Page 115 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

The man didn’t get up.

Hudson leaned through the open passenger door and pressed two fingers to Archie’s carotid. Alive.

The ambulance rocked. Hudson was already moving. His hand went for his gun and missed by an inch. His depth perception corrected a beat late.

Concussion.

He got his gun on the second attempt. He flowed along the side of the ambulance, staying low, one shoulder brushing the panel. Red and white lights painted the snow in rhythmic pulses, turning the world into a series of frozen frames.

Movement at the rear corner.

Hudson dropped.

Too late.

The ringing in his left ear had concealed the man’s approach. The round hammered into the ballistic plate beneath Hudson’s jacket, driving him onto his back. His Glock flew from his hand and stars burst across his vision.

Boots crunched closer. “Fucker.”

Hudson rolled as the man closed, got one boot beneath him and came up inside the rifle’s useful range. His left hand trapped the rifle, wrenching the muzzle aside as he planted a boot hard into the man’s pelvis.

The operator staggered back a step. Hudson tore the rifle sideways, ripped it free and slammed the man into the rear corner of the ambulance. The man’s head struck steel with a sickening crack. His knees folded, and he dropped to the snow with a groan. Hudson let the rifle fall.

Fuck.

The man wasn’t out. Hudson snatched up his Glock and kept moving. Cord came first.

His hands shook from adrenaline, and his lungs screamed for a full breath. There wasn’t time. He swung around the open rear doors, his Glock raised.

Two operators inside, shouting instructions. One covering Mercer and Julie. One disconnecting Cord from the monitor, working fast to prepare the gurney for extraction.

Medical equipment littered the floor. Julie was pressed against the far wall, hands clamped over her mouth. Mercer was on his feet, bleeding from a cut above his eye, his weapon on the floor, kicked out of reach.

Neither looked at him, but they’d heard him.

The cover man’s rifle started toward him. Hudson’s sight picture blurred. He blinked hard, forced it back into focus, and fired. The operator dropped where he stood, his rifle clattering onto the ambulance floor.

Julie flinched, her eyes squeezed shut as she smothered a scream. The gunshot snapped the extraction operator’s head around. He dropped Cord’s restraint straps and reached for his rifle.

Mercer hit him before Hudson could call it. A full-body tackle that drove them both into the medical cabinets with a crash that shook the suspension. The operator twisted in Mercer’s grip. A knife appeared, pulled from a vest sheath. The blade flashed bright as it came around.

Mercer got his forearm up. The slash opened a line across his sleeve that bloomed red immediately. He grunted and held on. The operator stabbed again, and the point caught Mercer below his vest on the left side.

Mercer gave a startled grunt. He slid down the cabinets, hands flying to his side as blood welled between his fingers.

Hudson holstered his Glock, vaulted up into the vehicle and caught the man from behind, his forearm locking beneath the man’s chin as his other hand cinched the choke tight.

The man thrashed, driving them both backward. Hudson’s spine struck the sharp edge of a cabinet, pain flaring along his back, but he didn’t loosen the choke. The knife plunged back toward his ribs. Hudson twisted, and the blade scraped across his vest.

It came again—higher this time. He caught the man’s wrist for a fraction of a second.

Not enough. The point drove into the meat of Hudson’s upper arm. White-hot pain skewered through him. Hudson tightened the choke and held. The man’s movements turned frantic, then weaker. Hudson held until the weight against him changed, then another beat before he released.

The man slumped to the floor.

Hudson dropped to Mercer. The stab wound was below the vest on Mercer’s left side and bleeding profusely.

Bad. Pressure first. Everything else later.