What had Nate just witnessed?
The old man who walked hunched over, struggled to get around, and always spoke in a soft, gentle voice was now standing beneath the moonlight in a textbook shooting stance.
The hand holding the pistol was perfectly steady.
Two shots.
Fifty meters away.
At night.
Against a moving target.
One round hit the shoulder.
The other shattered the knee.
And he’d done it with a Glock 17 they’d only just taken from the enemy.
He hadn’t even had time to get used to the gun.
Was that really Henry?
Lily had already crawled to the truck door, half her body leaning outside, just in time to witness her father fire both shots.
Her mouth fell open into an exaggerated O, her eyes went wide, and her pupils shrank to tiny black dots.
She froze completely, as if she’d even forgotten to breathe.
“Dad?!” Her voice cracked.
“Y-you…”
Henry didn’t turn around.
The Glock remained steadily aimed forward, the pistol completely motionless in his hands.
He held it with such effortless stability that it seemed perfectly natural.
His voice remained as calm and mild as ever.
“Girl, this is America. How do you think your old man managed to establish himself here back in the day?”
Nate’s mind raced.
Was Henry a hitman too?
Henry Wang had told him that he’d entered the country illegally more than thirty years ago.
Yet somehow, completely on his own, he’d managed to obtain legal status.
He’d even managed to buy a restaurant and make a life for himself in America.
The restaurant next door had changed owners twice, while his Good Luck Restaurant had remained firmly in place.
All these years, even after taking in the mess that was Nate, no one had ever come looking for trouble or tried to push Henry around.
Except, of course, for those two idiots who had blown up the restaurant.
And now, beneath the bright moonlight, Nate could see everything clearly with his enhanced vision.
Henry had picked up a pistol and immediately landed two precise shots on a moving target fifty meters away at night.
With a handgun.
Nate himself struggled to hit a moving target from ten meters away.
Even John Wick in the movies, the legendary killer himself, never seemed to take anyone down with a handgun from more than ten meters away.
This man wasn’t just a cook.
He was a battle-hardened veteran with an extraordinary talent for shooting.
Maybe even calling him a hitman wasn’t enough.
That instinctive feel for a gun, that composure, those nerves that remained perfectly steady amid gunfire and smoke.
Those were qualities that belonged to someone who had actually survived a battlefield.
“…Henry. The Continental?” Nate asked quietly.
His HK416 remained aimed forward.
This wasn’t the time to start asking questions.
There were still enemies outside, and someone was still hiding behind the shipping containers in the distance.
“Yes. We’ll talk later.”
Henry’s answer was short and calm, without the slightest hesitation, as though everything were under control.
“Give me your gun. Let’s deal with the problem in front of us first.”
“Alright.”
Nate took a deep breath, shoved all his questions and shock to the back of his mind, and focused on the fight again.
The hitman Henry had shot in the right shoulder and knee was lying on the ground, screaming in pain.
His partner remained hidden behind a nearby shipping container, unwilling to risk coming out.
He merely poked the barrel of his weapon around the edge and fired two wild bursts.
Bullets struck the truck and showered sparks across the metal.
Henry tossed the Glock into the vehicle and took the HK416.
Nate raised his Rattler rifle, held his breath, and settled the crosshairs over the wounded hitman’s head.
“Pfft.”
The subsonic round left the barrel with a soft sound.
The screaming stopped.
Then Nate heard something that had no business being there.
An engine.
Loud and aggressive.
The sound came from the container yard across from the warehouse, even though there wasn’t a road in that direction.
Only gravel, sand, and sheets of rusted metal.
The roar of the engine rapidly grew louder, accompanied by the sharp crackle of tires grinding over loose gravel.
A modified black Ford Raptor burst from the shadows between the containers.
A heavy steel ram bar had been mounted across the entire front bumper.
The truck came barreling straight toward them at a ridiculous speed.
Its headlights were off.
Only the vague silhouette of someone behind the wheel was visible.
If that thing hit them, they were finished.
Nate immediately raised the Rattler and unleashed a burst at the oncoming truck.
That was when the weakness of subsonic ammunition became painfully obvious.
It simply didn’t have enough power.
The rounds struck the windshield almost like stones being thrown against it.
The glass was bulletproof.
The bullets produced several fist-sized white impact marks across the windshield, cracks spreading outward like spiderwebs, but none of them penetrated.
The Ford Raptor didn’t slow down.
It kept charging directly toward them.
Fifty meters.
Forty.
Thirty.
With Nate’s enhanced eyesight, he could already make out specks of mud stuck to the truck’s grille.
“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Four shots came so close together they sounded like a single burst of thunder beside his ear.
Nate snapped his head around.
At some point, Henry had crouched and shifted position, moving from the left side of the truck to the right while continuing to use the vehicle for cover.
He had fired four shots in rapid succession.
Before the echoes had even faded, the sheer steadiness of his movements was already burned into Nate’s memory.
The first round struck the tire.
The 5.56 round tore precisely into the left front wheel.
Rubber burst apart, and the steel rim slammed down against the gravel, throwing out a long shower of sparks.
The Ford Raptor lurched violently and veered left.
Henry didn’t hesitate.
There wasn’t even a noticeable pause to aim.
In his hands, the HK416 seemed like part of his body.
Between shots, he even made tiny adjustments to his stance, shifting his weight from his rear foot to his front and controlling the rifle’s recoil so steadily that every bullet landed in the same spot.
The remaining three rounds struck the exact same point.
Right in the center of the white cracks Nate had already created with the Rattler.
The first round widened the cracks.
The second tore through the laminated layers.
The third punched through.
Under three consecutive impacts from 5.56 rounds only milliseconds apart, the bulletproof glass finally failed.
The last bullet carried fragments of shattered glass into the cab.
A burst of red sprayed across the driver’s seat.
The silhouette behind the wheel jerked backward.
The Ford Raptor began swerving from side to side.
No one was controlling the steering wheel anymore, but its enormous momentum kept carrying it forward.
The Raptor roared past Nate’s truck, barely grazing the rear bumper.
The rush of air was strong enough to make Nate stagger.
The two vehicles passed so close that their metal bodies nearly scraped together, while the shriek of the tires made his teeth hurt.
“BOOM!”
The Raptor slammed headfirst into the warehouse wall.
Brick and concrete exploded outward.
Sheet metal twisted, and half the truck’s front end buried itself in the structure.
The crash and the screech of grinding metal made Nate’s eardrums ache.
Lily had already dropped beside the truck, both hands over her head as she curled into a ball.
“Idiot! You think bulletproof glass means you can just charge straight into a line of fire?” Henry snapped.
“What kind of hitmen are they training these days?”
His voice wasn’t particularly loud.
But the contempt in it couldn’t have been clearer.