Chapter 5 - The Siege
The tranquility of the safehouse shattered instantly.
I threw the radio onto the table and racked the slide of my assault rifle.
"Get the babies into the basement vault," I ordered Mara, my tone leaving zero room for debate.
Mara didn't waste time crying; she grabbed the heated blankets and scooped up our sons.
She hurried down the concrete stairs, pulling the heavy vault door shut behind her.
I turned off every light in the cabin, plunging the room into absolute darkness.
I peered through the reinforced sniper slits in the steel window shutters.
Through the rain and the dense trees, I saw the faint red glow of laser sights cutting through the fog.
There were at least twenty heavily armed men advancing silently toward the perimeter fence.
"Silas, fall back to the cabin immediately," I barked into the radio.
"I can't, Boss," Silas coughed, his voice thick with pain.
"They hit me in the leg, I'm pinned down behind the old generator."
I cursed under my breath, refusing to let my most loyal man die in the mud.
I grabbed two smoke grenades from the supply cache and kicked the front door open.
I tossed the grenades into the yard, filling the clearing with thick, blinding white smoke.
I sprinted out into the crossfire, bullets pinging viciously against the concrete walls of the cabin.
I found Silas bleeding heavily behind the rusted generator, his assault rifle completely empty.
I grabbed him by the tactical vest and dragged him backward through the mud while firing blindly into the tree line.
We crashed through the front door of the cabin, and I slammed the heavy deadbolt shut.
Silas collapsed onto the floor, gasping for air as I tied a crude tourniquet around his thigh.
"You shouldn't have risked it for me, Grant," Silas groaned, his face pale from blood loss.
"We don't leave our own behind," I told him grimly, keeping my gun trained on the door.
Suddenly, the heavy barrage of gunfire from outside completely stopped.
An eerie, suffocating silence fell over the woods.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, the screen illuminating the dark room.
The caller ID displayed my mother's private number.
May you like
I answered the call, pressing the phone to my ear.
"You fight bravely, Grant, but this cabin is entirely surrounded by explosives," Evelyn said cheerfully.
