Chapter 28 - The Confrontation at High Peak
I didn't care about the rifle at my neck. I didn't care about the cold. I drove my elbow backward into the throat of the mercenary behind me with the ferocity of a mother protecting her young. He gagged, stumbling back into the snow, and I threw myself directly onto Douglas Sterling.
We crashed hard onto the frozen wooden dock. Douglas lost his grip on Emma, his silver-tipped cane skittering across the slick ice. For an old man, he possessed the wild, desperate strength of a cornered predator, his fingers clawing at my eyes, his nails tearing into my cheek.
"Kill her!" Douglas shrieked, writhing beneath me. "SHOOT HER!"
The second mercenary leveled his carbine at my chest.
*CRACK!*
The sound that echoed across the lake wasn't suppressed gunfire. It was the thunderous, high-caliber bark of a long-range federal sniper rifle firing from the wooded ridge five hundred yards away.
The mercenary aiming at me dropped instantly into the snow, his weapon spinning across the ice.
A split second later, the air was ripped apart by the deafening roar of twin turboshaft engines. Out from behind the snowy ridge banked two olive-drab Black Hawk helicopters bearing the bold gold letters: **U.S. MARSHALS / SOG**.
The downdraft from the massive rotor blades struck the frozen lake like a hurricane, sending blinding walls of pulverized snow swirling through the air.
"FEDERAL AGENTS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND GET ON THE ICE!" a voice bellowed over an airborne loudspeaker.
The remaining mercenaries panicked, scrambling toward the transport vans, but the ice around the dock was already shuddering. Heavy tactical operators in black body armor rappelled from the helicopters, landing with practiced precision in the deep snowbanks along the perimeter, carbines raised, cutting off every escape route.
Douglas Sterling, his hair plastered across his forehead with sweat and melting ice, scrambled to his feet on the dock. He realized the game was over. The federal net had closed.
With a look of pure, unadulterated madness, he lunged for the laptop sitting on the technician’s table, intending to smash it onto the ice and destroy the sovereign ledger forever.
"If I can't have the Sterling name, nobody will!" he roared.
Brenda, still bound by her wrists on the dock, suddenly threw her entire body forward across the slippery planks, slamming her shoulder directly into Douglas’s shins.
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Douglas tripped violently, his arms flailing, and crashed over the low wooden edge of the dock, plunging headfirst into the freezing, eight-foot-deep channel of the boat basin.
The dark, frigid water swallowed him whole with a heavy splash.
