The story follows Captain Jack Vance (based on Volkov) and his partner, entrusted with transporting a high-value cargo worth 37 million and a classified “NOC List” of deep-cover agents across a hostile border. Their mission is compromised when their scheduled security detail is replaced at the last minute by a man named Conrad, who claims to be the new head of security but is actually an enemy operative. Realizing they are trapped on a moving train with no way out, Vance and his partner must navigate a psychological game of cat-and-mouse. The situation escalates into a violent shootout, forcing them to flee into the wilderness. While the enemy is desperate to recover the “List” of agents, Vance must decide between saving the cargo or the lives of the patriots on that list, ultimately realizing that the mission has changed from transport to survival.
Part 1
It was 06:08 AM when the knock on the compartment door changed everything.
I’m Captain Jack Vance. For the last 48 hours, my partner and I had been awake, guarding a cargo that didn’t technically exist. We were moving $37 million in bearer bonds and diamonds, plus a digitally encrypted drive containing the names of seven deep-cover assets embedded in the highest levels of the enemy administration.
We were tired. We were on edge. But we were almost to the extraction point.
Then the door slid open.
I expected our usual contact. Instead, a tall man with a scar on his cheek and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes stepped in.
“Mr. Vance?” he asked. “I’m your escort.”
He introduced himself as Conrad. He claimed to be the new head of the courier security service. He said the old chief had been “replaced”.
My stomach dropped. In this line of work, replacements don’t happen at 6 AM on a moving train without a secure comms update.
“I have the honor of not knowing you,” I told him, keeping my hand inches from the holster concealed under my jacket.
He laughed. It was a cold, mechanical sound. “You speak excellent German for an American,” he said, handing over papers that looked perfect. Too perfect. “I would never have believed you were a foreigner.”
“I would never believe that a change of security is an accident,” I shot back.
He sat down opposite me, uninvited. The air in the small compartment grew heavy. He looked at the locked heavy-duty briefcase handcuffed to my wrist.
“Transporting emeralds and bonds worth 37 million through half of Europe is very risky,” Conrad said, his eyes flicking to the bag. “Especially without well-trained security. That’s why we’re here.”
He leaned in closer. “It would be better if you give the bag to us now. My brother is in charge of customs at the next stop. I will personally ask that you be allowed through without… problems.”
It wasn’t an offer. It was a threat wrapped in a velvet glove.
I looked him dead in the eye. “The cargo stays with us. In any case.”
Conrad smiled again. “Unless death do you part.”
The train rattled over the tracks, the rhythm sounding like a countdown.
“You know, Conrad,” I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding my veins. “I don’t advise you to threaten me. Because everyone who has tried is already dead.”
He blinked. “You are nervous. You perceive an innocent joke as a threat.”
“Not at all,” I lied.
He stood up, brushing lint off his coat. “I won’t bother you. If you want to chat over a glass of French cognac, my compartment is nearby.”
As soon as the door clicked shut, I turned to my partner. “Do not make contact with them. Do not take water, cigarettes, or food. We are compromised.”
I checked my weapon. A compact .45. Not long-range, but reliable. “If they breach the door,” I whispered, “we break through.”
But deep down, I knew. The train wasn’t stopping at the station. We were trapped in a steel cage moving at 80 miles per hour, and the wolves were waiting in the corridor.
Part 2: The Kill Box
The silence in Compartment 4 was louder than the rhythmic clacking of the train wheels against the steel tracks.
After the man calling himself “Conrad” left, the air in our small cabin felt thin, like we were at high altitude. I sat there, staring at the locked door, my hand still resting near the grip of my .45. My partner, Alex—a kid fresh out of the Academy, barely twenty-four years old—was wiping sweat from his palms onto his trousers. He looked pale. He looked like a kid who had just realized that the adventure stories were lies, and the reality of this job was a cold, lonely grave in a foreign country.
“Jack,” he whispered, his voice cracking slightly. “That guy… the way he looked at the bag.”
“I know,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Check the window. Keep the blind down, just a crack. Tell me what you see.”
Alex moved to the window, peering out into the gray, pre-dawn mist of the European countryside. “Nothing. Trees. Fog. We’re slowing down, though. We shouldn’t be slowing down yet, right? The timetable said Terespol in forty minutes.”
I checked my watch. 06:15 AM.
“We aren’t stopping for customs,” I said, the realization settling in my gut like a stone. “We’re stopping because they want us to.”
I looked down at the briefcase handcuffed to my left wrist. Inside were bearer bonds and uncut diamonds worth 37 million dollars. It was enough money to fund a small war, or to buy a retirement on a private island. But the money was just the distraction. The real weight was in the encrypted drive tucked into a hidden lining of the bag. The “Rushin List.” Seven names. Seven ghosts. Deep-cover operatives embedded so high up in the enemy’s command structure that their discovery would turn the tide of history.
If Conrad got the bag, he got the money. If he found the drive… seven patriots would be trtured and excuted before breakfast.
“Alex,” I said, my tone hardening. “Listen to me very carefully. The rules of engagement have changed. We are no longer couriers. We are targets.”
I stood up and began to barricade the door. I shoved the heavy oak table against it, wedging it under the handle. It wouldn’t stop a battering ram, but it would buy us seconds. And in a gunfight, seconds are the only currency that matters.
“Get your weapon out,” I ordered. “Chamber a round. Safety off.”
Alex fumbled with his holster. He was shaking. “Jack, are we… are we going to sh*ot at them? They’re supposed to be security. Maybe we misunderstood. Maybe—”
“Stop,” I snapped, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Look at me. That man, Conrad? He isn’t security. He’s a cleaner. He’s here to wipe the slate. He told me to my face: ‘Emeralds will remain with us in any case… unless death do us part.’ That wasn’t a joke, Alex. That was a promise.”
The train lurched. The squeal of the brakes was deafening, a high-pitched scream of metal on metal that sent shivers down my spine. We were losing speed rapidly.
“They’re stopping the train in the middle of the transfer zone,” I muttered. “Smart. No witnesses. No real customs officers. Just us and them.”
I pulled the heavy curtains shut, plunging the cabin into semi-darkness. “We don’t open this door for anyone. Not unless I give the order. If that handle turns, you fire through the wood. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Alex said. He was terrified, but he was holding it together. barely.
The train came to a complete halt with a final, jarring thud. The sudden lack of motion was disorienting. For hours, the vibration of the tracks had been a constant companion; now, the stillness was suffocating.
From the corridor outside, I heard heavy boots. Not the polished shoes of a conductor, but the heavy, deliberate tread of combat boots. Many of them.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It was a polite, rhythmic rapping on the door. It was almost mocking.
“Mr. Vance?” It was Conrad’s voice. Smooth. Arrogant. “We have arrived. The customs inspection will take place here. Please, open the door.”
I signaled Alex to stay silent. I moved to the side of the doorframe, using the wall as cover.
“We’ll stay inside, thanks,” I called out. “We’re comfortable.”
A pause. Then a low chuckle from the other side of the wood. “Mr. Vance, don’t be difficult. The tracks are blocked. There is a… technical issue. We need to transfer the cargo to a secure vehicle. My men are here to assist you.”
“We don’t need assistance,” I yelled back. “We have orders to remain on board until the diplomatic seal is verified by our own consulate.”
