Chapter 11 - Kade
ELEVEN
Kade
The world turns white, then gray.
The breaching charge hits like a physical blow, compressing my lungs and rattling my teeth. Dust billows in a choking cloud, instantly filling the main room, turning the air to grit.
I don't blink. Don't flinch. Let the adrenaline sharpen the chaos into data.
Three beams of coherent green light slice through the haze. Weapon-mounted lasers. Three men moving with predatory fluidity, their sweep synchronized and tight.
One. Two. Three.
They don't see me. I'm tucked into shadow behind the overturned oak table, a void in the corner of the room.
They see the heat.
The lead operator snaps his carbine toward the kitchen—where Wren taped the first chemical hand warmer to the table leg. His thermal optic registers the glow. A heat signature in the dark.
"Contact front." Voice distorted by a gas mask.
All three open fire.
Rounds shred the kitchen cabinets and the wall behind them, tearing into empty space where they think a body is hiding. Wren's trick just bought us the only currency that matters in a gunfight: time.
I use it.
I come up from behind the table, bringing the AR up, reticle glowing red. No hesitation.
Pop-pop.
The trailing operator drops, throat armor is insufficient against high-velocity rounds at close range.
Pop-pop.
The second man spins, my rounds catch him in the side gap of his vest. He goes down screaming.
The point man realizes his mistake. He pivots, weapon traversing toward my muzzle flash—
BOOM.
The Mossberg from the top of the stairs. A guttural roar against the snap of rifle fire. Wren.
The point man is lifted off his feet, thrown backward through the remains of the front door by a full load of buckshot to the chest plate. The armor stops penetration, but the kinetic energy cracks ribs and collapses lungs. He hits the floor wheezing, weapon skittering away.
I move to confirm.
"Clear."
"I got the one in the bedroom." Wren's voice, shaking but loud.
"Reload. Scan your sector."
A put a security round into the point man to ensure he stays down. Then I sweep the breach. The door is gone—jagged wood and twisted hinges. Night air rushes in, cold and reeking of cordite and pulverized drywall.
The suppressed pistol is gone, lost in the initial flashbang disorientation—I registered its absence when I came up from behind the table and found my left hand empty. I'm down to the Glock and one magazine.
We held. Against a three-man entry team, with a civilian on the shotgun, we held.
Relief lasts exactly two seconds.
This was the hammer. There's always an anvil.
"Flash out." A voice from the darkness outside.
"Eyes." I spin away from the door, squeeze my eyes shut.
A canister clatters across the floorboards.
BANG.
Even with my eyes shut and head turned, the flashbang is blinding—a supernova behind my eyelids. The pressure wave scrambles my equilibrium. A high-pitched whine drowns out the world.
I'm stumbling. The floor feels tilted.
Shadows pour through the broken door. More of them. Too many.
I fire blindly toward the fatal funnel, suppressing the entry, but I'm shooting at ghosts.
"Gas. Gas. Gas."
Canisters hiss across the floor, spewing thick white smoke. CS gas. In an enclosed space without masks, incapacitation comes in seconds. My eyes stream instantly, throat closing like a fist.
We can't hold this room.
"Wren." Coughing, air turning to acid. "The hatch. Go."
I scramble backward, firing toward the door to keep heads down. A round sparks off the wood stove inches from my hip. Another tugs at my sleeve.
I hit the stairs half-blind, lungs burning. Wren is there—shotgun leveled, face wet from the gas, eyes streaming. Terrified. Immovable. She waited.
"Kade?"
"Go." I shove her toward the bedroom. "Drop the hatch. Move."
She turns and sprints.
I turn to fire one last burst to cover the retreat.
Through the swirling gas, a figure looms. Not a grunt. This one moves differently—faster, lighter, stepping over the bodies of the entry team with the deadly calm of a man who expected them to fail. His weapon comes up.
He's not aiming at me.
He's aiming past me. At the bedroom door. At Wren.
Amara.
The name surfaces in the fraction of a second before my body moves. Not her face—just the name, clean and simple, the thing I've been carrying for three years. And then it's gone, because I'm already moving.
I launch myself across the hallway, throwing my body into the line of fire as his weapon flares.
Thwip-thwip.
The first round misses. The second hits.
Fire brands my left bicep—punching through muscle, grazing bone. The impact spins me and slams me into the doorframe.
My arm goes dead. The sling catches the Glock before it hits the floor.
One knee down.
The shooter steps forward for the kill shot.
BOOM.
The doorframe beside me explodes into splinters. Wren—leaning out, shotgun shouldered, firing past me. She misses, but the violence of a twelve-gauge at close range puts the shooter behind the couch.
"Get your ass in here." The slide racks. CLACK-CLACK.
I scramble on hands and knees, adrenaline overriding the arm. I dive through the doorway and kick the door shut. It won't hold—but it breaks their line of sight.
Wren has the rug pulled back. The trapdoor is open, the black maw of the tunnel waiting below.
"Down." She grabs my good arm. Her eyes go wide at the blood soaking my sleeve. "Kade, you're hit—"
"Get in the hole." I shove her toward the opening.
The bedroom door shudders under a boot. Rounds punch through the wood, buzzing like hornets. Wood chips spray my face.
Wren drops into the dark. I follow, one-armed down the ladder, just as the door gives way behind me with a crash.
"Clear the room." Above us. Close.
I reach up with my right hand and yank the trapdoor down. Heavy wood slams into place. I throw the deadbolt I installed on the underside.
Darkness swallows us.
Cool air. Damp earth and mold. Above us, muffled footsteps thunder on the floorboards—tearing the room apart. They'll find the hatch in seconds. They'll breach it in minutes.
"Wren."
"Here." Close. Trembling. "I'm here."
I lean against the dirt wall, clutching my arm. The pain is arriving now—a deep, throbbing ache syncing with my heartbeat. Blood running down my fingers.
"Move," I grit out. "Left wall. Count your steps. Don't stop."
"Your arm—"
"Works enough to hold a gun. Move."
We scramble through the blackness. The tunnel is narrow, shored with rough timber, built for a fire escape, not a tactical retreat while bleeding out. Every step jars the arm. My vision swims.
I focus on the sound of Wren breathing ahead of me.
Keep her moving. Keep her safe.
A muffled THUMP shakes dirt from the ceiling. They're working the hatch.
"Faster."
She picks up the pace. Her voice comes back in a frantic undertone, counting steps. "Forty-two, forty-three, forty-four..."
Sixty yards to the exit. Sixty yards to the tree line. Then six miles to the highway through a dark forest, with Ivan Kova's remaining team hunting us from behind.
I check the Glock. One magazine. Fourteen rounds.
I check myself. Losing blood fast. Too fast.
If they catch us in the woods, I can't fight them. Not like this.
Wren is going to have to save us.
And God help me, I hope the training was enough.