Chapter 7 - The Siege in the Blizzard
The exterior floodlights mounted beneath the cabin’s eaves suddenly blazed to life, turning the swirling white snow outside into a blinding wall of brilliant amber illumination.
Outside, Thorne and his operatives threw their hands up, temporarily blinded by the sudden surge of light.
Before they could recover their night-vision optics, the front and rear perimeter speakers mounted on the cabin exterior crackled to life, broadcasting my voice across the snowy clearing with terrifying clarity.
"You're trespassing on private property, Mr. Thorne," I said, my voice echoing off the mountain walls. "And you brought muddy boots into my wife’s home. That’s a capital offense."
Thorne spun around, staring directly at the security camera mounted above the porch. Even through the distorted lens, I could see the sudden panic flicker behind his cold eyes.
"Moretti!" Thorne yelled over the roar of the wind. "We know you're in there! Hand over the audit files and the girl's mother, and we walk away before this mountain becomes your grave!"
"You aren't walking anywhere, Viktor," I replied calmly.
Marcus gave the signal from the side window.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The crisp, unmistakable reports of suppressed tactical rifles echoed from the surrounding pine trees. Two of Vance’s operatives dropped instantly into the snow, their legs immobilized by precision non-lethal limb shots.
Panic erupted among the remaining infiltrators. They scrambled for cover behind snowbanks and firewood stacks, returning blind, panicked fire toward the treeline. Bullets pinged harmlessly off our exterior ballistic steel plating.
"Push forward!" Thorne roared, dragging one of his wounded men behind a frozen snowdrift. "Break the windows! Flush them out!"
Three operatives rushed the front porch, raising their carbines to target the reinforced glass of the living room windows.
I didn't flinch. I raised my Sig Sauer, aimed through the bulletproof glass, and squeezed the trigger three times.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The glass didn't shatter—it was rated to stop high-caliber rifle rounds—but the kinetic impact of my return fire caught the lead operative square in the chest plate, sending him tumbling backward off the porch into a drift of soft powder.
Marcus and our enforcers opened up from the flanking positions in the woods, a synchronized crossfire that completely pinned Vance’s team against the open clearing.
Within ninety seconds, the firefight was over.
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Thorne’s men dropped their weapons, raising their hands in surrender as Marcus and three of our elite guards closed in from the shadows, kicking their carbines away into the snow.
Viktor Thorne remained kneeling behind a snowbank, his hands empty, his breath coming in ragged, freezing gasps as Marcus grabbed him by the tactical collar and hauled him upright toward the cabin porch.