“Your consulate isn’t here, Jack,” Conrad said, dropping the formal act. His voice dropped an octave, becoming cold and hard. “And they aren’t coming. The phone lines are down. The engineer is on my payroll. The only people for ten miles are me, my men, and the wolves in the forest.”
I looked at Alex. He was aiming his pistol at the door with both hands, his breathing shallow and fast.
“You have two choices,” Conrad continued, his voice drifting through the cracks in the door. “Option A: You unlock the door, hand over the bag, and I might let you walk away. I’m a businessman, Jack. I don’t enjoy violence unless it’s necessary.”
“And Option B?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Option B,” Conrad said, “is that we turn this carriage into a coffin. We take the bag off your corpse. It’s messier, sure. But the result is the same.”
I tightened my grip on my weapon. “I think I’ll take Option C.”
“And what is that?”
“I hold this position until hell freezes over,” I said. “And I take as many of you with me as I can.”
There was silence for a long moment. Then, I heard Conrad sigh. “Pity. I actually liked your suit.”
He barked a command in a language I didn’t catch—maybe a dialect, maybe code. Then, the footsteps retreated.
“They’re falling back,” Alex whispered, hope flickering in his eyes.
“No,” I said, checking the magazine of my gun. “They’re getting the heavy tools. Move the mattress. Put it against the window. Now!”
We scrambled. I unhooked the bunk mattress and shoved it against the glass. Alex grabbed the pillows and cushions, piling them up to create a soft barrier against shrapnel. We were fortifying a shoebox.
I knew their tactics. They wouldn’t just kick the door; they knew we were armed. They would try to flush us out or pinch us.
“Listen to me,” I told Alex. “If they breach, they’ll come low. Aim for the waist. Don’t look at their faces, just look at the center of mass. Squeeze, don’t pull.”
“Jack,” Alex said, his voice trembling. “I’ve never shot anyone. Not for real.”
“Today,” I said, looking him in the eye, “you aren’t shooting people. You’re shooting targets that are trying to stop you from going home to your mother. You focus on that. You want to see home again? You fight.”
CRASH.
The glass of the corridor window shattered. Then came the sound of something rolling on the floor outside.
“Gas!” I yelled. “Cover your face!”
We pulled our collars up, burying our noses in our shirts. But it wasn’t gas. It was a flashbang.
BANG.
The world turned white. A ringing, piercing scream filled my ears. I was blind, disoriented, the pressure wave slamming against my chest.
“Alex!” I screamed, but I couldn’t hear my own voice.
I forced my eyes open, blinking through the spots of light. The door handle was turning. The lock shattered as a shotgun blast blew the hinges off. The heavy oak table we had wedged there groaned but held the door partially closed.
A black-clad arm reached through the gap, trying to shove the table aside.
I didn’t hesitate. I raised my .45 and fired three rounds through the wood, right where a torso should be.
Bam. Bam. Bam.
A scream. The arm retracted instantly. A heavy thud followed—the sound of a body hitting the floor.
“One down!” I shouted, the adrenaline clearing the fog in my head. “Alex, fire! Keep them back!”
Alex opened fire. Pop-pop-pop. He was shooting wildly, chipping the wood of the doorframe, blowing holes in the ceiling.
“Lower! Aim lower!” I roared, dragging him down behind the overturned bunk.
Bullets started shredding the wall of our cabin. They were firing blind from the corridor, spraying the room with submachine gun fire. The wood splintered, sending sharp shards flying everywhere. The noise was deafening—a chaotic symphony of automatic fire and shattering glass.
I huddled over the briefcase, my body curling around it instinctively. Not for the money. For the List.
“We can’t stay here!” Alex yelled over the noise. “We’re sitting ducks!”
“The window!” I pointed to the mattress we had set up. “We have to go out the window!”
“The train is stopped, but there are men outside!” Alex argued.
“Better them than the ones in the hallway!”
I grabbed the heavy briefcase and swung it, smashing the glass behind the mattress. The cold morning air rushed in.
“Go! I’ll cover you!” I shouted.
Alex hesitated. “Jack, I can’t leave you!”
“Move, kid! That’s an order!”
Alex scrambled up on the bunk and kicked the mattress out. He climbed through the broken window, tumbling out onto the gravel of the railbed.
I turned back to the door. The table was sliding. They were pushing it. I fired my last three rounds into the gap, buying myself a split second. Then I reloaded, the motion practiced and smooth despite my shaking hands.
I holstered the weapon, grabbed the heavy bag—37 million dollars in gold and paper is heavier than you think—and hauled myself up to the window.
A burst of gunfire chewed up the mattress where my head had been a second ago. I threw myself backward, falling out of the train car and landing hard on the sharp stones of the track ballast.
The impact knocked the wind out of me. I rolled, clutching the bag to my chest.
“Over here!” Alex was crouching behind a concrete signal box, waving frantically.
I scrambled toward him, keeping my head low. Bullets pinged off the steel rails and kicked up dust around my boots. We were in a rail yard of some kind—a sorting depot in the middle of nowhere. Rusted freight cars sat on idle tracks. Fog swirled around us, thick and gray.
“Are you hit?” I asked, scanning him for bl*od.
“No… I don’t think so,” Alex stammered. “Jack, look.”
He pointed toward the front of the train.
Squads of men were pouring out of the forward carriages. They weren’t just thugs in suits; these guys were wearing tactical gear. They moved with military precision. Conrad had brought an army.
“We need to move,” I said, scanning the perimeter. “Into the treeline. If we can get into the woods, we lose their advantage. They can’t use their numbers if they can’t see us.”
We ran.
We ran past the rusted hulks of old coal cars. We ran over rotting wooden ties and through puddles of oil and icy water. The bag banged against my leg with every step, a constant, heavy reminder of the burden we carried.
“There!” Alex pointed to a gap in the fence, about two hundred yards away. Beyond it lay a dense pine forest.
Zip. Zip.
Bullets whizzed past our heads, cracking the air. Snipers. They had shooters on the train roof.
“Zig-zag!” I yelled. “Don’t run in a straight line!”
We wove through the obstacles, ducking behind piles of lumber and discarded machinery. My lungs were burning. The cold air felt like broken glass in my chest.
We reached the fence. It was chain-link, topped with barbed wire, but someone—maybe smugglers, maybe animals—had bent the bottom corner up.
“You first,” I gasped, shoving Alex down. “Craw under. Pull the bag through.”
Alex shimmied under the metal. I unclipped the handcuff from my wrist—something strictly against protocol, but necessary for survival now—and shoved the briefcase through the dirt to him.
“Got it!” he yelled.
I dropped to my stomach and crawled after him. My jacket snagged on the wire. I yanked it free, hearing the fabric tear. As I scrambled to my feet on the other side, a bullet sparked off the fence post inches from my ear.
“Go! Go! Go!”
We plunged into the trees. The pine branches whipped our faces. The ground was soft here, covered in layers of dead needles and moss. It absorbed the sound of our footsteps.
We ran until my legs felt like lead. We ran until the sounds of the shouting men and the gunfire faded into the distance, replaced by the heavy silence of the forest.
Finally, I collapsed against the trunk of a massive oak tree, sliding down until I hit the dirt. Alex dropped the bag and fell to his knees, vomiting from the exertion and the adrenaline crash.
I checked my weapon. One magazine left. Seven rounds.
“We… we made it,” Alex wheezed, wiping his mouth. “We escaped.”
