Chapter 14 - Blood on the Floor
The first indicator of the assault was the sudden shatter of the kitchen window as a flash-bang grenade was tossed onto the wooden floorboards.
“Close your eyes!” Roman shouted, diving behind the heavy stone masonry of the fireplace just as the canister detonated with a blinding, white-hot explosion.
The concussive blast rattled the log walls of the cabin, sending a shower of broken glass and ceramic pottery flying across the room.
Before the smoke could clear, the front door was kicked open by two heavily armed Sokolov mercenaries wearing night-vision tactical goggles.
Roman did not wait for them to acquire targets; he leaned out from behind the chimney stack, firing twice with lethal, surgical precision.
The lead mercenary dropped instantly to the porch floorboards, a hollow-point round through his center mass before his rifle could even level.
The second man fired a wild burst from his automatic carbine, the bullets chewing into the log walls and shredding the back of the wool sofa.
From the upstairs window, Nikolai’s suppressed weapon spat twice, taking the second gunner in the neck and sending him tumbling down the porch steps.
“We have two more flanking the eastern wall!” Nikolai yelled down the stairwell, reloading his weapon with mechanical speed amidst the gunpowder smoke.
Roman moved toward the kitchen, his boots crunching over broken glass as he checked the secure trapdoor leading to Sienna’s hiding place.
The rug was displaced by the explosion, but the heavy oak panel remained solidly locked from below, entirely unbreached by the assault.
Suddenly, the rear wooden door of the cabin was blown off its hinges by a breaching charge, throwing splintered oak across the kitchen table.
Viktor Sokolov stepped through the smoke, an automatic pistol in his right hand and a wild, desperate grin on his youthful, scarred face.
“Volkov!” Viktor screamed, firing three rapid rounds toward Roman’s silhouette in the dim light of the burning hearth.
Roman dived toward the protection of the kitchen island, but one of the high-velocity rounds caught him cleanly in the left shoulder.
The impact spun him around, slamming his back against the wooden cabinets with a blinding flash of white-hot, burning agony that took his breath.
He didn't drop his weapon; he clamped his right hand tighter around the grip of his Sig Sauer, sliding down to one knee on the bloody floorboards.
Viktor stepped into the kitchen, his pistol raised to execute the wounded Bratva boss, his eyes wide with triumphant malice.
“This is for Uncle Mikhail, you arrogant bastard,” Viktor snarled, aiming directly at the center of Roman’s forehead from five feet away.
Before Viktor could pull the trigger, Nikolai dropped from the second-story loft directly onto the mercenary’s shoulders with the weight of a falling tree.
The two men crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs, weapons clattering across the wood as they fought for control of a tactical knife.
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Roman fought through the gray mist of shock clouding his vision, raising his weapon with a trembling right hand toward the struggling figures.
He waited for a fraction of a second until Nikolai rolled clear, then pulled the trigger twice, ending the Sokolov bloodline permanently on the kitchen floor.
