The gunfight broke out so suddenly that when the helicopter pilot heard the shots and tried to lift off, an arrow punched through the glass and pinned him to the seat.
Seeing this, the pilot in the other chopper wisely took his hands off the controls and pressed them against the windshield where they could be seen—because directly in front of him stood a man with a red headband, bow fully drawn, the gleaming arrowhead aimed right at him.
The pilot swallowed hard. Outside, a little girl ran toward the two other attackers.
"Monica!"
Ina sprinted into Monica's arms. Monica had just put finishing shots into the bodies on the ground; she lowered her gun and hugged the girl tight.
Steve Owen glanced over, then looked back at Edward, whose eyes were burning with hatred. Edward, sprawled on the ground, glared back with equal venom.
Bang.
Steve Owen fired. Edward's head thumped hard against the ground, his hateful stare fixed on the sky—lifeless. Steve Owen had nothing to ask. The guy didn't have a doghead tattoo on his arm, but Steve Owen had already made up his mind—everyone dies.
"Why did you come back?" Steve Owen asked Rambo.
"I changed my mind. They owe me and Ina. I'm going to collect… personally."
Rambo slung a rifle off a corpse and onto his back. They boarded the helicopter.
"Wh-where to?" the pilot asked, trembling.
"Your base."
Ten minutes later, the aircraft neared the broadcast base. It sat on a hillside, not far in a straight line—only a river lay between.
That matched Steve Owen's earlier deduction. Drones have limited range; if they were streaming by drone, the base couldn't be far.
They flew in and set down in a clearing. All around, people were hurriedly loading trucks. Clearly, they were preparing to bug out.
The skids touched. A worker jogged up and called out, "Why'd only one bird come back? Where's the other one?"
A burst of gunfire answered—and the slaughter began.
Steve Owen and Monica poured out of the right side of the cabin, guns cracking, dropping the nearby guards in seconds. Rambo killed the pilot, then slipped out the left, cutting down several rifle-toting loaders one by one.
In the air, Steve Owen had already forced the pilot to describe the layout below in detail, so the second they touched down he and Monica split toward their assigned targets.
Pop… pop-pop-pop…
Wherever the trio passed, none were spared—man or woman—no mercy whatsoever.
Steve Owen and Monica struck with hatred in their hearts. For Rambo, a Vietnam vet back from hell itself, once the decision was made, killing was as simple as breathing.
After Slovakia's nightmare hostel, the Doghead Society weren't even people in their eyes. They had no humanity. Those who enabled them deserved death just as much.
Like the residents of that Slovakian town—they weren't Doghead members, but they knew exactly what was happening. Because they made money from it, they watched backpackers go to their deaths. Accomplices—unworthy of life.
Edward hadn't left many at the base. He'd taken most of his men to hunt Steve Owen. The handful remaining were shredded by the trio's assault—almost none survived.
In the control room, the live stream had ended. Nick and the broadcast's chief technology officer, Levinsky, watched a progress bar inch forward.
The streaming tech was the simple part. The real challenge was stealth and moving the money. Ever since the stream started, the servers had been under constant attack—individuals, official agencies, even national security organs. What they were doing was illegal, and on a global scale. Of course people took notice.
They needed real technical muscle—and Levinsky had it. He wasn't the best in the world, but he only had to hold attackers off for twenty-four hours and keep the money pipelines safe. That, he could do.
Now they were just waiting to move the funds securely into their personal accounts. Once the money hit, they'd be rich. The operation was complex, but they'd prepped it all—foolproof. It was only a matter of time.
As the progress bar neared ninety percent, gunfire erupted outside. Nick and Levinsky flinched, eyes snapping to the screens. They were a single step from success.
Screams from women rang out. A few women bolted from the control room in a panic—then ran back in like they'd seen a ghost. Two shots cracked. The women dropped—one dead, the other badly wounded, sprawled on the floor, begging toward the doorway.
Another shot. Monica appeared in the doorway, radiating killing intent. The pleading woman's head blossomed. Dead didn't begin to cover it. After landing, Monica, Steve Owen, and Rambo had split into three teams—with orders to kill everyone here. No survivors.
Monica glanced at the big screen—now off—and the gear in the room. She turned to the men.
"Which one of you is Nick?"
"I—"
No one spoke up at first. Monica leveled her gun; Levinsky, terrified, pointed at Nick. Nick grimaced and nodded.
Monica had already learned Nick was the one in charge here. She didn't kill him yet—she needed answers about the Doghead Society.
"What's your relationship to Douglas? Why is the Doghead Society operating here? Don't tell me you've reopened that hostel in Slovakia?"
She fired off questions that had been gnawing at her. Douglas had founded Doghead, but he'd been killed in Slovakia. She'd thought the Society had collapsed. Yet here they were—under a different guise.
Across the camp, the gunfire tapered off. For Steve Owen and Rambo, it had been a one-sided massacre. Unarmed, panicking civilians posed no threat. If not for their crimes, Steve Owen wouldn't have bothered killing them.
Some begged, claiming "tech is innocent," that they were just workers who didn't know what they were doing. Steve Owen answered that with a bullet. By their logic, he was just pulling a trigger—he couldn't know where the bullets would land.
Soon, Steve Owen and Rambo entered the control room as well. Levinsky and Nick were already scrambling to explain who they were.
"I'm a tech. I only handled account security and kept the stream from being interrupted. I don't know anything else…"
"No, he's lying. He used to be Doghead's head of tech. He ran their official site. Those scam pages—he made them…"
Facing death, they sold each other out. The truth came into focus fast.
______
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