“We didn’t escape,” I said grimly, looking back the way we came. “We just changed the battlefield.”
I looked at the briefcase. It was scuffed and dirty, but intact. 37 million dollars.
“They won’t stop, Alex,” I said. “Conrad isn’t doing this for the money. He’s doing it because he can’t afford to leave witnesses. And he knows what else is in that bag.”
I reached into the hidden compartment of the bag and pulled out the small, silver flash drive. It looked so insignificant. Just a piece of plastic and metal. But it was the reason seven people were still alive today.
“What is that?” Alex asked, seeing it for the first time.
“This,” I said, holding it up, “is the only thing more dangerous than the money. This is the List.”
“The List?”
“The names of our best agents,” I explained. “If Conrad gets this, the Agency goes dark in this entire sector. People die. Good people.”
Alex stared at the drive, then at the heavy bag of money.
“So,” he said, his voice trembling again. “They’re hunting us for the cash?”
“They’re hunting us for this,” I said, putting the drive into my breast pocket, right over my heart. “The cash is just a bonus.”
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the baying of dogs.
My blood ran cold.
“They have trackers,” I whispered. “German Shepherds. Or Dobermans.”
I stood up, fighting the exhaustion. “We have to keep moving. We need to find water. A stream, a river. Something to mask our scent.”
“Jack,” Alex said, struggling to lift the heavy briefcase. “This bag… it weighs fifty pounds. It’s slowing us down.”
I looked at the bag. Then I looked at the kid. He was exhausted. He could barely stand. Carrying that gold and paper was going to get us killed.
“Leave it,” I said.
Alex looked at me like I was insane. “What? It’s 37 million dollars! It’s the mission!”
“The mission is the List,” I said, tapping my chest. “The money is dead weight. We can’t outrun dogs carrying that anchor.”
“But… Command… they’ll court-martial us,” Alex stammered. “Losing the assets…”
“I’d rather be court-martialed and alive than rich and dead,” I said. “Open it.”
“What?”
“Open the bag.”
Alex fumbled with the combination. The locks clicked. He threw it open. Inside, stacks of bonds and velvet pouches of uncut emeralds glinted in the dim forest light.
I reached in and grabbed two handfuls of the bonds—bearer bonds, untraceable. I shoved them into my jacket pockets.
“Grab a handful,” I told him. “For retirement. Leave the rest.”
“This feels wrong,” Alex said, but he stuffed some of the diamonds into his cargo pants.
“It feels like survival,” I said. I kicked the expensive leather briefcase into a hollow under the tree roots and covered it with dead leaves. It wasn’t hidden well, but it might buy us some time if they stopped to check it.
“Let’s go,” I said. “If we find a river, we have a chance. If we don’t…”
I didn’t finish the sentence.
We moved deeper into the woods, the fog swallowing us whole. We were two Americans, thousands of miles from home, with no backup, no radio, and an army of mercenaries on our heels.
As we walked, I couldn’t help but think of Conrad’s face. The way he smiled when he threatened to k*ll us. He was confident. He thought he had already won.
He didn’t know that I had been trained for this. I wasn’t just a courier. Before the diplomatic pouch, before the suits, I was Recon. I knew how to disappear. I knew how to set traps.
I looked at the trees around us. This wasn’t a trap anymore. It was a hunting ground.
“Alex,” I said softly.
“Yeah, Jack?”
“Do you have your knife?”
He nodded, patting his belt.
“Good,” I said. “Keep it sharp. We might need to do this the quiet way.”
The howling of the dogs got closer.
We picked up the pace, moving into the shadows. The game had just begun.
Part 3: The Hunted
The forest didn’t feel like a sanctuary. It felt like a tomb.
We had been moving for three hours since we ditched the heavy bag. Three hours of trudging through a dense, ancient woodland that seemed determined to swallow us whole. The fog hadn’t lifted; if anything, it had thickened, turning the world into a claustrophobic gray tunnel. Every tree trunk looked like a silhouette of a gunman. Every snapping twig sounded like a rifle bolt sliding home.
I checked my watch. 09:42 AM.
In a normal life, people were pouring their second cup of coffee. They were sitting in traffic. They were complaining about the weather. Here, the weather was trying to kill us, and the traffic was a mechanized infantry unit sweeping the grid in a search pattern designed to flush out rabbits.
And we were the rabbits.
“Jack,” Alex whispered. His voice was raw, scraped thin by the cold and the fear. “I can’t… I can’t feel my feet anymore.”
I stopped and turned back. The kid looked bad. His face was the color of old ash. His lips were blue. We had waded through a freezing creek two miles back to throw off the dogs, and the water had soaked through his boots. Hypothermia wasn’t a possibility anymore; it was a timer ticking down.
“Keep moving,” I said, my voice harsher than I intended. “You stop, you die. That’s the rule.”
“I just need a minute,” he pleaded, leaning against a moss-covered rock. He was shaking violently, his teeth chattering so hard I could hear them clicking together.
I grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and hauled him upright. “You don’t have a minute. You hear that?”
I pointed back into the white mist.
Silence. And then, faint but unmistakable—the deep, rhythmic baying of a hound.
“They’re tracking the scent,” I told him, looking him dead in the eye. “Those dogs don’t get tired. They don’t get cold. And the men holding their leashes? They want that drive in my pocket more than they want to go home to their wives. If they catch us, Alex, they won’t just shoot us. They’ll peel us apart until we give them the encryption keys. Do you understand?”
Fear is a powerful stimulant. It cut through the cold in Alex’s system. He nodded, his eyes wide.
“Good,” I said. “Now move.”
We pushed on. The terrain was getting rougher. The forest floor was a uneven mess of roots and rotting deadfall, hidden under a layer of freezing mud. Every step was a battle for balance. My own legs were burning, the lactic acid building up like liquid fire. I was older than Alex by fifteen years. I had the experience, sure, but my knees remembered every jump, every hard landing, every mile I’d rucked in training.
But I was Recon. I knew how to embrace the suck. You don’t fight the pain; you welcome it. Pain means you’re still alive.
“Stay off the ridge,” I instructed, keeping my voice low. “We stay in the defilade. If we silhouette ourselves against the sky, their snipers will pick us off before we hear the shot.”
We moved into a ravine, a scar in the earth filled with jagged rocks and thorny underbrush. It was miserable going, but it offered cover.
As we scrambled over a fallen pine tree, I heard the crackle of static. It wasn’t ours.
I froze, holding up a clenched fist. Alex stopped instantly, freezing mid-step like I’d taught him.
The sound was close. Too close.
“…Sector Four clear. Moving to grid 7-9…”
The voice drifted down from the ridge above us. German. Efficient. Bored.
I signaled Alex to get down. We pressed ourselves into the mud beneath the root ball of the fallen tree. The smell of wet earth and decaying wood filled my nose.
Above us, on the lip of the ravine, I saw boots. Black tactical boots, caked in mud. Two pairs.
They were walking the perimeter of the ravine, looking down.
My hand drifted to the knife at my belt. I had one magazine left for the .45—seven rounds. If I started shooting, every unit within two miles would converge on our position. Gunfire was a dinner bell. This had to be quiet.
The soldiers stopped directly above us.
“Did you hear that?” one of them asked.
“Probably a deer. This place is full of them,” the other replied. A lighter flared. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted down. Tobacco. It smelled like civilization. It smelled like a mistake.
