Chapter 4 - The Surgical Strike
The third floor of Mercy General was completely silent.
Emergency backup lighting cast eerie, long shadows across the linoleum. Elena moved down the service stairs, taking each step on the ball of her foot, distributing her weight along the outer edges of the concrete to eliminate any structural squeaks.
She arrived at the third-floor fire exit.
Peering through the wire-reinforced glass, she spotted the first patrol.
He was moving methodically down the hall, checking doors. He held a Benelli M4 tactical shotgun at the low ready. He had night-vision goggles flipped down over his eyes—green-tinted dual tubes hummed softly on his helmet.
*Night vision,* Elena noted mentally. *A massive advantage in a darkened corridor. Unless you know how to turn their technology into a weapon against them.*
Elena slipped back into the stairwell, walked down three steps, and located the manual fire alarm pull station.
Beside it hung the high-intensity strobes for hearing-impaired patients.
She unscrewed the faceplate of the emergency strobe unit with the tip of her combat knife, exposing the copper wiring. She pulled out a small alcohol prep pad from her scrub pocket, wrapped it around the terminal, and rigged the ground wire to bypass the central alarm relay while feeding raw capacitor power straight into the xenon flash tube.
Then, she stepped back onto the landing, picked up a heavy stainless steel bedpan from a discarded utility cart, and hurled it down the hall.
*CLANG.*
The noise echoed like a gunshot.
Instantly, the mercenary pivoted toward the sound. The green tubes of his night-vision goggles locked onto the corner of the hallway. He moved forward, his shotgun raised, clearing the threshold with mechanical efficiency.
"Bravo, I have movement near the east wing," the man whispered into his throat-mic. "Moving to intercept."
He stepped past the utility station.
Elena jumped out from the recessed doorway.
She didn't shoot. Gunfire would alert the entire floor.
Instead, she slammed the bypass wire into the strobe capacitor directly in front of the man's face.
*FLASH.*
A four-thousand-lumen discharge of raw, blinding white light exploded inches from the dual tubes of his night-vision goggles.
To a man wearing light-amplifying optics, the effect was catastrophic. The goggles instantly amplified the blinding flash ten-thousand-fold, burning his retinas with agonizing intensity.
The mercenary shrieked, dropping his shotgun and clawing desperately at his helmet to rip the blinded optics away.
"Gah! My eyes!"
Elena closed the distance in half a second.
She drove a palm heel into his solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs. As his head snapped forward, she gripped his tactical helmet by the rim and slammed his skull downward against her raised knee.
The impact sounded like a bowling ball hitting pavement.
The man went limp instantly. Elena caught him before his body hit the floor, preventing his gear from rattling. She dragged him into the nearby linen closet, secured his wrists with medical restraints, and took his Benelli shotgun and his spare ammunition.
One down. Two to go.
She picked up his radio.
*"Bravo! Report! What happened?"* Drake’s voice was growing increasingly agitated.
Elena keyed the mic twice. *Click. Click.* The standard military signal for *in position, cannot speak.*
*"Hurry up,"* Drake snapped. *"I’m on the second floor with the hostages. Hadley says the cops are preparing a breaching charge on the east fire door. We execute the nurse supervisor in two minutes if Ward doesn't bring Vance."*
Elena’s heart pounded, but her breath remained deep and measured.
She knew the layout of Mercy General better than any floor plan Drake had downloaded. She had spent three years working every inch of this building. She knew that behind the second-floor pediatric nursing station, there was a laundry chute that dropped straight to the linen processing plant in the basement.
And more importantly, there was a ceiling crawlspace used for pneumatic medical tube delivery.
Elena looked up at the acoustic ceiling tiles.
May you like
"Coming for you, Drake," she whispered.
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