Gunfire tore through the room in a brutal, staccato roar. Muzzle flashes lit the space like strobe lights—harsh, blinding, chaotic.
James moved his HK barked once, the first shot tearing through the throat of a man mid-drop. He crumpled without a scream, drowning in his own blood as his body twitched on impact.
Another figure lunged for Ghost. James turned firing point-blank—two shots to the chest, one to the throat. The soldier dropped, convulsing as his weapon clattered to the floor. But he wasn’t not fast enough—Ghost hissed as a round carved across her thigh, crimson blooming along her combat suit.
Wrench yanked Elias behind cover as rounds shredded the air overhead. “Stay low!” he barked, bracing behind a half-shattered crate as bullets tore through its side.
Rios broke left, sliding into a crouch behind an overturned chair. His rifle snapped up and barked precise bursts. “Five tangos minimum!” he shouted. “More in the vents—check your sides!”
“They were waiting for us!” Ghost shouted out, already digging into her medkit as she ducked low, her voice tight with pain.
“Really I hadn't noticed” yells Rio before popping up and returning fire.
The next burst of gunfire shredded the far console—screens exploded into sparks and fragments. A second volley came lower, pinging off the floor, chewing apart the crate Ghost had just abandoned. Plastic and debris flew in all directions.
Elias cried out.
A burst of suppressed SMG fire slammed into his side, tearing through his vest. Blood sprayed across the wall behind him. He hit the floor with a grunt, his rifle skittering out of reach. Rios cursed, lunging to grab him by the collar and dragging him behind a comm panel.
Sliding low across the floor, James fired his HK it roared, and the first CVC commando dropped mid-step—jaw punched clean off as the round shredded through his face. Another turned, trying to raise his weapon—
Too slow.
James was already on him. He slammed into the man like a freight train, shoulder-first. The impact knocked him back a step. James caught the commando’s arm, twisted until the rifle clattered to the ground. A blade flashed in his hand. He drove it up beneath the vest—once, twice—then twisted hard until he felt the tip scrape spine.
The body sagged, lifeless.
Across the room, Wrench pulled a flashbang from his rig and lobbed it over the ruined center table.
Thunk… PING…
CRACK.
Light exploded through the room, a supernova in a box.
Screams followed.
Rios surged from cover, rifle steady. Two bursts—tight and clean. Head, chest. One enemy flailed backward, blood smearing the wall as he crumpled into a twitching pile of limbs and gear.
Another figure lunged at Ghost, a knife glinting in his hand.
She didn’t hesitate.
She rolled sideways, came up with her sidearm, and fired once—clean through the underside of his chin. The bullet exited in a geyser of bone and brain, splattering the wall behind him.
He dropped mid-stride like a puppet with cut strings.
Ghost exhaled sharply, eyes flicking. Blood smeared across her cheek as she wiped it away with the back of her glove, already grabbing her tablet again, breath shallow but controlled.
“They’re still jamming us,” Ghost muttered between keystrokes, her fingers dancing across the flickering interface. “Signal’s dead, but local net’s still traceable—I’m trying to scramble their uplink—just give me a second.”
James turned—another CVC soldier was rounding the corner near the sealed door, too close for a clean shot.
No time.
James hurled his HK like a hammer. It slammed into the soldier’s visor with a sharp crack, the lens spider webbing instantly. The impact knocked the man sideways. James was on him before he hit the floor. He grabbed the helmet, twisted, and drove the man’s head into the wall—once, twice, a third time. The steel dented. Bone snapped. Blood smeared. The man slumped, silent.
James wrenched his HK off the ground, spinning back toward the fray.
“Wrench!” he shouted.
“Already on it!” came the reply. Wrench was at the main entrance, pressing shaped charges onto the hinges with expert speed. “Thirty seconds!”
“Make it twenty.”
“That’s not how this works!”
Gunfire answered.
Two rounds tore through the air—one punched into Rios’s arm, the other slammed into his thigh. He dropped hard, teeth gritted, but kept firing, dragging Elias further behind the busted console.