“The Commander is losing patience,” the first voice said. “Conrad says if we don’t find the Americans by noon, he starts executing the support staff back at the train.”
My grip on the knife tightened. Conrad wasn’t bluffing. He was cleaning house.
“Let’s check the creek bed,” the smoker said. “The dogs lost the scent at the water.”
The boots turned and crunched away, fading into the distance.
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Beside me, Alex was trembling so hard the leaves around him were vibrating.
“They’re everywhere,” he whispered. “How many of them are there?”
“Enough,” I said. “But they’re searching a grid. That means they have gaps. We just have to find one.”
We crawled out from under the roots, coated in mud. It was good camouflage, at least.
“We need to head East,” I said, pulling out my compass. “The river bends back toward the border about five miles from here. There’s an old logging bridge. If we can get across, we’re in neutral territory. Or close enough.”
“Five miles?” Alex looked at his feet. “Jack, I can barely walk.”
“You don’t have to walk pretty,” I said. “You just have to walk.”
We climbed out of the ravine, moving slower now. The adrenaline from the near-miss was fading, replaced by a crushing fatigue.
The forest began to change. The pine trees gave way to a dense, swampy marshland. The ground became spongy, sucking at our boots with every step. The fog mixed with the swamp gas, creating a haze that made it impossible to see more than twenty feet ahead.
“Wait,” I said, halting.
Something felt wrong. The birds had stopped singing. The forest had gone quiet. Too quiet.
“Get down,” I hissed.
We dropped into the tall reeds.
Thirty yards ahead, a shape emerged from the mist. It wasn’t a man.
It was a Doberman. Lean, black, and silent. It wasn’t barking anymore. It was hunting.
The dog stopped, its head lowered, sniffing the air. It turned slowly, its ears pricking up. It looked directly at the patch of reeds where we were hiding.
A low growl rumbled in its throat.
“Don’t move,” I breathed. “Don’t even blink.”
Behind the dog, a handler materialized from the fog. He was dressed in gray camo, carrying a silenced MP5 submachine gun. He had a headset on.
The dog lunged.
It didn’t bark. It just launched itself like a missile.
“Run!” I shouted, abandoning stealth.
I scrambled up, putting myself between Alex and the animal. The dog hit me in the chest, eighty pounds of muscle and teeth. I went down hard into the swamp water. Jaws snapped inches from my face, hot breath smelling of raw meat.
I jammed my left forearm into the dog’s mouth to keep it from tearing my throat out. The teeth sank into my leather jacket, bruising the bone but not breaking the skin—yet.
“Jack!” Alex screamed.
“Go!” I yelled, grappling with the beast.
The handler raised his weapon. He couldn’t shoot without hitting the dog. He was shouting commands, trying to get a clear shot.
I rolled, dragging the thrashing dog with me, splashing through the freezing muck. My hand found the hilt of my knife. I didn’t want to do it—I love dogs—but this wasn’t a pet. It was a weapon.
I drove the blade into the animal’s side. It yelped, a high-pitched sound that cut through the silence, and went limp.
I shoved the carcass off me and scrambled to my knees. The handler had a clear line of fire now. I saw the muzzle of the MP5 flash.
Thwip-thwip-thwip.
The suppressed rounds kicked up geysers of mud around me.
I dove to the right, rolling behind a rotting stump. I drew my .45.
“Alex, flank him!” I roared, trying to draw the fire.
But Alex wasn’t flanking. He was frozen, standing in the open, paralyzed by the violence.
“Kid, move!”
The handler turned his weapon toward Alex.
I popped up from behind the stump. I didn’t aim; I just pointed and squeezed.
BANG. BANG.
The .45 is a loud gun. In the quiet swamp, it sounded like a cannon.
The handler jerked. One round caught him in the shoulder, spinning him around. He went down, splashing into the water.
“Is he down?” Alex shouted, his voice shrill.
“Stay down!” I kept my gun trained on the spot where the man had fallen.
Silence returned to the swamp, heavier than before.
I waded over to the handler. He was face down in the water. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. The water around him was turning dark red.
I holstered my gun and turned to Alex. “Check yourself. Are you hit?”
Alex was staring at his leg. He wasn’t looking at a bullet wound. He was looking at his ankle.
“I… I tripped,” he stammered. “When the dog jumped. I heard something snap.”
I cursed under my breath and waded over to him. “Sit down. Let me see.”
He sat on a dry patch of ground, wincing as I unlaced his boot. The ankle was already swollen to the size of a grapefruit. It was turning an angry purple.
“It’s a bad sprain,” I said, probing the area gently. Alex hissed in pain. ” maybe a hairline fracture. Can you put weight on it?”
He tried to stand, leaning on me. As soon as his foot touched the ground, his leg buckled. He cried out, collapsing back into the mud.
“No,” he gasped, tears welling in his eyes. “I can’t. Jack, I can’t walk.”
I looked around. The gunshot would have alerted every team in the sector. They knew exactly where we were now. We had maybe ten minutes before they boxed us in.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Okay. New plan.”
“Leave me,” Alex said. He wasn’t being dramatic; he was stating a fact. “You have the List. You can move faster without me. Give me a gun, I’ll hold them off.”
I looked at the kid. He was terrified, but he was trying to be brave. He was trying to be the soldier he thought he should be.
“I’m not leaving you, Alex,” I said. “We started this together, we finish it together. That’s the deal.”
“But the mission—”
“To hell with the mission right now,” I snapped. “Get on my back.”
“Jack, you can’t—”
“I said get on my back!”
I hauled him up. He was heavy, dead weight with his gear. I grunted as I adjusted his weight, locking my arms under his legs.
“Hold onto the drive,” I told him. “Check my pocket. Make sure it’s there.”
He reached into my jacket. “I got it.”
“Good. Don’t lose it. If I drop, you crawl. You hear me?”
We started moving again. My pace was agonizingly slow now. Every step was a torture test for my own legs. I was carrying 180 pounds of injured man, plus my own gear, through a freezing swamp, while being hunted by an elite paramilitary force.
My lungs burned. My vision blurred at the edges.
Just one more step, I told myself. Just one more.
We covered maybe half a mile like that. It felt like ten.
Finally, the trees began to thin. The ground started to slope upward. We were climbing out of the swamp, toward the high ground near the river.
I collapsed near a cluster of boulders, letting Alex slide gently to the ground. I leaned against the rock, gasping for air, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“Water,” I rasped.
Alex handed me his canteen. It was almost empty. I took a small sip and handed it back.
“Check the map,” I said, pointing to my pack.
Alex pulled out the laminated tactical map. He unfolded it with shaking hands.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Grid 8-2,” I wheezed. “Near the Devil’s Elbow. The river bends sharp there.”
Alex traced the line with his finger. His face fell.
“Jack,” he said softly. “Look.”
I leaned over.
“The bridge,” he said. “The logging bridge you talked about.”
He pointed to a red marker on the map that I hadn’t noticed before.
DESTROYED – 1944.
I stared at the map. The intel was old. The bridge wasn’t there.
“Okay,” I said, fighting the panic rising in my throat. “Okay. There has to be another way. A ford. A ferry crossing.”
“There’s nothing,” Alex said, his voice hollow. “Look at the contour lines. It’s a cliff. A gorge. The river is down there, but it’s Class 5 rapids. And on this side…”
He pointed to the markings that indicated the road network.
