Chapter 2 - Tactical Entry-2
We pulled up two blocks away from my address, killing the SUV's headlights and rolling silently behind a row of overgrown oak trees. The storm had intensified, whipping heavy rain through the air and masking the low rumble of our vehicle. I slipped on my black tactical vest, checking the chamber of my sidearm with a swift, practiced motion. The slide clicked into place with a cold, metallic snap.
"Perimeter status?" I whispered into my comms unit.
"Alpha team in position at the rear patio," came the response. "Beta team securing the front porch. The signal jammer is active inside the garage, but we've spliced into their hardline power to tap local audio. Sending feed to your receiver now."
I adjusted the receiver on my belt and pressed the earbud deeper into my ear. Through the static, muffled voices echoed from inside my own home.
"...needs to be packed now!" It was Gertrude's voice—sharp, frantic, completely devoid of the mocking cruelty she had displayed on the driveway. "The transport from the clinic is ten minutes out. If Samson's plane gets diverted or if his command network flags the alert, we won't make it to the airstrip!"
"Calm down, Mother," Samantha’s voice drifted through the static. She sounded utterly relaxed, casually sipping something from a glass. "Samson is in the air between Salt Lake and Norfolk. He can't do anything from thirty thousand feet. Even if his phone picked up the initial motion alert, he has no way of knowing what we're actually doing. He thinks we're just having a domestic dispute."
"And the kid?" That was Valerie, the middle sister. Her voice carried a strange, nervous edge. "She wouldn't stop crying. The chemical wash burned her skin."
"It's supposed to burn," Samantha snapped. "It strips the topical synthetic proteins. If those proteins stay on her epidermis for more than six hours, the genetic markers stabilize, and the lab won't be able to sequence the baseline. Do you want the forty million dollars or not?"
Forty million dollars.
The words hung in the air like poison. My chest tightened until I could barely draw breath. My wife—the woman I had shared a bed with for ten years, the woman who had cried in my arms when Chloe was born—was talking about our eight-year-old daughter like a harvested laboratory specimen.
"Jackson," I whispered, turning to my former operations chief. "Take out the power grid for the block. Now."
"Executed," Jackson said, tapping his tablet.
A split second later, every streetlamp on the road went dark simultaneously. The interior lights of my two-story home flickered once and died, plunging the entire property into pitch-black shadow. Inside the house, confused shouts immediately broke out.
"Alpha, breach the rear slider. Beta, take the front door. Non-lethal on the sisters if possible—I want them alive to answer questions. Gertrude and Samantha are mine."
"Copy that, Colonel. Execute, execute, execute."
The sharp, deafening BANG of two flashbang grenades shattered the quiet of the suburban neighborhood, blowing out the ground-floor glass windows in a burst of blinding white light and concussive sound.
I hit the front door with my shoulder just as Beta team's breach charge destroyed the heavy oak frame. Wood splinters rained down as we flooded into the foyer. Night-vision goggles flipped down, rendering the dark living room in crisp, glowing green hues.
Through the smoke, I saw Valerie and Brenda stumbling blindly across the hallway, screaming and clutching their ears from the disorientation of the flashbangs.
"DOWN ON THE GROUND!" Jackson roared, slamming Brenda against the wall and forcing her to the hardwood floor with a heavy knee to her spine. Valerie tried to scramble toward the kitchen, but Beta-2 caught her by the collar, driving her down and zip-tying her wrists behind her back in one seamless motion.
"Where is she?!" I grabbed Jacqueline by the throat as she emerged frantically from the dining room, pinning her hard against the staircase banister. "Where is my daughter?!"
Jacqueline gagged, her eyes wide with sheer terror as she looked into my night-vision lenses. "Samson... please... you don't understand... they made us... it's not what you think—"
"WHERE IS CHLOE?!" I barked, tightening my grip until her face turned dark.
"The... the pantry!" she gasped, pointing a trembling, manicured finger toward the back of the house. "The hidden door... in the pantry!"
I shoved her into Beta-1's waiting cuffs and sprinted down the hallway toward the kitchen. The house was dead silent now except for the heavy thud of my boots and the distant sound of rain pounding on the roof.
I threw open the walk-in pantry door, kicking aside boxes of overturned food. At the back of the shelving unit, behind stacked canned goods, was a heavy steel door that had been cut into the foundation wall—a door that had never been on any architectural blueprint of my home.
It was thrown wide open. A flight of concrete stairs descended into a brightly lit, sterile underground corridor.
From deep within the subterranean space below, I heard a high-pitched, terrified cry that made my soul freeze.
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"Daddy! DADDY, HELP ME!"
I leaped down the concrete stairs three at a time, my weapon raised, completely unconcerned with my own safety. All that mattered was reaching my child before the monsters in my family erased her forever.
