Darkness cloaks the narrow stone paths, broken by occasional beams of flashlight as mist fractures under the surge of sea wind sweeping past Czar.
He issues a silent command with a flick of his hand, dispatching his covert team along separate routes
for the midnight infiltration to rescue the six captive girls, the prime minister's daughter among them.
Agent Czar couldn't help being annoyed when the chief of EIS handed him another mission the moment he reported back to Elk after completing his previous assignment, which should have been his last before he went home to his beloved, who had been waiting for him after two weeks of restlessness, only for
him to be briefed on an urgent new development.
Alfredo, the second-in-command of a rogue militant group, has threatened to execute the kidnapped girls, including Erriador's prime minister's daughter, unless the government releases ERAM's captured leader, Taron Irwan, who is linked to a rival nation and responsible for multiple hijackings and chemical attacks in Erriadorian airspace, within one day.
The first twelve hours had already passed by the time he received the assignment, and he had been appointed temporary field commander of the six-agent elite team after Elk secured the necessary authorisation and arranged for the covert operation.
The team had reviewed the intelligence, clarified the objective, and coordinated support before departing for Jordan by flight, where they were briefed on the latest updates. Their subsequent journey by sea left them with only four hours to rescue the girls before Alfredo's deadline expired at six in the morning.
A black panther closing in on its prey, Czar moves unseen behind the armed guard patrolling the perimeter of the abandoned, corroded monastery.
One precise strike. A sickening snap of the neck.
And he catches the collapsing body before it
hits the ground to silence the sound of impact.
Czar naturally preferred missions that demanded less bloodshed of him, because no matter how depraved a criminal might be, everyone deserved a chance at redemption, though not without the imposition of due punishment. This belief was deeply influenced by his Christian upbringing,
which taught him that one's choices on earth determined the fate that awaited them in the afterlife.
He often dealt with his guilt over those cold-hearted kills by reminding himself that they had to be done, lest innocents be deprived of the same chance who deserved it far more. But who was he to decide anyone's fate? In the end, it was the Lord's sanctuary he sought, the One that had never forsaken him.
"All six girls and a dozen guards are in the monastery's east wing. Main altar."
Sky's cool, controlled voice drifts through the earpiece, confirming that she has successfully accessed the surveillance system.
"I can't confirm the girls' condition from these feeds. Alfredo appears to be there, too.
I can't see the entire wing, but the corridors and main entrance are choked with guards."
"Keep watching the feeds," Czar says. "We're moving in."
"Copy that," Sky replies, before the comms go silent.
Czar turns to the agents, who answer with a nod.
Lanternlight casts gold through the archway, where an armed guard stands dressed in black, a balaclava obscuring his face as he scans the area.
Farther down the corridor, another guard's attention wanders elsewhere for just a moment.
Czar leads his agents through the disused service entrance, keeping to the shadow of a fractured pillar.
Cobwebs catch on his balaclava as they move through the darkness,
disturbed dust swirling around them as he peers ahead through the night-vision optics.
Black and green give way to the black and green of the rusted library as they follow the monastery's layout through its unused secondary passages.
He signals that all is clear, before muffled cries filter through the stone walls from the adjoining altar room.
"Status?" he asks, creeping toward the doorway with Hunter beside him, moving as stealthily as a tiger.
"No positions altered," Sky answers. "Except the guards
are putting a bomb vest on the girl in the chair."
Czar draws a deep breath at the sight of a dozen guards lining the corridor,
measuring the arcs of their rifles as they move.
"Ace, now," he commands.
"Roger that," Ace replies.
Silence ensues, sharpening the sound of his pulse beneath the occasional murmurs drifting from the hallway and the muffled cries from the altar room, as he weighs the time they still have left.
Three hours and forty-five minutes remain until the deadline, but the girl in the vest raises new alarms.
"Alfredo is walking out," Sky reports, just as a deafening explosion shakes the floor beneath them.
Ace has set off their decoy.
Shouts and footsteps rumble through the crumbling monastery while dust and debris keep falling from the ceiling, when Czar signs the agents to follow him.
Six guards remain with Alfredo as he runs down the corridor, while the roar of explosion yields to the clash of gunfire resounding outside the monastery.
One of the guards spots them and raises his rifle, shouting a warning before he crumples to the floor.
Bullet casings clatter against the stone as the shots leave the guards little time to react, the chaos
inside almost swallowed by the commotion outside.
