Chapter 17
KANE
The explosion tears through the loading dock like the fist of God.
I grab Willa and pull her down as the shockwave hits, covering her body with mine. Metal shrieks. Glass shatters. The entire facility shudders on its foundation. Through the chaos, I hear Kessler shouting orders, his tactical team scattering for cover.
"You good?" I ask Willa.
"Yeah." She's still clutching the data drive. "Odin?"
The dog is pressed against her leg, shaken but unhurt. Smart animal stayed low during the blast.
"Stryker, report!"
"We're clear!" Stryker's voice crackles through comms. "That was Mercer—rigged some of their own ordnance at the loading dock. Bought you some breathing room, but it won't last!"
The emergency lighting flickers. Chemical alarms start screaming throughout the facility. Something ruptured in the explosion—I can smell it now, acrid and wrong. Component A or B, maybe both. If they mix, we've got minutes before this whole place becomes a gas chamber.
"We need to move!" I haul Willa to her feet. "Stay behind me!"
We push forward through the smoke and chaos. Kessler's team is regrouping, but the explosion disrupted their formation. Three of his men are down, two more dragging wounded toward the exits. The odds just improved from impossible to merely suicidal.
I engage the nearest hostile, controlled pairs to center mass. He drops. Willa fires past my shoulder, suppressing another operative trying to flank us. She's learning. Getting better with every engagement.
"Exit's blocked!" Stryker shouts over comms. "Fire's spreading from the loading dock. You need alternate egress!"
I scan the facility. The main entrance is behind Kessler's remaining forces. Loading dock is an inferno. That leaves the emergency exits on the east wall—but they'll be locked down, probably rigged.
"East emergency exit," I decide. "Willa, stay close!"
We move through the burning facility, trading fire with Kessler's team as we go. The chemical processors are rupturing one by one, venting toxic fumes into the air. My eyes water. Throat burns. We don't have long.
A figure steps out from behind a storage tank, rifle leveling at Willa.
I put two rounds in his chest before he can fire. He goes down hard.
"Keep moving!"
We reach the emergency exit. It's locked, reinforced steel, electronic lock. I'm reaching for breaching charges when Willa steps forward with a small device Tommy gave her.
"Let me." She attaches it to the lock. Three seconds later, the door clicks open. "Tommy thought we might need it."
"Remind me to give him a raise."
We burst through the exit into the Montana night, Odin right behind us. Cold air hits my face like a slap after the chemical-laced atmosphere inside. Behind us, the facility is fully engulfed, flames reaching toward the stars.
"Vehicle's two hundred meters north," Stryker's voice guides us. "But Kane, you've got a problem—Kessler just exited through the west side. He's coming for you."
Of course he is.
"Get Willa to the vehicle," I order. "I'll handle Kessler."
"Like hell." Willa chambers a round. "We do this together."
There's no time to argue. Kessler emerges from the smoke like something out of a nightmare, tactical vest scorched, face blackened with soot, rifle up and tracking.
He sees us. Adjusts his aim.
I fire first. My round catches his rifle, knocking it from his hands. He doesn't slow down. Just keeps coming, drawing his sidearm as he closes the distance.
"Run!" I shove Willa toward Stryker's position. "Go!"
She hesitates for one fatal second. That's all Kessler needs.
He's on me before I can bring my weapon around. His fist catches my jaw, snapping my head back. I taste blood. Counter with an elbow to his ribs. He grunts but doesn't go down. Former Delta operators don't go down easy.
We crash into each other like freight trains. He's good—better than good. Every move is textbook close-quarters combat. Strikes to vulnerable points. Grappling for weapon control. Brutal efficiency honed by years of training and combat.
My rifle goes flying, knocked loose by a vicious strike to my wrist. Now it's just fists and elbows and knees, two operators trained in the same kill-house, the same doctrine, the same ruthless efficiency.
He drives me backward into a concrete wall. The impact drives the air from my lungs. His hand goes for my throat. I deflect, grab his arm, attempt an arm bar. He counters, breaks free, lands a brutal hook to my ribs that cracks something.
Pain explodes through my side. Old injury. He knows it, too—saw my file, studied my weaknesses. He presses the advantage, another strike to the same ribs. Then another.
I drop, roll away, come up gasping. He's already on me. Relentless.
Behind us, another section of the facility collapses with a roar of tearing metal. Chemical fog rolls across the ground, glowing faintly toxic in the firelight. We're running out of time. The air itself is becoming poison.
