My father—my terrified, corporate father who hadn’t held a weapon in thirty years—lunged out from behind his cover. He tackled Voss around the waist.
The two men crashed to the floor. Voss’s gun went off wildly, the bullet ricocheting off the ceiling. My father clawed at Voss’s face, fighting with the feral desperation of a man trying to buy back his soul.
“Get the tablet!” my father screamed, taking a brutal punch to the jaw from Voss.
I dropped the rifle and scrambled toward the tablet. The screen glowed maliciously in the dim light.
81% Complete.
Voss threw my father off him, raising his gun to execute him.
Lucas, finally free of his bindings, launched himself off the desk. He hit Voss like a freight train, driving his shoulder into Voss’s chest. The gun skittered away into the darkness. The two men engaged in brutal, hand-to-hand combat, trading bone-crunching blows. Six years of torture and captivity fueled Lucas’s fists, but Voss was fresh and uninjured.
88% Complete.
I looked back out the door. Ryan had reached the base of the comms tower. He was ripping open the gray junction box that housed the hardline fiber-optic cables.
I could hear Commander Hayes over the radio clipped to Mercer’s vest. “All units, converge on Building 32 and North Annex. Shoot to kill on unrecognized personnel.”
But they were too far away. They wouldn’t make it in time.
94% Complete.
“Pull it, Ryan!” I screamed, praying my voice carried over the wind and the fighting behind me. “Pull the cables!”
Ryan grabbed a thick fistful of the black fiber-optic cables inside the box. He braced his boots against the metal housing and yanked backward with all his might.
The sniper on the warehouse roof found his mark.
Crack.
I watched it happen in horrifying slow motion. The high-caliber round caught Ryan in the right hip. The impact spun him violently in the air like a broken doll. He smashed into the chain-link fence, a spray of crimson painting the silver wire.
“RYAN!” my father shrieked, watching from the floor as Lucas pinned Voss in a chokehold.