“They control the roads,” he said. “They’re funneling us.”
It hit me then. The realization was colder than the swamp water.
They weren’t chasing us. They were herding us.
Conrad knew the terrain. He knew the bridge was gone. He knew we would head for the river because it was the only logical escape route. He had been pushing us toward a dead end the entire time.
We were walking into a kill box.
“We’re trapped,” Alex whispered. He dropped the map. He put his head in his hands and started to sob. Quiet, broken sobs that shook his shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he cried. “I’m so sorry, Jack. I messed up. I tripped. I’m slowing you down. We’re going to die here.”
I looked at him. I saw myself twenty years ago. Scared. Green.
I reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Hard.
“Hey,” I said. “Look at me.”
He looked up, tears streaking the mud on his face.
“You didn’t mess up,” I said firmly. “You survived. You’re still breathing. That’s a win. You think this is the end? It’s not the end until we say it is.”
“There’s no bridge, Jack! We’re cornered!”
“So we swim,” I said.
“In that?” He gestured toward the sound of the roaring river below. “With a broken ankle?”
“We find a way,” I lied. I didn’t know if there was a way. But I had to make him believe there was.
I pulled the satellite phone from my pack. It was our last resort. The battery was in the red. I extended the antenna.
“Who are you calling?” Alex asked.
“Command,” I said. “I’m going to get us a chopper. Or a boat. Or a damn magic carpet. But we are getting out of here.”
I dialed the emergency secure line. It rang. And rang.
Finally, a click.
“Station Chief here. Identify.”
“This is Vance,” I said. “Code Black. Repeat, Code Black. We are compromised. I have the Package. My partner is injured. We are at Grid 8-2, pinned against the river. Requesting immediate extraction.”
There was a long pause on the other end. Too long.
“Vance,” the voice came back. It sounded distant. Detached. “We have your location. We’ve been monitoring the situation.”
“Then you know we have company,” I said, eyeing the tree line. “We have hostiles closing in. Estimated strength, two platoons. We need air support. Now.”
“Jack…” The Station Chief’s voice changed. It wasn’t the voice of a savior. It was the voice of a bureaucrat. “The airspace is contested. We can’t send a bird in there. Not without sparking an international incident. The State Department has tied our hands.”
My grip on the phone tightened until the plastic creaked. “I don’t give a damn about the State Department. I have the List. Seven deep-cover names. If we go down, they go down. Do you hear me? You are writing death warrants for seven of your own people.”
“We know the stakes,” the Chief said. “Listen to me carefully, Jack. If capture is imminent… you are authorized to sanitize the asset.”
I froze.
“Sanitize?” I repeated, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You want me to destroy the drive?”
“Destroy the drive,” the Chief confirmed. “And terminate any personnel who have knowledge of the contents to prevent interrogation.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone. Terminate any personnel.
They weren’t sending a rescue. They were telling me to kill Alex and then kill myself. We were loose ends. We were liabilities.
“Jack?” Alex asked, watching my face. “What did they say? Are they coming?”
I looked at the phone. I looked at the kid who had trusted me with his life. I looked at the drive in my pocket.
I crushed the phone in my hand and threw it into the rocks.
“Yeah,” I lied again. “They’re working on it. But we have to buy them some time.”
I checked my .45. Five rounds left.
“Get up, Alex,” I said. “We’re going to the ridge.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the high ground,” I said. “And if we’re going to fight, we’re going to do it on our terms.”
I helped him stand. We hobbled toward the sound of the rushing water.
The fog was lifting slightly. Below us, a sheer drop of three hundred feet into a raging gray river. Behind us, the forest was alive with the sound of snapping branches and low voices.
They were here.
I pulled Alex behind a large granite outcropping at the edge of the cliff. It offered cover from the front, but we had nowhere to go but down.
“Here,” I said, handing Alex the gun.
He looked at it, confused. “What are you doing?”
“You’re the sharpshooter now,” I said. “I need you to cover the left flank. I’ll watch the right.”
“With what?” he asked. “You gave me the gun.”
I pulled my combat knife. “I’ll manage.”
I reached into my pocket and took out the flash drive. I held it up to the light. It was so small. So heavy.
“Alex,” I said. “Listen to me.”
“Yeah, Jack?”
“If they overrun us… if I go down…” I pressed the drive into his hand. “You throw this into the river. You hear me? You don’t let them take it. You throw it as far as you can.”
Alex gripped the drive. His hands were shaking, but his eyes were clear.
“I promise,” he said.
“Good man.”
I looked out over the tree line. I could see them now. Figures moving through the mist. Gray uniforms. Tactical movement.
Conrad stepped out of the trees, about a hundred yards away. He wasn’t hiding anymore. He was walking casually, like he was on a Sunday stroll. He had a megaphone in his hand.
“Mr. Vance!” his voice boomed, echoing off the canyon walls. “I see you found the view! It is breathtaking, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. I stayed low.
“There is no bridge, Jack!” Conrad yelled. “There is no boat. There is only me. And I am a patient man. But my patience has limits.”
He signaled his men. They fanned out, forming a semi-circle around our position. There were at least twenty of them.
“Give me the List!” Conrad shouted. “And I will let you walk away! I give you my word as a soldier!”
“His word is worth about as much as a counterfeit bill,” I muttered to Alex.
“What do we do?” Alex whispered. “Jack, what do we do?”
I looked at the rushing water below. Then I looked at the approaching soldiers.
I knew what I had to do. The Command had abandoned us. The mission was burned. But I wasn’t going to let them win.
“We make them pay for every inch,” I said.
I looked at Alex one last time.
“You trust me?” I asked.
He nodded. “With my life.”
“Good.”
I stood up, stepping out from behind the rock, my hands raised.
“Jack!” Alex hissed.
“Stay down,” I commanded.
“Conrad!” I yelled, my voice cracking through the cold air. “Let’s talk!”
Conrad smiled. He lowered the megaphone. He signaled his men to hold fire.
“A wise decision, Captain Vance,” he called back. “Come down. Bring the bag.”
I walked forward, about ten paces. I was in the open now. A clear target.
“I don’t have the bag,” I shouted. “We left the money in the swamp. It’s gone.”
Conrad’s smile faltered. “I don’t care about the money. I want the drive.”
“I have it,” I said, tapping my chest pocket. “Right here.”
“Bring it to me.”
“No,” I said. “You come and get it.”
Conrad laughed. A cold, sharp sound. “You are in no position to negotiate.”
“I’m holding the only thing you want,” I said. “And I’m standing on the edge of a cliff. You shoot me, I fall. I fall, the drive is gone forever. Down the river. You’ll never find it.”
Conrad hesitated. He knew I was right.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I want a car,” I said. “And safe passage to the embassy.”
“Done,” Conrad lied. “Just give me the drive.”
I reached into my pocket. Conrad’s men tensed.
I didn’t pull out the drive.
I pulled out the handful of uncut diamonds I had taken from the bag.
“Here’s your down payment!” I yelled.
I threw the diamonds into the air. They sparkled like rain as they scattered into the mud and rocks.
For a split second, greed took over. Several of the soldiers instinctively looked at the gems.
“Now!” I screamed.
I turned and sprinted back toward the rock.
“Fire!” Conrad screamed. “Kill him!”
The air erupted. Bullets chewed up the ground around my feet. I dove behind the granite slab just as rock splinters exploded into my face.
