Henry quickly swept the dark corners behind the shipping containers with his rifle, checking to make sure no one else was stupid enough to come charging out.
Nate slowly turned to look at him.
He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
He took a deep breath and was about to check the truck that had crashed into the warehouse when Henry spoke again.
“Wait, Nate. Don’t let your guard down yet.”
The old man quietly shifted position, crouching behind the rear of the truck and using it as fresh cover.
He kept the HK416 shouldered, his right eye fixed on the area ahead through the sight.
His normally cloudy eyes now held a razor-sharp focus.
“Henry?” Nate lowered himself and followed the direction of Henry’s rifle.
“There should be more of them. Otherwise, that guy wouldn’t have charged us like that.” Henry was speaking noticeably faster than before.
It was the first time that night Nate had heard any urgency in his voice.
“The building behind the containers. Third floor. Something’s off.”
Nate cautiously peeked out and looked where Henry had indicated.
About a hundred and fifty meters ahead stood an unfinished building facing the warehouse.
Construction had stopped long ago.
The exterior was still bare gray concrete, and half the scaffolding had already been dismantled.
Most of the windows were nothing but dark, empty openings, with scraps of torn construction netting still hanging from some of them.
But on the third floor, the third window from the left was lit.
A faint yellowish glow came from inside, like the light from a flashlight or emergency lamp.
A dark silhouette stood within it.
It was blurry, but there was definitely something there.
A light inside an abandoned construction site made no sense.
The place had no electricity or running water.
No one had any reason to be sitting on the third floor with a light on in the middle of the night.
There was only one reasonable explanation.
Someone was up there with a gun, using the higher ground to watch the warehouse district below.
Nate slid the muzzle of the Rattler through a gap beside the rear of the truck and rested his finger on the trigger.
He was a little nervous.
A hundred and fifty meters.
He’d never taken a shot from that distance before, much less at night.
Yet somehow, he had the feeling he could make it.
It was like getting into a rhythm while playing basketball, when every shot somehow felt like it was going in.
Just as Nate was about to squeeze the trigger, Henry spoke beside him.
“My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I can’t make it out clearly. That might be a decoy. Take another look.”
Nate immediately pulled his finger away from the trigger.
He closed his eyes, opened them again, and focused his enhanced vision on the unfinished building.
A fifty percent boost to his eyesight was normally enough at this distance, but if someone was deliberately hiding in the darkness, even he could miss them without checking carefully.
His gaze moved slowly from left to right, examining each third-floor window in turn.
The third window was lit.
The dark figure was still there.
It hadn’t moved at all.
Too stiff to look human.
Nate kept scanning.
The fourth window was empty.
Nothing.
The fifth…
Then his gaze reached the opening on the far right.
There was no glass, just a pitch-black rectangle.
Nate’s eyes stopped there, his pupils narrowing slightly.
Something was behind the window frame.
A faint silhouette, almost completely swallowed by the darkness.
The figure appeared to be crouching, with just a short length of gun barrel protruding past the windowsill and pointing directly toward them.
Without his enhanced vision, Nate could have stared until his eyes bled and still never noticed it.
“Henry. Third floor, far right.” Nate kept his breathing slow and steady, forcing the words through clenched teeth.
“I’ll take the one in the lit window. You take the one on the far right.”
The silhouette in the lit window might have been a decoy.
The one hiding in the dark window was almost certainly the real shooter.
But if they were wrong and the figure in the middle was a real person too, then at this distance, once both sides opened fire, whoever got hit first would die.
There was no way to be completely certain.
They would have to gamble.
“Alright.”
Henry answered without hesitation.
Nate settled his crosshairs on the silhouette in the lit window.
Beside him, he heard Henry brace the rifle stock against his shoulder.
“Pfft.”
The Rattler’s muzzle barely moved.
With the suppressor and subsonic ammunition, the shot was faint, almost like a stone being whipped through the air.
“Pfft.”
Nate immediately fired a second round.
Henry fired at nearly the same moment.
“Bang!”
The HK416 was far louder than the Rattler, its report cracking through the air like a whip.
The shots came so close together that Nate couldn’t tell which had been fired first.
Through his scope, he saw the silhouette in the lit window take the hit.
The dark shape split into two pieces and disappeared from view.
Almost simultaneously, the figure in the dark window on the far right jerked violently sideways, as if something had slammed into it from the side.
It toppled out of the opening, while another dark shape fell from above.
The subsonic rounds were slower.
At a hundred and fifty meters, they took a fraction of a second to reach their target.
Both silhouettes went down almost at the same time.
Nothing else moved inside the unfinished building.
“That should be it.”
Henry’s voice finally returned to its usual unhurried tone.
His body visibly relaxed as he lowered the rifle from his shoulder, keeping the muzzle pointed toward the ground.
He still wasn’t completely at ease, though, and occasionally glanced back toward the building.
“Nate, go search those two bodies. I’ll keep watch.”
“Got it.”
Lily was still crouched on the ground, trembling uncontrollably.
Nate stayed low as he ran to the Raptor, then sprinted across to the body beneath the unfinished building.
He moved quickly.
He found the sniper rifle near the body, but the barrel had been bent in the fall and the sight was shattered.
It was useless, so he left it behind.
Searching the body, Nate pulled a short-barreled submachine gun with a folding stock from the holster on the man’s back.
He also found two fully loaded magazines.
A pistol was strapped to the outside of the man’s thigh.
A Glock 17.
Unlike the one Henry had been using earlier, this one had a red dot sight mounted on it.
There was also a backup P226 tucked into the back of the man’s waistband.
Nate wiped down all three weapons with the edge of the man’s clothing, then quickly returned to the truck.
He searched the other bodies on the ground and inside the vehicle as well, finding another two pistols.
Nate opened the back of the truck and tossed the weapons inside.
There was barely any room left.
The man inside the vehicle had something else in his pocket.
Nate reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a black velvet pouch.
He loosened the drawstring.
Nine gold coins lay inside.
Their golden surfaces had a muted sheen beneath the moonlight.
Nate slipped the pouch into his pocket and zipped it shut.
“Lily, we’re leaving.”
He patted her shoulder, opened the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Lily finally managed to get up and scramble into the back seat.
She hadn’t even closed the door properly before Nate started the engine.
The Cadillac’s engine gave a deep rumble.
The headlights came on, illuminating the rough dirt road ahead.
“Scared, Lily?” Nate teased with a deliberately annoying grin in his voice.
Lily was still trembling in the back seat, though nowhere near as badly as before.
She stubbornly shot back, “I’m not scared! I just don’t want to die!”
Henry smiled indulgently and handed her the Glock 17 he’d tossed into the vehicle earlier.
“Tomorrow, Dad’ll teach you. I guarantee you’ll be better than Nate.”
The mood inside the car immediately lightened.
A little while later, Nate spoke.
“Henry…”
Before he could continue, Henry cut him off.
“I know what you want to ask. Keep your eyes on the road. We’ll talk after we get to the hotel.”
Henry leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Alright.”
Nate didn’t head straight for the main road.
He made two turns through the container yard first, making sure no one was following them before finally pulling onto the highway.
The night rushed past outside the windows.
Streetlights swept by one after another, casting alternating bands of light and shadow across the interior of the car.
Nate kept both hands steady on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
The events from the warehouse were still replaying through his mind, but there was no time to sort through them yet.
The Continental was just ahead.