Eight crimson laser dots locked dead-center onto the contractors’ foreheads!
Two locked onto the drill operator’s hands!
Two locked onto Arthur Sterling-Vance’s vicuña chest!
The eight Apex contractors didn’t even attempt to raise their carbines.
Private mercenaries know when an operation is structurally terminal. They immediately released their weapon slings, dropped their rifles onto the wet tarmac, and sank flat onto their stomachs with their fingers laced behind their heads:
clack-clack-clack-clack.
The drill operator hit the emergency kill switch.
The deafening scream of the diamond core drill died instantly, leaving only the hiss of cooling water and the low rumble of our turboshaft engines.
TACK.
TACK.
TACK.
The sound of my hand-welted leather field boots stepping off the deployment gantry onto the wet asphalt was slow, unhurried, rhythmic, and concussive.
Every step fell with the mechanical, heavy cadence of a naval battery firing across an enclosed harbor.
