Page 11 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

A claustrophobic nightmare. Rigging ropes hang from the ceiling like a mechanical jungle. Painted wooden backdrops stack against the walls, creating deep shadows.

Exactly the kind of environment a sniper despises. My advantage is built on distance, visibility, and control. In this cluttered corridor, a threat could materialize from two feet away before I raise a weapon.

"Hutch." My voice barely carries over the distant wail of the fire alarm. "I'm blind in the service corridors. You have eyes?"

"Negative." Hutch's response is instant. "The Consortium crew sliced the hardlines to the venue's security hub when they breached. I only have external traffic feeds. I'm tracking a secondary perimeter element moving around the rear loading dock. They're sealing the exits. You're being boxed in."

"Then I break the box."

I grab the ballerina's shoulder and haul her to a halt behind a stacked wooden scenery painted like a Parisian street.

She gasps, spinning to face me, her green eyes wide with panic.

I raise a finger to my lips.

Silence.

I tilt my head, tuning out the sirens bleeding through the walls from the solarium. I listen to the building. The creak of weight shifting on old floorboards. The faint rustle of tactical nylon against concrete.

Measured footsteps approach from the far end of the corridor.

Not police. Local authorities move in chaotic surges. These footsteps are disciplined. Methodical. Spaced to cover intersecting angles of fire.

The clean-up crew is already on the floor.

I draw the SIG again, the cold grip grounding me. I slide the combat knife from its chest sheath and hold it reverse-grip in my left hand.

I look down at the ballerina. She's pressed flat against the backdrop, her chest rising and falling fast. She understands what's happening. The terror is there, but her dancer's discipline holds her still. She isn't making a sound.

I step past her, putting my body between her and the open corridor.

I sweep the backstage labyrinth, reading the threat vectors. A fatal funnel—choke points of canvas rigging, stacked flats, and exposed lighting trusses. The narrow sightlines kill my rifle's advantage, but they also keep the incoming hitters from establishing overlapping fields of fire. In a space this tight, speed and violence of action are the only currency. I have to drop them before they coordinate a crossfire.

The first hitter rounds the corner of a stacked prop wall.

His gear is identical to the men I shot on the stage, his face obscured by a balaclava. He leads with a compact submachine gun, sweeping the shadows.

He never gets the chance to acquire a target.

I close the six-foot gap in a single lunge. Two hundred twenty pounds of momentum overwhelms him.

I drive the pommel of the knife into his throat, crushing his windpipe before he can shout a warning. Before he registers the impact, I pivot my hips, sweep his submachine gun off-center, and bring the SIG tight against his vest.

Crack. Crack.

The suppressed rounds punch through the soft side-paneling of his armor. He convulses, the air leaving his lungs in a wet hiss.

I don't let him hit the floor. I grab the nylon straps of his rig, haul his dead weight into the deep shadows behind the Parisian backdrop, and lower him to the concrete without a sound.

The ballerina stares at the corpse, her hand pressed to her mouth to stifle a scream. Her eyes track the pool of blood spreading across the floor.

"Two more coming." The words barely leave my lips, a rumble pitched under the sirens.

The footsteps of the remaining fireteam hesitate. The absence of their point man breaks their sweeping pattern.

"Kozlov?" A thick accent, calling from the corridor.

They move faster now, the disciplined caution replaced by aggression. They know their point man is down.