Chapter 8 - The Perimeter Breach
At 4:30 AM, the rain stopped, leaving a heavy, freezing fog hanging over the riverbed.
Jax stood near the shattered living room window, a suppressed submachine gun he had pulled from Eleanor’s weapons trunk resting against his chest. Knox was stationed in the kitchen pantry, his long knife strapped to his thigh alongside a tactical shotgun.
Through the mist, two dark shapes moved across the front lawn. There were no headlights this time. No black SUVs. Four men in night-vision goggles and dark tactical gear moved in a diamond formation through the fir trees, carrying thermite charges and suppressed short-barrel rifles.
"Two coming through the porch," Jax whispered into his throat mic.
"Got two more covering the back cellar hatch," Knox’s voice crackled through the earbud.
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"Take them in the kill zone," Eleanor’s voice came through cold and clear from the basement terminal. "Don't let them hit the main load-bearing beams."
Jax waited until the lead operator stepped onto the top wooden stair—the exact spot where Julian Sterling had stood twelve hours earlier. Jax leaned around the window frame and pulled the trigger. The submachine gun coughed twice—a dry, metallic chiff-chiff. The operator collapsed forward onto the porch planks without making a sound.