“Cover Wrench!” James barked, sweeping up beside Rios and returning fire, muzzle flash lighting the haze like a strobe.
One of the cartel troops shouted something in Spanish—James caught only a single word through the chaos:
“Diablo.”
He turned.
Two enemies left.
One was fumbling with a fresh magazine, hands shaking. He never got the chance to finish.
James fired—one round into the knee.
The man collapsed with a shriek, his rifle clattering across the floor. James walked toward him, slow and deliberate, HK raised. The man screamed again, reaching for the weapon.
James kicked it away, then drove his boot into the man’s chest and fired once into his throat.
The scream died gurgling.
The last cartel soldier crouched behind a half-toppled crate, blood on his visor. He looked up—cornered, terrified—and raised both hands.
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“Wait—wait—!”
James didn’t.
Two rounds punched through his skull. The back wall caught what was left.
Silence fell. Not peace—never peace—but silence. Just Elias’s labored breathing, wet and rapid, and the soft click of Wrench securing the last of the explosives.
James turned. “Rios. Keep your eyes on that vent.”
Rios, pale and bleeding, gave a nod and a pained grunt, rifle still aimed upward.
James made his way to Ghost, who had given up on breaching the uplink and now knelt beside Elias, hands slick with blood. The kid’s shirt was soaked through. His breaths came sharp and shallow.
“Will he make it?” James asked, voice low.
Ghost looked up, jaw tight. Her eyes said it before her words did.
“We won’t have time to carry him out.”
James stared down at Elias, chest rising and falling like a failing engine.
“Hit him with something,” he said. “T-70. Keep him under.”
Ghost nodded, reaching into her satchel and pulling out a small injector. She stabbed it into Elias’s neck. The boy went slack, pain drowned in synthetic numbness.
James looked up. “Rios—make sure you don’t bleed out on me.”
Rios gave a dry, grim chuckle. “I’ll do my best.”
James turned next to Wrench. “How much longer?”
Wrench gave one last check, then ducked behind the comms console. “We’re good. Det ready on your mark.”
James looked over what was left of his team.
They were down one. Two more bleeding. The room stank of cordite and burnt flesh. The air was thick with grit and blood.
He didn’t blink.
“Well,” he said, voice low, sharp, and final. “I hope none of you think we’re pulling out. We still have a job to do.”
His eyes locked on Rios. “You going to be able to keep up?”
Rios grunted, forcing himself upright, the blood-soaked wrap on his thigh already darkening again. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
“Good,” James said, just as a faint sound hit his ear.
Footsteps.
Multiple pairs—fast, heavy. From the sound of it a few exo suits as welll.
Ghost’s head snapped up. “We’ve got movement. Closing in time to arvill 20 seconds”
“Stacking for breach,” Ghost murmured.
James turned to Wrench. “Now would be a good time.”
Wrench didn’t answer. He just clicked the detonator, thumb steady.
A dull beep-beep-beep…
Then—
BOOM.
The east door blew outward like a kicked-in skull, jagged steel ripping off the hinges. The blast ripped through the hallway beyond like a cannonball.
Screams. Bone and fire.
Cartel soldiers were thrown like rag dolls—two vaporized by the blast, another torn apart mid-step. The flames reached into the hallway and curled back like a fist made of hell.
Silence followed.
A chunk of smoking steel clanged to the floor.
James moved first, shouldering through the smoke. “Let’s go.”
Alarms blared instantly—high, shrill, panicked—but no sprinklers activated. The building’s water systems had long since dried out, like veins run empty. The only thing that poured was smoke.
Wrench knelt by Elias’s body for a brief second, fingers moving fast. He grabbed the small satchel of encrypted intel from the kid’s gear—dog tags too—and muttered something low before catching up.
Outside the breached entrance, the hallway looked like a butcher’s corridor. Blood streaked the walls. Limbs and gear lay scattered like battlefield shrapnel. The blast had been surgical.
The bodies weren’t twitching.
Ghost’s eyes flashed as her data-slate pinged.
“We’re back online,” she said quickly. “Signal’s live.”
