Chapter 15: The Sniper
Chapter 15: The Sniper
Downtown Chicago was freezing. The bitter wind howled through the concrete canyons of the skyscrapers. I walked casually down Michigan Avenue, my hands in my coat pockets, constantly checking the reflections in the store windows for the slightest anomaly.
I spotted it: the briefest glint of a sniper's optic catching the pale afternoon sun on the 14th floor of an unfinished, skeletal high-rise across the street. Silas had taken the bait perfectly.
Instead of running and presenting a moving target, I stepped smoothly into the blind spot of a massive concrete structural pillar. I pulled my phone, tapped into the city grid, and hacked the construction site’s automated freight elevator. I was riding up to the 14th floor before Silas even realized his target had vanished from the street below. I stepped out of the shadows behind him as he scanned the street. He heard the grit under my boot and spun, reaching for his tactical sidearm with terrifying speed. But my combat knife was already embedded deep into his right shoulder. We fought brutally amidst the concrete dust and exposed rebar. I threw him through a sheet of uninstalled drywall, disarmed him of his blade, and knocked him out cold with the stock of his own rifle. One major threat neutralized.
