Chapter 8
“The target structure is an old Soviet-era bunker, heavily retrofitted,” Hayes continued. “It’s currently occupied by a rogue paramilitary group. Highly trained. Heavily armed. They took Elara three days ago.”
“Why?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard.
“Leverage,” Hayes said flatly. “Her father is a deep-cover asset. He possesses information they want. If they figure out we are making a move on the compound, they will kill the girl instantly.”
He swiped his finger across the tablet, zooming in on a specific section of the massive concrete wall.
“This is the southern face of the bunker,” Hayes explained. “There are no windows. No doors. The walls are six feet of reinforced concrete.”
He pointed to a tiny, dark rectangle near the top of the wall.
“That is an industrial ventilation shaft,” he said. “It measures roughly eighteen inches wide by twenty-four inches tall.”
I stared at the tiny black square on the screen. It looked impossible.
“Our thermal imaging shows a structural flaw in the bunker’s internal layout,” Hayes yelled over the engines. “There is a narrow hallway that connects the holding cells to the main guard barracks. That hallway runs directly behind this ventilation shaft.”
He swiped to another screen, showing a complex architectural diagram.
“Every four hours, the guard holding Elara’s cell keys walks down this hallway,” Hayes said, locking eyes with me. “For exactly three seconds, his head passes directly behind that ventilation shaft.”
I felt a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck.
“You want me to shoot a moving target,” I said, my voice tight. “Through an eighteen-inch opening. From two thousand, six hundred meters away.”
“Yes,” Hayes said without blinking.
“In negative thirty-degree wind chill,” I added, looking down at my shaking hand.
“Yes.”
I handed the tablet back to him.
“You are asking for a miracle,” I told him bluntly. “Even for a healthy sniper, the wind shear alone across a mountain valley at that distance is unpredictable. The bullet will be in the air for almost four seconds. If the target speeds up, slows down, or simply turns his head, I hit concrete.”
“If you don’t take the shot, the girl dies at sunrise,” Hayes said coldly. “They’ve already transmitted the ultimatum. We are out of time, Jocelyn.”
He turned and walked back to his seat, leaving me alone with the roaring engines and my violent, agonizing tremors.
I unzipped the top of my tactical jacket and reached inside, pulling out a small black battery pack. It was the power source for my mechanical brace.
I pressed the small indicator button on the side.
Three tiny green LED lights blinked to life.
My stomach churned.
When I built the prototype in my garage, I didn’t design it for extended combat operations in sub-zero environments. I designed it to run off a customized lithium-ion battery.
In ideal conditions, a fully charged battery gave me exactly four minutes of stabilized, tremor-free movement before the micro-hydraulics drained the power.
But I wasn’t in ideal conditions. The extreme cold of the Carpathian Mountains would drain the lithium battery exponentially faster.
I might have two minutes of power. Maybe less.
If I turned the brace on too early, the battery would die before I could even pull the trigger. If I turned it on too late, my hand would be shaking too violently to mount the rifle and find the target in time.
I had exactly one chance. One three-second window.
I shoved the battery pack back into my jacket, close to my chest, desperately trying to keep it warm with my body heat.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cold fuselage.
I tried to focus on the math. The ballistics. The drag coefficients. But my mind kept drifting back to Syria. To the blinding white dust. To the crushing weight of the concrete beam.
I heard Amira crying.
I opened my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. The ghosts were too loud.
Four hours later, the red jump light above my head suddenly flashed green.
The rear cargo ramp of the C-17 began to lower, groaning loudly over the sound of the engines.
Instantly, a wall of pure, agonizingly cold air blasted into the fuselage. It was like stepping into a commercial freezer. The temperature drop was so violent it stole the breath from my lungs.
My right arm immediately reacted.
The nerve damage screamed. A jolt of white-hot agony shot from my wrist to my shoulder. The tremors intensified instantly, my hand jerking and vibrating against my thigh with terrifying violence.
I clenched my jaw, tasting copper as I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out.
“We’re ten miles from the drop zone!” Cross yelled, standing up and checking his heavy rucksack. He looked over at me, his eyes dropping to my violently shaking arm.