“Jack!” Alex yelled, firing blindly over the top.
“Save your ammo!” I shouted.
I grabbed Alex by the vest.
“Listen to me,” I said, my voice intense and final. “There is a path. I saw it on the way up. A goat trail. It goes down the cliff face, about fifty yards back.”
“I can’t walk, Jack!”
“You’re going to slide,” I said. “You’re going to drag yourself. Because you have the drive. And you are going to deliver it.”
“What about you?” Alex asked, realization dawning in his eyes.
I looked at my knife. Then I looked at the grenade I had taken off the dead handler in the swamp. I hadn’t told Alex about it.
“I’m going to create a diversion,” I said.
“No,” Alex grabbed my arm. “No, Jack. We go together.”
“Not this time, kid.”
I pulled the pin on the grenade, holding the spoon down tight.
“Go,” I ordered. “That’s a direct order.”
Alex looked at me, tears streaming down his face. He looked at the grenade in my hand. He knew there was no arguing with a man holding a live explosive.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“Go make me proud,” I said.
Alex turned and started to crawl toward the edge of the cliff, dragging his broken leg behind him.
I took a deep breath. I stood up.
“Hey, Conrad!” I screamed. “You want the List? Come and get it!”
I stepped out into the fire.
Part 4: The Last Stand
The sound of a grenade pin being pulled is not loud. It is a tiny, metallic ping, a sound no louder than a coin dropping on a sidewalk. But in the silence of the high ridge, with the wind howling through the canyon and twenty rifles trained on my chest, it sounded like a church bell tolling for a funeral.
I held the spoon of the grenade tight against my palm. The knuckles of my hand were white, contrasting with the dirt and dried blood that coated my skin.
“Alex,” I whispered, not looking back. “Go.”
Behind me, I heard the scrape of boots on rock. The sound of Alex dragging his broken body toward the goat trail was agonizingly slow. Every inch he moved was a victory. Every breath he took was a defiance of the odds.
Conrad stood fifty yards away, his men fanned out in a firing line. He looked at me, his eyes narrowing. He saw my hand. He saw the tension in my shoulder. He knew what I was holding.
“Captain Vance,” Conrad shouted, his voice carrying over the roar of the wind. “Do not be foolish. There is nowhere to run. Drop the weapon and we can discuss terms.”
“I’m not running, Conrad,” I yelled back, my voice steady. “And I’m fresh out of terms.”
I looked at the sky. It was a slate gray, heavy with unfallen snow. It looked like the sky back home in Montana, just before a blizzard buried the valley. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the cold, biting air. It tasted like pine needles and ozone. It tasted like the end.
“Go!” I screamed at Alex one last time.
Then, I moved.
I didn’t throw the grenade at them. That would have been a waste. They were too far, and they had cover. Instead, I threw it into the cluster of loose boulders to my right—the only path that flanked our position.
ONE. TWO. THREE.
I dove behind the granite slab just as the world disintegrated.
BOOM.
The explosion was deafening. It wasn’t the cinematic fireball you see in movies. It was a sharp, concussive crack that punched the air out of the canyon. Rock shards turned into shrapnel, spraying the area with deadly velocity. Dust and smoke billowed up, creating an instant wall of gray between me and the enemy.
“Contact front!” I heard a German voice scream. “Open fire!”
The ridge erupted.
The sound of twenty automatic weapons firing at once is a physical sensation. It vibrates in your teeth. It rattles your bones. The granite rock I was hiding behind began to chip away, disintegrating under the hail of lead. Stone splinters sliced into my cheek, hot and sharp.
I pressed my back against the stone, checking my weapon. The .45 felt light in my hand. Too light.
Five rounds.
I had five bullets to fight an army.
I closed my eyes for a second. I thought about the list. Seven names. Seven ghosts. If I died here, and Alex died on that trail, those seven people would be erased. Their families would never know what happened. They would just disappear into the gulags or the black sites.
Not today, I thought. Not on my watch.
I rolled to the left, popping out from the cover just as the dust cloud began to settle.
I saw a silhouette moving through the smoke—a soldier trying to flank me. He was young, terrified, moving too fast.
I extended my arm. The sights aligned. I squeezed the trigger.
BANG.
The soldier crumpled, dropping his rifle.
Four rounds.
I scrambled back into cover as a fresh wave of bullets chewed up the ground where I had just been standing.
“Alex!” I yelled over the noise, risking a glance backward.
He was gone.
The edge of the cliff was empty. He had made it to the trail.
A wave of relief washed over me, so powerful it almost knocked me down. He was off the ridge. He had a chance.
Now, my job was simple. I didn’t have to win. I didn’t have to survive. I just had to be the loudest, most annoying distraction on the planet for the next ten minutes.
I looked at the sat-phone lying broken in the rocks where I had thrown it. The silence from Command still stung. Sanitize the asset. That’s what they called us. Not men. Not soldiers. Assets. Entries in a ledger to be balanced or written off.
I grabbed a fist-sized rock and hurled it to my left, aiming for a patch of dry brush. It landed with a loud thump.
Instinctively, three of Conrad’s men turned and fired at the sound.
“Over there!” someone shouted. “He’s moving left!”
I moved right.
I crawled on my belly, dragging myself through the mud and the snow. The pain in my knees was gone, replaced by a numb, buzzing vibration. I was running on pure adrenaline now. The body’s last great gift before it shuts down.
I found a gap in the rocks and saw the Dog Handler’s backup team moving up. Two men. They were professional, moving cover to cover.
I waited.
Patience, my drill instructor had said, twenty years ago at Fort Benning. War is 99% waiting and 1% pure terror. Master the wait, and you master the war.
I waited until they were thirty feet away. I could see the condensation of their breath.
I raised the .45.
BANG.
The lead man took a round to the chest plate. It didn’t penetrate, but the force knocked the wind out of him, dropping him to one knee.
BANG.
The second shot went high, shattering the visor of his helmet. He went down.
Two rounds.
The second man opened up with a submachine gun. I ducked, feeling the heat of the rounds passing inches above my head. I didn’t fire back. I couldn’t afford to.
“He’s out of ammo!” the survivor yelled. “Move up! Rush him!”
They were coming.
I looked around for anything I could use. My hand brushed against a heavy, rusted iron bar—part of the old logging infrastructure that had been abandoned here decades ago. It was about two feet long, jagged and heavy.
I holstered the empty gun and gripped the iron bar.
Come on, I thought. Come and get it.
The Descent
Fifty yards below, Alex was living his own private hell.
The “goat trail” Jack had seen wasn’t a trail. It was a fissure in the rock face, a jagged scar barely wide enough for a boot, slick with moss and freezing slime.
Alex clung to the rock face, his fingers dug into the cracks so hard his fingernails were tearing. His broken ankle dragged behind him like a sack of wet cement. Every time it bumped against the stone, a bolt of white-hot agony shot up his leg, threatening to make him black out.
Don’t pass out, he told himself, gritting his teeth until his jaw ached. If you pass out, you fall. If you fall, the List dies.
Above him, the battle raged. The explosions shook the cliff face, sending showers of dust and pebbles raining down on his head. He could hear the distinct crack of Jack’s .45. He counted the shots.
One.
Two.
Three.
Then, a long silence.
“Jack,” Alex whimpered, tears mixing with the sweat and dirt on his face.
