Chapter 25 - The broken cane
The heavy wooden front door of the gym swung open with a slow, agonizing groan. Through the frame, the acrid scent of burnt cordite and vaporized motor oil flooded the dark entryway.
Viktor stumbled across the threshold, not walking with his usual haughty arrogance, but crawling on his hands and knees. Blood dripped steadily from a jagged laceration across his forehead where flying shrapnel had torn his skin. Behind him, the gravel lot was entirely still. The helicopter had landed beyond the tree line, its engines spooling down into a high, sinister whine.
"Marcus..." Viktor wheezed, his fingers clawing at the rough floorboards. "You... you don't understand what you brought down on us. That isn't your government."
Marcus stepped out of the gloom, towering over the bleeding syndicate boss. The barrel of his sidearm hovered two inches from the bridge of Viktor’s nose. "Get up."
"They aren't taking prisoners, Marcus!" Viktor spat, blood flecking his pale lips as he rolled onto his back, clutching his crushed ribs. "You thought my men took the town vault? We intercepted the courier, yes, but the order came from inside your old command. A man named Colonel Vance. He paid me two million in bearer bonds to stage a break-in at the Town Hall and pull your service records!"
Marcus didn't flinch, but his grip tightened on the pistol. "Vance died in an airstrike outside Aleppo."
"He faked the casualty manifest, you fool!" Viktor choked out a bitter, desperate laugh. "He built a private syndicate using Chimera’s discarded assets. He wanted your records because he knows you still hold the encryption cipher to the ghost accounts. He used me to flush you out of Oak Ridge!"
Before Marcus could speak, the glass window on the second-story mezzanine exploded inward.
A black-clad operative rappelled through the shattered opening, boots hitting the wooden floor without making a sound. The operative carried a suppressed carbine, his movements robotic, lethal, and practiced. He didn't demand surrender. He brought the muzzle up directly toward Viktor’s head to eliminate the loose end.
Marcus moved purely on instinct.
He lunged forward, catching Viktor by the collar of his trench coat and yanking him behind a solid cast-iron weight bench just as three subsonic rounds tore through the floor where Viktor had been lying. Marcus fired twice over the top of the iron frame. The heavy .45 hollow points slammed into the operative’s chest plate, throwing him off balance.
The intruder didn't scream. He recovered instantly, rolling backward toward the heavy boxing bags, pulling a combat blade from his tactical vest.
Marcus stepped forward into the clear space of the gym, tucking his empty pistol into his waistband. He recognized the combat stance immediately. The lowered center of gravity, the knife blade turned inward, the left hand extended as a claw. It was the Chimera close-quarters doctrine—a style Marcus himself had taught to young recruits a decade ago.
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"Who sent you?" Marcus asked in a low, gravelly tone.
The operative tilted his head, his face hidden behind a dark ballistic visor. He didn't speak. He sprang forward, blade cutting through the air in a lightning-fast horizontal slash aimed directly at Marcus’s jugular.