Then James heard it. Static—then Kane’s voice breaking through over radio, sharp and urgent:
<
>
The name echoed across the channel like a cold wind. Reaper Team. It was what they’d been called off the record—too effective, too brutal, too off-the-books for regular SDS units. Ghost had joked it was because they left nothing alive. Rios said it was because they always came back with one less.
James keyed his mic, voice calm and cold. “Copy, command. Phantom Team is alive and moving.”
<
Ghost’s slate lit up with a new overlay. She gave a nod, face grim.
James looked ahead—down the twisted corridor lit by firelight and blood.
The corridor twisted again, leading them deeper into the facility’s core. James advanced in a low crouch, HK tight to his shoulder, boots quiet but purposeful against the metal-plated floor. Smoke from the earlier blast still was pouring onto the ceiling in dark waves. Something in the compound must’ve caught fire.
The sound of boots—hard, fast—echoed ahead, pounding against steel like war drums.
“Get ready,” James growled, raising his HK. “We push through.”
CVC troops rounded the far corner—four of them in a tight staggered formation, rifles raised. The hallway exploded with muzzle flashes, red and gold bursts strobing across the walls.
James dropped the first before the man could squeeze the trigger. A three-round burst stitched his vest, sending him sprawling backwards, rifle clattering.
The second trooper opened fire blindly—rounds slamming into the wall near Ghost. She dove to the side, slid low, and came up firing. One clean shot pierced the center of his visor. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Wrench stepped forward, shotgun braced to his hip, and fired twice in rapid succession. The third CVC operative was lifted off his feet, chest cratered and spraying mist as he collapsed against the bulkhead.
The last tried to run.
He didn’t make it.
Rios pivoted, firing controlled bursts. The rounds punched through the back of the man’s armor, the last one severing his spine. He folded mid-sprint and slid across the floor, blood streaking behind him.
Silence followed, broken only by the soft hiss of a leaking pipe.
“Keep moving,” James said, stepping over a corpse, boot smearing blood. “We’re almost there.”
The facility grew tighter as they advanced—hallways narrowing, shadows deepening. Water leaked from above, mixing with the blood across the floor, turning the path into a slick, unstable mess. The flickering lights above stuttered like a heartbeat, casting the team in sharp, broken fragments.
They turned the next corner—and found another CVC squad waiting, entrenched behind overturned tables, old crates, and sandbags. Orders were being shouted in Spanish, rifles sweeping the corridor.
James yanked a Helxion grenade from his belt and lobbed it forward. It landed behind their cover—then erupted.
A flash of white-blue flame consumed the barricade, throwing screaming bodies backward. James was already moving, rounding the corner and opening fire into the chaos. His rounds slammed into a CVC exo-suit operator, punching deep into the armor’s weakened seams.
Wrench followed up, shotgun roaring again. He took down three CVC soldiers in quick succession, buckshot tearing through sandbags and ribs alike.
Rios pivoted to the flank, unloading on a pair of enemies behind a broken console. One screamed, clutching his neck as blood fountained. The other tried to crawl away—Rios put a bullet between his shoulder blades.
Then—
BOOM.
The ancient exo-suit’s fuel cell detonated.
A fireball swallowed the hallway. Limbs, shrapnel, and debris flew in every direction. The floor buckled. Smoke surged forward like a living thing.
Through the haze, Ghost’s voice cut in, urgent but composed. “We’re close. I’ve got a stationary heat signature in the next room past that door. Ten, maybe twelve guards in the room. That one in the center? That’s probably him.”
James raised a clenched fist. The team froze behind him, every weapon trained forward, breathing hard, but steady.
James raised a clenched fist. The team froze behind him, weapons up, breathing hard but steady. Sweat mixed with blood, smearing grime across armor and skin.
From deeper down the corridor, boot falls echoed—more CVC troops. Reinforcements.
James turned toward the reinforced door ahead, then back at the others.
“You hold the hallway,” he said, voice like cold steel. “I’ll take care of Vance.”
Ghost gave a single nod, eyes hard. Wrench checked his last charge. Rios chambered a fresh mag with one hand, the other pressed to his bleeding leg.
James stepped toward the door without another word.