Chapter 24 - The Hunting Ground
The first contractor crossed the icy stream with his rifle raised to his shoulder pocket, scanning the dense ferns with his weapon-mounted flashlight. The beam cut through the swirling mountain fog, catching raindrops suspended in the air.
He never heard Gabriel approach.
Gabriel stepped out from behind the trunk of an ancient hemlock tree like a wraith born of the shadows. His left hand shot forward, clamping over the contractor's tactical mouth-guard with crushing force, muffling any possible scream. Simultaneously, Gabriel drove a five-inch combat blade upward through the soft tissue beneath the soldier's jaw, penetrating directly into the brain stem.
The contractor went completely limp instantly.
Without letting the corpse hit the gravel with a splash, Gabriel caught the falling weapon—a suppressed Heckler & Koch 416—unclipped the man's chest rig, and lowered the dead body silently into the icy water, letting the dark current carry it under the overhanging roots.
"Point, report," a voice crackled through the dead man’s ear-piece.
Gabriel didn't answer. He picked up the suppressed rifle, flipped the selector switch from safe to semi-automatic, and melted back into the brush.
The second contractor, twenty yards back on the sandbar, noticed the absence of his partner's flashlight beam. "Bravo Two, what's your status?"
He took three cautious steps forward, his boots crunching on the wet river stones.
He swept his light across the water. A pale hand drifted past on the surface, caught in the current.
The contractor’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to shout—
*THWIP-THWIP.*
Two suppressed 5.56 rounds punched through the center of his chest armor at close range, shattering the ceramic trauma plates. The contractor staggered backward. Before he could hit the ground, Gabriel lunged from the fern line, his boot driving into the man’s knee, snapping the joint backward with a sickening crack.
Gabriel caught the falling mercenary by the throat, slamming him onto the gravel beach with a knee pinned against his sternum.
Gabriel jammed the warm muzzle of the rifle directly into the man’s eye socket through his shattered tactical goggles.
"Don't speak," Gabriel hissed, his voice dropping into a register colder than the glacial lake. "Nod if you want to breathe for another sixty seconds."
The mercenary, gasping through bloodied lips, nodded frantically.
"Who hired you?" Gabriel demanded. "Elena is supposed to be in a burn unit or dead at sea. Who is funding the black-budget tracking?"
The contractor coughed, blood bubbling from his mouth. "You... you don't know anything, servant boy... Elena... Elena isn't the head of the snake..."
Gabriel pressed the barrel deeper. "Names."
"The... The Ashford Trust..." the man wheezed, a grotesque, terrified grin spreading across his bloody teeth. "Arthur Ashford... he didn't die of a stroke in that hospital. Elena didn't kill him... he faked it all. The mother... the daughter... you... you're all just liabilities in a ledger being cleared before the merger..."
Gabriel’s mind reeled. *Arthur Ashford?*
The patriarch? The grieving grandfather who had sobbed at Julianna’s funeral? The old man who had sat in his leather armchair in the library, clutching Nora’s baby photograph while Gabriel stood guard outside the double mahogany doors?
"Where is Arthur?" Gabriel growled.
"He's watching..." the contractor gasped, his eyes darting toward the sky. "He's watching you right now through the satellite feed..."
A sudden red laser dot bloomed on the center of the captured contractor's forehead.
Gabriel’s combat instincts flared. He dove laterally into the rocks.
*CRACK!*
A high-velocity sniper round from the hovering helicopter above obliterated the captured soldier's skull, executing their own man to maintain operational silence.
The black Eurocopter dipped its nose, its massive spotlight suddenly igniting with blinding, daylight-level intensity. The searchlight beam swept across the beach, tracking Gabriel’s dive, illuminating the rocks where Nora was hidden fifty yards away.
The searchlight stopped.
It illuminated the small bundle of wool wedged beneath the roots of the hemlock.
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"TARGET LOCATED," the helicopter’s external loudspeaker boomed through the canyon, rattling the spruce needles from the branches. "RECOVERY PROTOCOL AUTHORIZED. TERMINATE THE CARETAKER."
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