Chapter Fifty-Three
White Ravens
Gage
The Ravens jet ate up the sky, flying at a speed of nearly seven hundred miles per hour. Every minute in the air was a minute the hostages lost.
So far, there’d been no government mobilization by Montenegro or a response from local law enforcement.
While in transit, the Shadow Division’s breach-and-entry unit designed the penetration points, while Command and Strategy coordinated the takedown sequence.
They’d been briefed once and once was enough.
Gage’s directions were clear.
Locate, isolate, and shield the hostages until his brothers dismantled every cell of the militia and the field transport moved in for extraction.
Radio static hissed once they were in position.
“Comms check,” Corvo said, taking lead handler. “All divisions, roll call.”
“Black,” Meridian and Ex answered at the same time.
“Brown,” Mirage said. Grace followed with a double-click on the channel.
“Green,” Valor rumbled. “Green check,” Zorion added.
“White,” Scar answered.
“Saint online,” Gage said. “Roz, vision check.”
“All cams clear, Saint,” Roz said, sounding as if he were right beside him.
Gage squatted on the ground at the forest perimeter. He kept his breathing measured as he let the subtle vibrations of the earth speak to him.
Smoke carried on the wind, the ugly kind that came from burning wood and scorched metals.
The village was about a hundred yards ahead of him, close enough he could still hear scattered pockets of shouting, a thin wail of someone trying not to scream, and the occasional crack of gunfire that sounded like whips snapping.
“Ravens in positions,” Spectre said. “Headquarters, we are go for green. How call?”
“Go for green,” Jo answered immediately.
“Ravens, you’re green. Call set,” Corvo directed.
“White set,” Scar said. “South approach.”
“Brown set,” Mirage said. “East roofline.”
“Green set,” Valor said. “North side. Point-eight clicks on terrain.”
“Black set,” Meridian said. “Front and center.”
Gage held his cane folded in his right hand, with his left extended in front of him.
Roz came in on their private comms. “Saint, you’ve got three armed contacts thirty meters off your twelve. Two posted side entrance of the church.”
Corvo’s voice darkened on one word. “Execute.”
A whisper cut the air above him, clean and fast…then another…and another.
Zorion’s arrows whipped over his head in rapid sequence, the shafts striking the ground and exploding on impact. Not with fire, with dense smoke that swallowed light and rolled across the ground.
Blacks went first because the Blacks always went first.
Somewhere, a man barked panicked orders in another language. By the time the militia realized what was happening, who’d come for them, they’d all be dead.
“They’re scattering. Move.”
Gage squeezed, and his cane snapped out to its full length.
He slid the sharpest end along the ground, pushing debris from his path and stepping easily over bulging roots and fallen branches.
Roz’s voice was tight and positive as he set him up to infiltrate.
“You got three hostiles left in the corridor. Two, right corner. Four moving fast in the side pocket.”
Gage tilted his head. He wasn’t just listening for steps. He was measuring and counting them. Determining weight by the depth of each footfall, height by the way their breath cut through the air.
He dipped low and inched closer as Roz counted him down.
“Fifty feet…thirty…hostile at the door shifted left, weapon raised.”
Gage didn’t slow as he reached into the rear compartment of his vest and removed four small mag-lock disks.
Gunfire erupted from weapons far more advanced and deadly than those the militia had.
Grace’s and Meridian’s Smith & Wesson and Desert Eagles.
But he stayed focused on Roz.
“Twenty…visibility reduced two hundred meters.”
They couldn’t see him. They relied on their vision to fight…he didn’t.
“Ten feet, up the pipeline.”
Gage flung his disk in a low sweep. The magnets snapped against the rifle muzzles raised in his direction, making it impossible to aim.
With his left hand free, he pulled his shock baton and rushed forward.
A man cursed, angry, his weapon no longer under his control as he fired in the wrong direction.
Gage crept beneath the fog, out of the line of fire until he was right up on his target.
He caught the enemy’s wrist, twisted downward in one brutal motion, a short pop marking the break that made him drop his weapon—the hand useless.
With his shoulder pressed into his sternum, he drove the man backward until he slammed into the wall.
He slumped, and Gage jammed the baton in the center of his chest. The current surged through him, locking every joint and muscle.
He heard the hostages a few feet away, huddled tight in a corner, breaths overlapping breaths. Their worry and anxiety thick in the air and overwhelming him. Some—probably the younger ones—were trembling so hard he could hear teeth chattering.
Their fear tugged on his heart. He wanted to go to them and reassure them, but he couldn’t, not until each threat was eliminated.
To his left, a guard struggled with his rifle, trying to remove the disk and force it to operate.