He wanted to stop. He wanted to curl up on the ledge and let the cold take him. It would be so easy. Just let go. The river below was roaring, a chaotic ribbon of white water that promised oblivion.
But then he felt the hard plastic of the flash drive pressing against his chest, inside his jacket pocket.
“I’m not leaving you, Alex. We started this together, we finish it together.”
Jack’s voice echoed in his head.
Jack was up there, dying. He was buying every second of Alex’s life with a drop of his own blood. To stop now would be the ultimate betrayal.
Alex let out a guttural sob of rage and pain. He reached down, grabbed his paralyzed leg, and physically moved it to the next foothold. He screamed into the wind, the sound torn away by the gale.
“Move,” he commanded his broken body. “Move, you coward.”
He slid down another ten feet. The rock was slippery here. His good foot skidded.
He dropped.
For a terrifying second, he was in freefall. His hands scrambled desperately against the wet stone, finding no purchase.
Thud.
He landed hard on a narrow shelf of rock, twenty feet down. The impact sent a shockwave of agony through his leg that was so intense his vision went white. He rolled onto his back, gasping, staring up at the gray sky.
He was alive. He hadn’t fallen into the river. Yet.
But he was stuck. The shelf was a dead end. Below him was a sheer drop of forty feet into the churning water.
He looked up. He could see the edge of the ridge. He could see the flashes of gunfire.
And then, he saw something else.
A figure appeared on the edge of the cliff, outlined against the sky. It wasn’t Jack. It was one of Conrad’s men, scanning the drop with binoculars.
Alex froze, pressing himself into the shadow of the overhang.
The soldier looked down. He scanned the trail.
Alex held his breath. His heart was hammering so loud he was sure the soldier could hear it.
The soldier paused. He lowered the binoculars. He reached for his radio.
He sees me, Alex thought. It’s over.
Then, a gunshot rang out from the ridge.
The soldier’s head snapped back. He dropped the radio. He teetered on the edge for a second, then fell forward, tumbling past Alex and disappearing into the abyss below.
Jack.
Jack was still fighting. Jack was watching over him.
Alex looked at the dead soldier falling into the water. He realized something.
Jack isn’t just fighting them, Alex realized. He’s herding them away from the edge. He’s clearing the path.
Fresh tears streamed down Alex’s face.
“I won’t fail you,” he whispered. “I swear to God, Jack, I won’t fail you.”
He looked at the river again. There was no way to climb down. He had to jump.
Forty feet. Into freezing, Class 5 rapids. With a broken leg.
It was suicide.
But staying here is death, Alex thought.
He took a deep breath. He zipped his jacket all the way up. He patted his pocket one last time to make sure the drive was secure.
He closed his eyes.
“Geronimo,” he whispered.
He pushed off the ledge.
The Kill Box
My .45 was empty. The slide was locked back.
I dropped the magazine and let it clatter to the rocks. I didn’t have another one.
I was huddled behind the last remaining slab of granite that offered any cover. The enemy fire had stopped. They knew I was out. They were toying with me now.
“Mr. Vance!” Conrad’s voice was closer now. Much closer. “It is over. Throw out the gun. Stand up.”
I looked at my hands. They were bleeding. My knuckles were raw. I had a piece of shrapnel embedded in my left thigh, soaking my pant leg in warm, sticky blood. I felt lightheaded. The edges of my vision were starting to blur.
I looked at the iron bar in my hand. It wasn’t much of a weapon against twenty assault rifles.
But it was all I had.
I stood up.
I didn’t raise my hands. I gripped the iron bar and stepped out from behind the rock.
The wind whipped my hair into my eyes. I stood tall. I wanted them to see me. I wanted them to see that I wasn’t afraid.
Conrad was standing twenty feet away. He was flanked by six of his men. The rest were hanging back, watching the show.
Conrad looked disappointed.
“An iron bar?” he sneered. “That is your final gambit? Primitive.”
“It gets the job done,” I rasped. My throat was dry, coated in dust.
“Where is the boy?” Conrad asked, scanning the ridge. “Where is the List?”
“Gone,” I said. “He’s halfway to the border by now. You missed him.”
Conrad laughed. “He has a broken leg, Vance. We heard the bone snap. He didn’t make it to the border. He is either dead at the bottom of the cliff, or he is stuck on a ledge waiting for my men to pick him off.”
He took a step closer.
“Tell me where he is,” Conrad said, his voice dropping to a reasonable, almost friendly tone. “And I will make your death quick. A bullet to the head. No pain. You have my word.”
“Your word,” I spat on the ground. “I’d rather take my chances with the pain.”
Conrad sighed. He shook his head, looking genuinely saddened by my stubbornness.
“You Americans,” he said. “Always the heroes. Always the cowboys. You think this is a movie? You think the cavalry is coming?”
He gestured to the sky.
“Look up, Jack. There are no planes. No helicopters. Your government abandoned you. I monitored your call. They told you to ‘sanitize’ the asset. They told you to die.”
His words hit harder than any bullet. He knew. He knew everything.
“Why die for people who see you as a line item in a budget?” Conrad asked. “Why protect a list of names that will probably be betrayed by another bureaucrat in a year? Join me, Jack. I can use a man with your… talents. We can find the boy together. We can take the money and disappear.”
It was a tempting offer. A logical one. Command had betrayed me. They had left me here to rot. Why should I bleed for them?
I thought about the names on the list. Agent MAX. A father of three who was feeding us intel on chemical weapons. Agent SIERRA. A young woman working in the encryption office who risked her life every day to stop bomb plots.
They weren’t bureaucrats. They were people. They trusted us. They trusted me.
“You’re right,” I said, my voice quiet.
Conrad smiled. He thought he had broken me.
“My bosses are scum,” I said, taking a step forward. “They sit in air-conditioned offices and move us around like chess pieces. They don’t know what it’s like to bleed. They don’t know what it’s like to watch a friend die.”
“Exactly,” Conrad said, lowering his weapon slightly. “So put down the bar, Jack. Be smart.”
I looked him in the eye.
“But here’s the thing, Conrad,” I said, tightening my grip on the iron. “I don’t work for them. Not really.”
“Who do you work for, then?”
“I work for the guy next to me,” I said. “I work for the kid with the broken leg who is too stubborn to quit. I work for the families of the names on that list. I work for the promise I made.”
I smiled. It was a bloody, broken smile.
“And my orders,” I said, “are to hold the line.”
Conrad’s eyes widened. He realized his mistake.
“Kill him!” he screamed.
I didn’t wait. I charged.
I covered the twenty feet in two seconds. The adrenaline dump was massive, a final burst of energy from a dying star.
The soldier nearest to Conrad raised his rifle, but he was too slow. I swung the iron bar with everything I had. It connected with his helmet with a sickening crunch. He went down.
I didn’t stop. I spun, using the momentum to drive the bar into the knee of the second man. He screamed, his leg bending the wrong way.
I was a whirlwind of violence. I wasn’t fighting to survive anymore. I was fighting to consume them. I wanted to be the nightmare they remembered for the rest of their short lives.
A bullet struck me in the shoulder. It felt like a sledgehammer. I spun around, almost losing my balance.
Another bullet hit me in the gut. A hot, burning poker twisting in my intestines.
I fell to my knees.
The world went gray. The sound of the wind faded.
I looked up. Conrad was standing over me. He had his pistol drawn. He looked angry. Not triumphant. Just angry.
“What a waste,” he muttered.
