Page 103 of Blood & Snow

Overhead, voices float down toward us past the rickety scaffolding and a haze of cheap fluorescent lighting.

The stairwell reeks of piss and body odor.

I take the steps two at a time, my team following in tight formation.

Three floors up, voices drift through the darkness—Russian obscenities mixed with laughter.

They have no clue what's coming for them, though they should.

I've picked off their men one by one for the past six weeks and with two left to deadline, I'm ready to close the ranks and finish this.

"Movement on the third floor," Ivan's voice crackles through my earpiece.

"Six tangos visible through the east windows."

I reach the third-floor landing and pause.

The warehouse space opens before us, filled with wooden crates and metal shelving units.

Bare bulbs hang from exposed wiring,creating pools of yellow light that leave most of the floor in shadow.

The guards cluster around a card table, their weapons leaning against nearby crates.

I count them again—six men, all armed, all about to die.

The firefight erupts as my team flows through the doorway, muzzle flashes illuminating the warehouse in strobing white light.

The guards scramble for their guns, but we've already claimed the advantage.

Automatic weapon fire tears through the air, bullets sparking off metal beams and splintering wooden crates.

One guard makes it to his rifle, spinning to bring the barrel around.

But Igor's burst catches him in the chest, the impact sending him backward into a stack of ammunition boxes.

Another tries to run for the windows, but Ivan puts him down with three rounds to the spine.

The last guard finds cover behind a concrete pillar, his pistol barking repeatedly as he tries to hold us back.

I circle wide, using the maze of machinery to approach from his blind side.

When I step out, he's still firing at shadows, his back exposed.

The Makarov's report is nothing but a whisper.

The bullet takes him in the base of the skull, and he pitches forward onto the concrete floor where his blood pools in a dark crimson kidney shape under him.

Silence descends, broken only by the ringing in my ears and the shuffle of my men's boots as they sweep for anymore hostiles.

We have maybe forty minutes before the fire department arrives, fifteen before someone calls the police.

We're not going to get away with this if we stand around talking, and there's no time to get a cleaner in here.

"Set the charges," I order, stepping over bodies as I survey the weapons cache.

The crates contain exactly what our intelligencepromised.

Kalashnikov rifles packed in cosmoline, rocket-propelled grenades nestled in foam padding, cases of ammunition that represent months of preparation.