Chapter 8 - The Breach of Saint Jude’s Gate
The sudden wail of emergency sirens tore through the valley before the tape could finish clicking.
High-intensity spotlights from the river swept across the terrace glass, throwing violent white beams across the bloodstained floorboards.
A heavy concussive blast rattled the foundations of the mansion from the eastern gate.
The chandelier swung violently, shadows leaping across the ceiling like panicking ghosts.
“That’s not the feds,” Marcus shouted over the screeching alarms, racking another shell into his shotgun.
Damon pulled Anna behind the heavy mahogany sideboard with a single violent jerk of his arm.
“Who hit the gate?” Damon demanded into his radio.
Static hissed through the speaker, followed by the sound of rapid, heavy-caliber machine-gun fire.
“Keller’s down!” an operative screamed over the channel.
“Black tactical sedans! They breached the eastern perimeter with a dump truck!”
“They have military-grade hardware! Repeat, military-grade—!”
A sharp snap of a high-velocity round cut the radio transmission dead.
Damon looked at Leo Rossi, who was still cowering near the fireplace.
Leo began to laugh—a high, hysterical sound that rose above the distant gunfire.
“You thought I only brought street muscle, Damon?”
Leo wiped spit from his chin, his eyes wide and bloodshot.
“The Zurich group doesn't leave loose ends!”
“The people who bought those weapons in Nineveh never forgot Anthony Marino!”
“They knew the ledger was here!”
“They came to wipe the entire estate off the map!”
Damon stepped out from cover, grabbed Leo by his silk necktie, and hauled him up onto his toes.
Damon drove the steel barrel of his semi-automatic pistol into the hollow beneath Leo’s jaw.
“Give me their entry codes.”
Leo gasped for air, his heels kicking against the hardwood.
“There are no codes! They were hired to kill every living soul inside these walls!”
A sniper round punched through the center pane of the glass terrace door.
The bullet tore clean through Leo’s upper chest, spraying dark crimson across the white marble mantelpiece.
Leo’s body went completely limp in Damon’s grip.
Damon let him drop to the floor like a sack of wet laundry.
“Cover!” Damon roared, dragging Anna down as a hail of automatic fire shattered the remaining terrace glass into a million glittering shards.
Curtains shredded into ribbons under the storm of high-velocity lead.
Plaster exploded from the walls in blinding clouds of white dust.
James Marino stood in the center of the crossfire, completely unmoved.
His blindness made him immune to the disorientation of the flashing muzzle flares.
He dropped flat onto his belly with the precise combat roll of an infantryman fifty years younger.
He crawled under the cover of the long mahogany table toward the corner where Marcus was firing out into the dark.
“Jimmy!” Marcus yelled over the deafening noise.
“They’re using suppressors and thermal optics! They’re moving along the rose garden!”
Anna pressed her forehead against the hardwood, her ears ringing with an agonizing whine.
The smell of pulverized plaster, cordite, and blood filled her throat.
For a second, the sheer terror threatened to paralyze her limbs.
Then her father’s voice rang in her mind, louder than the gunfire.
When the house catches fire, Annie, you don't look at the flames.
You count the exits.
You check your footing.
Pain later.
Anna lifted her eyes through the haze of smoke.
She looked at the walls, at the antique sconces, at the heavy brass moldings her father had described in his letters.
“The service tunnel!” Anna shouted at Damon, her voice cutting through the din.
Damon looked back at her, his weapon smoking as he returned fire through the shattered terrace.
“What?”
“My father drew the blueprints for this wing before he went to Iraq!”
“Behind the portrait of our great-grandfather in the library!”
“There’s a reinforced fallout chute that drops straight into the old carriage tunnels!”
Damon’s eyes flashed with fierce recognition.
“He told you about Sector Zero?”
“He made me memorize the dimensions every summer during our road trips!”
“He said: ‘If the wolves ever reach the house, the cellar is the only place they can't burn!’”
Marcus fired two rapid rounds through the doorway, dropping an operative in black body armor who had breached the terrace steps.
“Move!” Marcus barked. “I have three rounds left!”
Damon grabbed James by the collar of his suit, hauling the old patriarch to his feet while using his own body as a shield.
“Anna! Lead the way!”
Anna didn't hesitate.
She vaulted over the fallen dining chairs, her flat shoes gripping the splintered floorboards.
She sprinted through the smoke-filled corridor toward the heavy double doors of the private library.
May you like
Behind them, the grand dining room was consumed by the deafening roar of a flashbang grenade.
The war that had started in the burning sands of Nineveh had finally breached the sanctuary of the Marino bloodline.