He aimed the gun at my forehead.
I looked past him, over the edge of the cliff. The goat trail was empty. The river was raging below.
He made it, I thought. He jumped.
I looked back at Conrad.
“You lose,” I wheezed. Blood bubbled past my lips.
Conrad pistol-whipped me across the face. “Where is the drive?”
“Safe,” I whispered.
Conrad screamed in frustration. He kicked me in the chest, knocking me onto my back. I stared up at the sky. The snow had started to fall. Tiny, perfect white flakes drifting down from the gray.
“Finish him!” Conrad barked to his men. “And get the ropes! We go down the cliff!”
Ropes.
My eyes snapped open. If they had ropes, they could catch Alex. They could rappel down and scan the riverbanks faster than he could swim.
I couldn’t let that happen.
My hand moved to my tactical vest. To the hidden pouch on the inside.
I hadn’t told Alex everything. I hadn’t told him about the C4.
It was a small block. Standard issue for emergency demolition. Enough to blow a door. Or, if placed correctly, enough to destabilize a fractured granite shelf.
I was lying on the main stress point of the ridge. I had chosen this spot carefully.
I struggled to pull the detonator pin. My fingers were numb. My body was failing.
“Check his pockets!” Conrad ordered, turning his back to me. “Maybe he has it!”
A soldier grabbed my vest, ripping the Velcro open.
He saw the C4. He saw my finger in the ring of the detonator.
His eyes went wide. He screamed. A sound of pure, primal terror.
“BOMB!”
Conrad spun around.
Our eyes locked one last time.
I saw the fear in his face. The realization that he wasn’t the hunter anymore. He was the prey.
“For the List,” I whispered.
I pulled the ring.
The River
Alex was underwater when the world ended.
He was tumbling through the freezing darkness, the current thrashing him against rocks, the cold paralyzing his limbs. He was drowning. His lungs were burning for air.
Then, a muffled THUMP vibrated through the water. It was so powerful it felt like a depth charge.
The shockwave hit him, tumbling him end over end.
He broke the surface, gasping for air, choking on water and bile.
He looked up.
The cliff face where he had just been—the high ridge where Jack had made his stand—was gone.
A massive section of the mountain was sliding away. Thousands of tons of rock, snow, and earth were cascading down into the gorge in a terrifying, slow-motion avalanche.
“JACK!” Alex screamed, his voice lost in the roar of the collapse.
The landslide hit the river fifty yards upstream. The impact sent a massive wave of water surging toward him.
Alex grabbed onto a floating log, holding on for dear life as the water level rose ten feet in an instant. The surge carried him, slamming him through the rapids, spinning him like a ragdoll.
He saw bodies falling with the rocks. He saw twisted metal. He saw the dust cloud rising like a mushroom cloud, blotting out the sky.
Jack had brought the mountain down on top of them.
He buried them, Alex realized, sobbing as the water dragged him downstream. He buried them all.
Alex fought to stay afloat. The cold was seeping into his core. His vision was tunneling.
Swim, a voice in his head said. Jack’s voice. Swim, kid. Don’t you dare quit now.
He kicked with his good leg. He paddled with frozen hands. He fought the river, the pain, and the grief.
He fought for a mile. Then two.
The current began to slow. The roar of the rapids faded into a gentle lapping.
He saw a mud bank. Reeds. Solid ground.
He dragged himself out of the water. He crawled through the mud, dragging his broken leg, until he was in the dry grass.
He collapsed.
He lay there for a long time, staring at the sky. The snow was falling harder now, covering him in a thin white blanket.
He reached into his pocket. His hand was numb, blue, and shaking.
He pulled out the drive.
It was wet. Muddy. But it was in one piece.
Alex curled his hand around it, holding it to his chest. He closed his eyes.
He listened to the silence. No gunfire. No dogs. No voices.
Only the wind.
“I got it, Jack,” he whispered to the empty air. “I got it.”
Epilogue: Six Months Later
The coffee shop in Arlington, Virginia, was warm. It smelled of roasted beans and cinnamon. It was filled with people laughing, typing on laptops, living their safe, normal lives.
I sat in the corner booth. My leg was in a brace, hidden under the table. I walked with a cane now. The doctors said I would always have a limp.
I didn’t mind. The pain was a reminder.
A man in a gray suit sat down opposite me. He didn’t introduce himself. He didn’t have to.
“Alex,” he said.
“Mr. Deputy Director,” I replied, not looking up from my black coffee.
He slid a manila envelope across the table.
“Your discharge papers,” he said. “Honorable. Full pension. Medical benefits for life.”
I didn’t touch the envelope.
“And the List?” I asked.
The man nodded. “Safe. Because of the drive you brought back, we were able to extract all seven assets. They are all in the States now. New identities. New lives. Max is teaching history in Ohio. Sierra is working for a tech firm in Seattle.”
“Good,” I said.
“You saved them, Alex,” the man said. “You did a great service to your country.”
“I didn’t save them,” I said, my voice hard.
The man paused. He knew what was coming.
“We recovered the bodies,” he said softly. “From the river gorge.”
I looked up at him. “And?”
“We found Captain Vance,” he said. “Or… what was left of him. We identified him by dental records.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, plastic bag. Inside was a charred, twisted piece of metal. It was a dog tag.
VANCE, JACK. O POS. NO RELIGIOUS PREF.
“We want you to have this,” the man said.
I took the bag. I held it in my hand. It was cold.
“There will be a ceremony,” the man said. “A star on the Wall at Langley. Private, of course. But he will be honored.”
“Honored?” I laughed. It was a bitter, ugly sound that made the couple at the next table look over. “You left us to die. You ordered us to ‘sanitize the asset’. You told him to kill me.”
The man didn’t flinch. “Decisions were made. Hard decisions. Based on the intel we had at the time.”
“He saved me,” I said, leaning forward. “He saved the mission. He saved your reputation. And you left him in the mud.”
“Alex…”
“I’m done,” I said. I grabbed the envelope and the dog tag. “I’m done with you. I’m done with the Agency.”
I stood up, leaning heavily on my cane.
“One last thing,” the man said. “The raid on the train… Conrad’s team… we never figured out how they knew the schedule. How they knew about the cargo.”
I stopped. I looked back at him.
“Maybe you should check your own list,” I said. “Maybe the leak wasn’t on the train. Maybe it was in the office.”
I walked out of the coffee shop into the rain.
I took a cab to the Arlington National Cemetery. I didn’t go to the official section. I went to the empty hill overlooking the city.
I stood there for a long time.
I thought about the train. The swamp. The cliff.
I thought about the grenade pin. The sound of it hitting the rock.
Ping.
Jack Vance wasn’t a hero in the newspapers. He wasn’t a name in the history books. He was a ghost.
But seven families were eating dinner together tonight because of him. I was breathing because of him.
I took the dog tag out of the bag. I squeezed it until it cut into my palm.
“Mission accomplished, Jack,” I whispered.
I turned and walked away, leaving the ghost on the hill to watch over the city he died to protect.
But as I walked, I realized something.
I wasn’t just a survivor anymore. I was a witness. And as long as I lived, his story—our story—wouldn’t die in that canyon.
I hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
“West,” I said. “Montana.”
“Long trip,” the driver noted.
“Yeah,” I smiled, for the first time in six months. “I have a promise to keep. I need to see what the sky looks like before the snow falls.”
[END OF STORY]
