Chapter 14 - THE COUNTER-STRIKEBefore Alexander could react, the heavy steel ventilation grate crashed to the floor. Maria dropped from the ceiling like an avenging angel, moving with blinding speed.
Before her boots even hit the ground, she fired a silenced pistol. The guard standing behind Elena dropped instantly, a bullet perfectly placed between his eyes.
Alexander spun around, firing wildly, but Julian moved faster. He lunged forward, grabbing Alexander’s wrist and twisting it violently upwards. The revolver discharged into the ceiling. Julian drove his knee into his brother’s ribs, hearing a satisfying crack, and threw him across the glass coffee table.
Alarms instantly shrieked throughout the fortress. Red strobe lights pulsed.
"Intruders in the command center!" a voice blared over the intercom.
Maria rushed to the glass room, kicking the door open. She sliced Elena’s bonds with her combat knife. "Get the baby! Do not let him go!" she yelled. Elena, sobbing, scooped up Leo, holding him tight.
Dozens of heavy boots echoed down the hallway. Alexander’s private army was coming.
Julian scooped up Alexander’s dropped revolver. He looked down at his brother, who was coughing up blood on the shattered glass.
"You think you've won?" Alexander wheezed, a bloody smile spreading across his face. "This entire fortress is wired with thermite charges. If my heart rate drops to zero, the biometric implant in my chest detonates the mountain. We all die."
Julian grabbed Alexander by the throat, hoisting him up. "Then it’s a good thing I'm not going to kill you, brother. I'm going to make you wish you were dead."
Gunfire erupted as the doors blasted open. Mercenaries flooded the room.
Julian and Maria unleashed hell. Working in perfect, lethal synchronization, they turned the command center into a slaughterhouse. Julian used Alexander as a human shield, dragging him backward toward the glass room, firing with deadly precision. Maria provided covering fire, tossing flashbangs that blinded the attackers, picking them off one by one.
"Elena, get back!" Maria screamed as a stray bullet shattered the glass wall of the nursery.
Julian dumped Alexander on the floor and slammed the blast doors shut, sealing the four of them inside the secure nursery. Bullets began to hammer against the reinforced titanium door, slowly denting the metal.
"They have heavy weapons! They'll breach in two minutes!" Maria yelled, reloading her final magazine.
Julian looked around the nursery. It was a dead end. But he noticed a massive, metal ventilation shaft leading directly outside to the sheer drop of the mountain.
"We're taking the chute," Julian said, kicking the grate open. The freezing wind howled inside.
May you like
"Julian, that drops a thousand feet down to the lower slopes! It's suicide!" Maria yelled.
"It's a garbage chute. It's designed to slow down the refuse before it hits the incinerator below. If we bypass the furnace, we land in the snowbanks." Julian turned to his brother, dragging him up by his collar. "And you're coming with us."
Related Stories