He signals Agent Parker to capture Alfredo, who is crawling away, clutching his injured thigh as blood trails the floor amid his fallen guards.
The altar's door cracks open and more guards emerge.
Shards of concrete and debris scatter through the smoke swallowed air as round after round
ring out, followed by the thunder of footsteps down the stairs as the operation begins to unravel.
Czar holds back the guards alongside Agent Kane at the entrance while Hunter, the team's explosive specialist, works to disarm the bomb vest strapped to Lily, the
prime minister's seventeen-year-old daughter.
The girls had only been seeking a vacation in Switzerland when Alfredo had them seized the moment they stepped off their private jet and into the car waiting to take them to their destination.
That's when, as in all the other times, no matter how unlikely the situation,
his thoughts stray to her, barely older than the girls.
He shudders at the mere thought of her ever finding herself in a situation even remotely close to this.
God forbid.
When the corridor is clear enough, save for the writhing and motionless bodies,
his gaze lifts to the girls, who are freeing one another from their cable ties with a knife Hunter gave them.
Hunter.
The corner of Hunter's mouth lifts into a small, reassuring smile.
The vest is off, and the prime minister's daughter is being embraced by her friends.
"Multiple SUVs approaching from the south. SUVs." Sky adds, "They are closing in."
Parker brings Alfredo to his knees, cuffed, bloodied hands lifted over his head.
"Surrender—" the ginger-haired, middle-aged man breathes, dark-brown skin glistening with
sweat as blood slips from his temple. "I surrender—"
"We're leaving," Czar orders. "Get the boats to the extraction point.
Ace, Sky, bring the vehicles around."
A quick response follows as they retreat through the same service passage they
entered, the girls escorted by Hunter, Alfredo secured by Parker, and Kane guarding the rear.
Distant shouts and gunfire echo through the passage, mingling with the thud of
footsteps and Alfredo's pained groans.
When the frosty breeze stings his cheeks again, two SUVs are already waiting outside, just as bullets
rain down on them from the approaching vehicles.
The team unleashes a volley on the swarming guards while Czar instructs the girls to take shelter behind the stone walls.
They cower there, shrieking and covering their ears.
Thankfully, they are not as badly injured as he had feared.
Czar loads a fresh magazine into his HK416 and opens fire on the approaching vehicles, covering their retreat as Hunter ushers the girls into the SUV.
A shot strikes the SUV, engulfing it in flames as
Kane rushes after Parker and Alfredo toward the waiting Range Rover,
the other SUV carrying the girls already pulling away.
"Boss!" Ace calls out as silhouettes close in on him.
With smog shrouding the air,
he shoves a guard's rifle aside and slams the man's head against the wall with a sharp crack.
He grabs another guard, reaching for his pistol as bullets rain down on him again, muzzle flashes gleaming gold through the thick, grey smog.
He makes for the SUV, firing back as bullets strike the guard, whose body jerks with each impact.
Czar lets him fall and scrambles into the moving vehicle as shouts erupt
around him and bullets crack against the metal.
Czar has barely a second to catch his breath
before firing back at the pursuing vehicles, Agent Kane following suit through the open windows.
As the first flecks of snow begin to graze the gloved hands gripping his gun, he wonders how this world could harbour people like Alfredo, held captive in the back of the SUV, who is but a glimpse of one of the biggest criminal organisation's network, SHEOL, a business
built on terror, inciting wars and plagues that profit none other than the most depraved of elites.
Then comes his Angel, the soul he was immediately drawn to from the moment he first saw her,
the purest form of a human being he has ever known.
The RHIB and patrol craft wait offshore, the girls already
climbing aboard the latter, while more vehicles, seemingly endless in number, close in behind them.
Loading a fresh magazine, he considers how, once, he would have been more reckless, teetering on the seam between life and death.
He still risks his life to accomplish his missions.
Though a young woman has altered his whole world.
He can't imagine not being with her, loving her.
She makes him want to live a long life, his Angel.
What would she think, if he never came back home?
Occasional ideas of leaving EIS had crept into his mind, for the dark side of the world unravelled something dreadful within him, but he'd never had a strong enough reason to leave. Now he does.
Perhaps, then, he would never have to reveal it, could keep her in the shadows, an act of cowardice born of his fear of what she would make of him.
So silently, he prays, wishing through it all to return home to her, who, if Heaven were a
person, safe, warm, and ethereal, it would be her.