Page 120 of Dead Fall

“Ooh-rah,” Krueger stated.

Hookah and Jacks nodded.

“On me,” Harvath ordered. “Let’s go.”

Peeking out from behind their cover, he saw another wave of Ravens pouring into the courtyard—the biggest one yet. Before he even realized that he had applied pressure to his trigger, he was firing.

As the Ravens dropped, he was joined by the rest of his team, all of them sending rounds across the courtyard and ripping the enemy to pieces.

Leaping to his feet, Harvath charged forward, leading his men deeper into the fight.

Without even needing to be told, the men contracted into a tight tactical formation, delivering controlled bursts of deadly fire at anything that moved. Within seconds, they had reached the main building.

As Krueger and Hookah took up covering positions and Jacks watched the courtyard behind them, Harvath removed a frag, pulled the pin, and tossed it inside the main building.

“Frag out!” he yelled as he and his teammates turned away from the explosion.

The moment it detonated, they regrouped and rushed inside. Harvath now had a horrible decision to make. Go find Anna Royko first, go find the little twin girls first, or split the team in half and do both at the same time.

He hated situations like this. But this was why he had been trained the way he had. The core mission took precedence. Anna Royko came first. That’s why they were here.

As Harvath and his team crossed the polished vestibule floor, they continued to fire tight bursts. Waves of Ravens kept flooding in.

Using the room’s massive staircase for cover, they pushed the Ravens back and chased their retreat with another frag grenade, felling even more of the Russian mercenaries.

In a gunfight, there were only three things you should be doing—shooting, moving, or reloading. Harvath’s team knew this all too well and were executing a perfectly orchestrated, bloody ballet without even thinking.

Crossing into a large reception hall, they pushed fast toward the doorway at the other end. They needed to get downstairs and get to Anna Royko before any of the Ravens decided to kill her.

They were almost at the door when it burst open and a trio of Russians leapt out. Harvath drilled all three of them.

The darkness was working to their advantage. Few if any of the Ravens were using night vision.

With Harvath on point, they stepped over the bodies and moved quickly but quietly down the stairs.

The basement was cluttered with all sorts of art and artifacts—gilded paintings, altarpieces, crates filled with rare books and manuscripts. It was ground zero for all the cultural treasure the Ravens had stolen.

There were also multiple little rooms off to each side that they didn’t have time to fully clear. Popping open each door with their guns up, they did a quick peek and moved on. The priority wasn’t finding and eliminating bad guys, it was finding and rescuing Anna Royko.

As Harvath and Krueger pushed forward, Jacks and Hookah kept their focus on the team’s six—just in case a threat came down the hall from upstairs or out of one of the rooms they had just looked into.

Finally, Harvath arrived at the last door, this one with a padlock on it. Using the butt of his rifle, he broke the lock off with one blow and pushed the door open. A figure was chained to a bed inside.

Scanning for threats, Harvath stepped into the room and approached the bed. The figure didn’t move.

Carefully, Harvath brushed the hair back from the woman’s face and identified her.

“Anna Royko,” he said. “My name is Scot Harvath. We’re here to get you out.”

Krueger entered and helped assemble the stretcher as Harvath did a quick assessment of Anna’s injuries. She was in rough shape.

Snapping the lock that secured her to the bed, they moved her as delicately as they could to the stretcher and then covered her with a Mylar blanket.

He quickly explained to her what was going to happen next.

When he asked if she understood, she nodded. Then, her voice barely above a whisper, she said, “There are two other hostages. Two little girls.”

“Have you seen them?”

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