Chapter 18 - Ambush at the Cathedral
The two contractors moved with military precision, flanking Maya from both sides. The contractor on the right reached for the zip-ties on his tactical vest, while the one on the left raised his weapon to butt-stroke Maya across the temple to incapacitate her.
It was the exact tactical opening Maya had been waiting for.
The moment the contractor’s weapon rose, breaking his sightline, Maya struck. She didn't retreat; she drove forward, closing the distance in a fraction of a second. Her right palm slammed upward into the base of the contractor’s nose with the force of a hydraulic piston, shattering the nasal bone and driving the bone fragments into the sinus cavity. The man went limp instantly, his weapon slipping from his grasp.
Before the weapon could hit the floor, Maya caught the sling, wrenched the SIG Sauer MPX submachine gun into her hands, and spun toward the second contractor.
*BRRRRRT.*
A three-round burst punched through the second man’s throat, dropping him in his tracks before he could clear his holster.
"Down! Clara, Leo, down!" Maya roared, diving behind the massive mahogany desk just as the two snipers on the mezzanine opened fire.
A storm of 5.56mm armor-piercing rounds shredded the desk, sending heavy splinters of wood flying like shrapnel. Books detonated off the shelves in explosions of paper, and the floor-to-ceiling glass windows shattered inward under the kinetic onslaught, letting the howling wind and torrential rain tear through the penthouse.
Sterling didn't panic. With cold, calculated survival instinct, he grabbed Sophia by the hair, dragging her backward into the reinforced interior of the vault, his suppressed pistol pressed against her temple.
"Kill them all!" Sterling shouted over the roar of the gunfire. "Scrape the boy’s blood off the floorboards if you have to!"
Maya rolled onto her back behind the remnants of the desk, pulling the charging handle of the captured MPX. She had twenty-seven rounds. Above her, the two shooters on the mezzanine were repositioning, their boots clattering on the steel catwalk.
"Clara! Crawl into the hallway! Take the service stairs!" Maya yelled, blind-firing a short burst toward the upper railing to keep their heads down.
"I’m not leaving you!" Clara screamed back, huddled behind an overturned marble credenza, clutching Leo against her chest.
"You have to! He wants Leo's blood, Clara! If they get him, everyone Daniel died for dies with him! GO!"
Clara looked at Maya, the raw agony in her eyes warring with the fierce, protective instinct of a mother. She grabbed Leo by the collar, scrambled onto her knees, and dashed out the double doors of the study into the darkened penthouse corridor just as a burst of automatic fire chewed through the doorway behind her.
One of the snipers on the mezzanine leaned over the rail to track Clara’s escape.
Maya didn't miss. She settled her red-dot sight on his exposed clavicle and pulled the trigger twice. The shooter flipped over the ornate wrought-iron railing, crashing seventy feet down onto the glass coffee table in the center of the living room with a sickening crunch.
One shooter left on the catwalk. And Sterling in the vault.
Maya rose into a crouch, her tactical senses hyper-alert. But as she moved toward the vault door, a heavy, metallic object clattered across the hardwood floor, stopping three feet from her boots.
A stun grenade.
*BANG-FLASH.*
A hundred and eighty decibels of concussive force and three million candelas of blinding white light detonated in Maya’s face. The blast slammed her against the wall, blowing out her eardrums with a high-pitched, deafening squeal and plunging her vision into a wall of solid white static. Her equilibrium shattered; her legs buckled beneath her.
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Through the ringing in her ears, she felt a heavy tactical boot slam into her chest, pinning her to the floor.
As her vision slowly began to clear, the silhouette of a massive operative stood over her, his combat knife drawn, the blade descending toward her throat.
