abandoned his nagging wife in a hot zone," Marcus growled, slipping his arms under my back and knees to lift me onto the tactical gurney. "He has no idea he just committed treason, attempted murder of a federal operative, and conspiracy against national security assets."
"He... he took my radio..." I gasped as Reyes hooked an IV directly into my jugular vein, pushing whole blood into my failing circulatory system.
"Let him run," Marcus replied, his voice chillingly calm as the gurney was winched up into the belly of the Black Hawk. "The higher a traitor climbs, the farther he has to fall. Today, you die to the world, Keystone. Tomorrow, we tear Croft Corporation apart brick by brick."
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As the cabin doors slammed shut and the helicopter banked violently into the gray sky, I looked down through the reinforced glass window.
Far below, Julian’s white armored SUV was pulling up to the secondary landing pad, completely unaware that the real storm had just taken flight above him.