Gage rotated, using the momentum to bash his cane across the man’s hand, hearing the knuckles and bones crunch like splintering wood as he dropped his weapon.
Without pause, he whacked the cane across the enemy’s cheek, jerking his head to the side so hard his neck popped before he rammed the blunt end into his sternum.
While his target was doubled over, spitting and cursing, Gage pressed the concealed mechanism, causing the cane to retract in sections as a blade snapped out, transforming it into a sword two seconds later.
“Please, God, no. I beg you, don’t kill me.”
Gage scoffed. “You dragged these people out of church, beat and tortured them…” Gage did three fast moves that sliced tendons and vital muscles in the guard’s thighs, forearm and biceps. “God’s no longer listening. I’m here now.”
The man howled, blood spraying from the gashes and splattering the damp leaves.
“Motion on your six, fast and closing,” Roz rushed out.
Gage dropped and spun around, snapping his cane back out mid-motion, sweeping a set of legs into the air. A broad back slammed into the ground at his feet.
The man recovered quickly, growled some expletives in another language and rushed him.
Gage whipped the cane’s shaft upward, felt it connect under the chin, and followed it with a brutal hook from his fist that shattered the guard’s jaw and loosened teeth.
Though his targets were mangled, broken, and crippled for life…he left them alive.
“Two more inbound, rifles up, flanking your three and nine.”
They were coming at him from both sides, but he was calm and centered.
He reached back for his mag-disk, his biceps coiling in anticipation, but before he could throw, a sharp hum echoed from the tree line.
Whistling metal sliced past his left cheek a second before another cut past his right.
Aluminum-carbon punched through meaty torsos with sickening thuds, crunching cartilage, and splitting bones as the bodies that’d been coming at him were thrown into the church wall.
The hostages cried out in collective shouts and gasps of panic laced with horror.
Gage tilted his head, listening as the men gurgled and choked on the blood flooding their throats.
He stayed low, moving toward the sound of sizzling fluids, and the putrid stench of defecation tinged with something sharper, chemical.
A few seconds later, solemn realization hit him in his gut.
Zorion’s arsenic-dipped arrows.
Their insides were boiling, making the death that much more excruciating and torturous.
He extended his cane’s tip toward the nearest body. The arrow’s shaft protruding from his stomach still vibrated from the man’s dying spasms.
He turned their backs to them and walked away. They brought wrath down on themselves.
He reduced his cane and tucked it away before he slowly approached the hostages with his hands raised in a sign of peace.
“You’re gonna’ be okay. We’ll protect you.”
The hostages let out choked sobs and whimpers of relief as he began to cut at their bindings.
Once they were free, Gage clicked on his comms. “Hostages secured.”
Zorion dropped from the trees, the sound of his flight suit catching air and carrying him in a controlled glide toward the village, where he landed on a roof a few yards away.
A moment later, footsteps thundered across the wooden slats above him. He thought it was Zorion until a body tumbled off the roof, hit the ground hard, and rolled.
Too sloppy to be a Raven.
Gage stood and drew his cane out until one of the hostages grabbed his arm.
“No, not him.” He spoke boldly as if he were the one charge, maybe an elder. “Wait, he’s not like the others. He’s only fifteen and was forced to do this. His father beat him several times for sneaking us water.”
“My father is dead.” The kid said it with disdain, as if he wanted to attach the word “finally” to the end.
“What’s your name,” Gage asked as he drew closer.
He could tell the kid was tall, but underweight, by the way his breaths hit his forehead, and the sound of his light gait.
“Ben,” he answered, still looking scared.
“Your name,” Gage stressed.
“Ben J. Fischer.”
“Toss your weapon, Ben, get behind me, and stay down,” Gage said. “My brothers are not finished.”
“Who are you?” the elder asked.
There was only one name Gage could think of giving them.
“We’re the help you prayed for.”
“God bless you,” a woman whispered behind him.
He could tell by the way she talked that her lip was split badly.
He tore a piece of cloth from his coat, knelt, and touched it gently to her mouth.
“God bless you too,” he said.
“Heads-up, gentlemen,” Spectre said in their comms. “Here comes their reinforcements.”
During the flight, Intel had prepped them for The Brotherhood’s response to the attack. The incoming surge was estimated at twenty-five to thirty men, heavily armed but untrained.
“Orders stand.” Corvo’s voice was cold and void of compassion. “Total elimination.”
Gage listened to the loud trucks barreling toward them, less than a quarter mile out.
“Let’s show these motherfuckers what true brotherhood looks like,” Scar said in their comms.
Gage never thought he’d smile in the midst of a war zone…but he did.