Chapter 8 - The Ranger's Playground
Marcus and the three mercenaries breached the perimeter fence using wire cutters, slipping into the dense pine woods surrounding the main house. The property seemed eerily quiet. Too quiet.
"Keep your eyes open," Briggs whispered, raising his suppressed rifle as they advanced through the fog. "I don't like this. No exterior floodlights, no guard dogs."
A soft, electronic beep echoed through the trees.
Before Briggs could yell a warning, a localized flashbang detonated in the canopy above them. The blinding flash and deafening crack disoriented the team instantly. From the shadows, Gabriel moved like a wraith.
He didn't use a firearm; he wanted this quiet. Dropping from a low tree branch behind the rearmost mercenary, Gabriel placed him in a textbook rear-naked choke. The man dragged his heels for three seconds before going completely limp, dragged silently into the ferns.
"Where's Miller?" the second mercenary muttered, spinning around in the fog.
A heavy combat boot caught him behind the knee, snapping the joint, followed by a swift palm strike to his jaw that knocked him unconscious before he hit the dirt.
Briggs panicked, raising his rifle to fire blindly into the fog, but Gabriel was already inside his guard. A disarming technique stripped the rifle from Briggs's hands in a split second, and a ruthless elbow strike to the solar plexus left the seasoned mercenary writhing on the ground, gasping for air.
Marcus stood alone in the clearing, trembling violently, holding a small, shaking handgun with two hands.
"Gabriel?!" Marcus screamed into the mist, tears of terror streaming down his face. "Show yourself! I'll shoot!"
May you like
Gabriel stepped out from the shadows just ten feet away. He wasn't even breathing hard. He looked at the trembling gun in Marcus’s hands with absolute contempt.
"You like holding weapons against people who can't fight back, don't you, Marcus?" Gabriel said, his voice cold as ice. "Let's see how brave you are when the target is facing you."
