Chapter 5 - The Wolf HuntDominic, Marcus, and Julian froze, their eyes tracking up to the mezzanine level where I stood. For a second, there was nothing but dead silence in the massive warehouse, save for the ticking of the hot truck engine. Then, Dominic’s face twisted into an ugly, arrogant sneer as he recognized me.
“Well, well,” Dominic chuckled, drawing his Kimber .45 with a smooth, practiced motion. “Look what the cat dragged in from the sandbox. The government dog didn't go back to his base. He came to play hero.”
“Marcus, Julian,” Dominic barked, keeping his weapon trained on my chest. “Go around the back stairs. Don't let him jump. I’m going to personally show this grunt what happens to people who break into my gym.”
Marcus and Julian split up instantly, running toward the flanking iron stairwells with the speed of trained fighters. They thought they had me cornered on a high platform with nowhere to go. They thought like street thugs; they didn't think like military strategists.
I didn't move. I reached into my vest pocket, pulled out a small, palm-sized electronic device, and pressed the center button.
Instantly, every high-intensity halogen light bulb in the warehouse exploded in a shower of white sparks. I had wired a high-voltage surge pulse into the warehouse's main lighting breaker when I first entered through the back alley. The entire space was instantly plunged into pitch-black darkness.
“What the hell?!” Marcus screamed from the left staircase.
“Dominic! I can’t see anything!” Julian yelled from the right.
They were completely blind, their pupils unable to adjust to the sudden, total absence of light. But I wasn't blind. I pulled down my night-vision goggles, the entire warehouse popping back into sharp, green clarity. To me, they were moving in slow motion, their hands flailing against the walls as they tried to find their bearings.
I dropped over the mezzanine railing, falling fifteen feet down onto the roof of Dominic’s Ford F-250 truck, landing with a soft, controlled thud that was masked by Marcus’s shouting. I rolled off the hood, dropping directly behind Julian, who was stumbling near the tire rack.
I didn't use my knife. I used a hard-composite tactical baton, extending it with a sharp flick of my wrist.
Crack.
The baton struck Julian directly across his right elbow joint, shattering the bone into multiple fragments. He let out a choked, bloody scream, dropping his weapon as his arm went completely limp. Before he could fall, I caught him by the hair, driving my knee violently into his ribs, cracking three of them instantly, collapsing his right lung. He hit the concrete floor like a sack of wet cement, completely incapacitated.
“One,” I muttered through the dark.
“Julian!” Marcus screamed, turning toward the sound of his brother’s agony, firing three wild shots from his 9mm pistol into the darkness. The muzzle flashes illuminated the empty gym rings for a fraction of a second, but I was already gone, moving through the shadows like a ghost.
I appeared right beside Marcus as his gun cycled its third round. I grabbed his right wrist, twisting it upward at a violent angle until the joint dislocated with a loud snap. The gun dropped from his useless fingers. I grabbed his shirt, spinning him around, and drove him face-first into the heavy steel corner of a professional fighting cage.
The impact shattered his nose and his jaw, sending him to the floor, unconscious and bleeding profusely.
“Two,” I said.
Now there was only Dominic left. The eldest brother was standing near the front of his truck, his pistol raised, his chest heaving as he realized both of his brothers had been taken down in less than forty-five seconds without landing a single blow. The arrogance was gone from his face, replaced by the terrifying realization that he wasn't dealing with a normal man. He was dealing with a phantom.
“Ethan!” Dominic shouted into the dark, his voice shaking slightly despite his massive size. “Show yourself! Come out and fight like a man! You think you’re tough with your little night goggles? I’ll tear your head off!”
I stepped out into the open space directly in front of the truck's headlights, which were still casting a faint yellow glow through the dark warehouse. I pulled off my night-vision goggles, letting him see my eyes through the dim light.
“I’m right here, Dominic,” I said softly.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger of his .45, but nothing happened except a dry click.
While I was on the roof of his truck, I had dropped a powerful rare-earth magnetic jammer onto the engine block, which emitted a high-frequency electromagnetic field that had completely fused the electronic firing pin mechanism of his custom modified pistol.
Dominic threw the useless gun aside with a curse, dropping into a classic heavyweight boxing stance. “I don't need a gun for a little bitch like you. I’m a state champion, Ethan. I’m going to break you just like I broke your wife.”
He charged forward, throwing a massive, right-hand haymaker that carried enough force to crack a horse’s skull. If that punch landed, it would kill a normal man.
But I didn't try to block it. I slipped inside the punch, my movement fluid and instinctual, honed by a thousand hours of close-quarters combat training in the dark alleys of Baghdad. I caught his extended right arm, using his own forward momentum against him, and drove my hard tactical boot directly into the side of his right knee joint.
CRACK.
The joint didn't just fracture; it inverted entirely, the bone tearing through the tendons and lateral ligaments. Dominic let out a roar of absolute, agonizing pain, falling to his good knee, his massive frame trembling as he looked up at me with eyes wide with horror.
“That’s for Tessa’s leg,” I said, my voice completely devoid of mercy.
I grabbed him by the throat, lifting his massive body off the floor with a strength born of pure, unadulterated righteous fury. I drove him backward against the hood of his truck, pinning him down. I pulled the heavy steel framing hammer out of the toolkit he had left in the back of his truck—the exact same hammer they had used on my wife.
“Ethan... please... we’re brothers... we’re family...” Dominic gasped, his hands clawing at my wrists, but my grip was like an iron vise.
“You’re not family, Dominic,” I said, raising the hammer above his hand. “You’re just targets.”
I brought the hammer down three times in rapid succession, precisely shattering the major bone clusters in his right hand and arm—matching the exact injuries he had inflicted on Tessa’s dominant hand. I didn't kill him; killing him would be too easy. I wanted him to live with the knowledge that he would never hold a weapon, never step into a fighting ring, and never harm another human being for the rest of his pathetic life.
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I packed the ledgers into my duffel bag, walked out of the warehouse into the early morning light, and left the three brothers bleeding on the floor of their own den.
Five down. Two to go. And then, Victor Wolf.