Kessler lunges again. I catch his punch, redirect his momentum, and send him stumbling into a support pillar. He recovers fast—too fast—spinning back with a knife I didn't see him draw.
The blade slashes across my forearm. Not deep, but enough to bleed. Enough to slow me down.
"You're getting old, Kane," Kessler taunts, circling. "Soft. That girl's made you weak."
"That girl's made me human," I counter, watching the knife. "Something you wouldn't understand."
He feints left, attacks right. The knife comes at my throat. I deflect with my forearm—feels like fire—and catch his wrist. We grapple for control of the blade, faces inches apart, both of us bleeding and burned and running on pure adrenaline.
"Hart trusted you!" Kessler snarls. "And your team made him choose—his daughter's life or the truth. That fear killed him just as surely as a bullet."
"I didn't know!" The words tear out of me. "We were following orders! Protecting..."
"Protecting nothing!" He drives his knee into my injured ribs. The pain whites out my vision. "You protected your careers! Your precious black ops clearance! While Hart died alone, afraid they'd kill his daughter!"
The knife inches closer to my throat. My grip is slipping. The chemical burns on my hands make holding anything agony. He's stronger than me right now. Fresher. Less damaged.
I'm going to lose.
A gunshot cracks through the chaos.
Kessler jerks sideways as the round impacts his tactical vest. Not a kill shot—center mass, stopped by armor—but enough to break his concentration. He releases me, stumbling back.
I see Willa fifty meters away, her pistol raised, Stryker beside her providing cover.
Instead of running to safety, she stayed. Saved my life.
Kessler sees her too. His expression twists with rage and recognition. "Hart's daughter. The reason he died silent."
"Don't." I force myself upright despite the screaming pain in my ribs. "She had nothing to do with..."
"She had everything to do with it!" Kessler draws his backup sidearm. "Hart loved her more than truth. More than justice. More than his brothers in Delta. So I'm going to take her. Make you watch. Make you feel what Hart felt."
He pivots, weapon tracking toward Willa.
I don't think. Just move.
Tackle him from the side as he fires. The round goes wide, sparking off concrete. We hit the ground in a tangle of limbs. His weapon skitters away. Mine's somewhere in the smoke. Just us now. Just pain and rage and guilt and the ghost of Michael Hart watching everything.
I get on top, land three solid punches to his face. His nose breaks with a wet crunch. Blood sprays. But he doesn't stop fighting. Bucks me off, reverses position, gets his hands around my throat.
The world starts to gray at the edges. Chemical fumes burn my lungs. His grip tightens like a vice.
I bring my knee up hard into his groin. Not clean. Not honorable. But effective.
His grip loosens just enough. I break free, gasping, roll away. Spot my sidearm three meters away in the toxic fog.
Kessler sees it too. We both lunge.
I get there first. Spin. Weapon up.
He freezes, halfway to his feet, eyes locked on my barrel.
Should finish it. Should put him down permanently. One round, right between his eyes, problem solved.
But I don't.
Behind us, the facility's chemical alarms reach a crescendo. Something inside detonates—not an explosion, but a massive venting of pressurized gases. Component A and B mixing in the atmosphere. Anyone still inside is dead. Anyone downwind has minutes.
"You should run," Kessler says, spitting blood. "Unless you want to die choking on the same chemicals Hart discovered."
"Why?" I keep my weapon trained on him. "Why come after her? After us? What's the endgame?"
"Justice." He wipes blood from his mouth. "Hart was my brother. We served together for ten years. Iraq. Afghanistan. Yemen. Ten years watching each other's backs."
The words hit harder than his punches.
"And your team," Kessler continues, voice thick with rage and grief, "put a gun to his head and told him if he ever spoke about Yemen, you'd kill his daughter."
The world stops.
"What?"
"You didn't know?" Kessler laughs bitterly. "Of course you didn't. You were just the weapon. Someone else pulled the trigger. But Hart knew. He knew they'd kill Willa if he talked. So he kept his mouth shut and died with those secrets eating him alive."
The guilt crashes over me like a tidal wave. I knew we'd destroyed Hart's credibility. Knew we'd threatened him. But explicit death threats against his daughter? Against Willa?
I look back toward where she's taking cover with Stryker. See her face in the firelight. Everything we've been through. Everything she's survived.
And we're the ones who put that target on her back.
"We didn't know," I say, and it sounds pathetic even to my own ears. "The order came down to neutralize the threat. We thought..."