Chapter 5 - The Lullaby in the Quarry
The heavy .50-caliber round punched through the engine block of our trailing escort vehicle, sending it spinning into a ditch in a shower of sparks and shredded steel.
“Sniper on the crusher tower!” Dominic shouted over the comms.
“Dominic, take Team Two through the lower drainage culvert and neutralize the tower,” I ordered, kicking open my door. “Emma, stay low. Follow my steps.”
We moved through the shadows of the abandoned limestone quarry, surrounded by towering walls of jagged gray stone and rusted gravel sorters. Freezing mud sucked at our tactical boots. The countdown timer on my wrist chronometer was flashing in crimson digits: **00:08:14**.
At the base of the quarry pit, concealed behind an overgrown grove of weeping willows, was an entrance to a subterranean civil-defense bunker built during the Cold War. The heavy steel blast door had been cracked open, illuminated from within by the hum of portable halogen work lights.
A muffled *crack* echoed from the crusher tower three hundred yards away, followed by the silent flash of Dominic’s counter-sniper team. The red laser on the cliff blinked out and died.
“Perimeter clear,” Dominic reported over the headset. “Move, Boss!”
I led the assault through the concrete blast door, carbine raised. The interior of the bunker was cold and smelled of ozone, damp limestone, and diesel fuel. Four cartel mercenaries in black tactical gear were stationed around the central electrical generator, their weapons raised toward the corridor.
I didn’t give them the chance to breathe. In four seconds of deafening, surgical semi-automatic fire, three shooters collapsed onto the concrete floor. The fourth lunged for a reinforced steel cage at the rear of the chamber, drawing a Glock 19.
Inside the iron cage, five-year-old Leo Blackwood was tied to a wooden chair with industrial duct tape. Strapped to the back of the chair was a digital demolition block glowing with yellow LED indicators: **00:03:42**.
“Step back, Blackwood!” the mercenary screamed, holding the gun two inches from the crying boy’s temple. “One more step and the kid dies before the bomb even blows!”
Leo sobbed hysterically, his small shoulders shaking against the tape. “Mommy! Mommy!”
Emma stepped around me, walking slowly into the light of the halogen lamps. Her hands were open, her Kevlar vest unzipped to reveal the silver swan necklace shining against her throat.
She didn’t plead. She didn’t shout.
She began to sing.
Her voice rose softly through the concrete vault, clear and warm, singing the gentle words of the Gaelic lullaby Gabriel had taught his son. *“Across the hills of heather, beneath the silver moon, the lion guards the slumber of the bravest little boy…”*
Leo’s crying stopped. He blinked through his tears, his cornflower-blue eyes locking onto his mother’s face. “Mommy…?”
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The mercenary’s eyes flickered with a split-second of bewilderment. His trigger finger loosened by a fraction of a millimeter.
In that infinitesimal window, my combat blade flew from my hand, burying itself through the mercenary’s gun hand and pinning his wrist against the wooden upright of the cage.
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