Chapter 9 - THE STAND AT ASHFORD TOWER
The legal and strategic offensive launched by Sienna Ashford was swift and devastating. Using her vast network in tech and international logistics, she leaked encrypted files from Mason's military service directly to the Senate Armed Services Committee, exposing the illegal private military operations in Afghanistan.
Within forty-eight hours, federal warrants were issued for the executives of Vanguard Defense Solutions. But desperate men do desperate things.
On a dark, stormy Sunday evening, as Sienna, Mason, and Ava prepared to depart for Washington D.C. to present testimony before a federal grand jury, the power across the upper floors of Ashford Tower went completely dark.
The emergency backup generators clicked on three seconds later, bathing the executive suite in a eerie red security glow.
"They're here," Mason said instantly, pulling Sienna and Ava into the reinforced central panic room of the penthouse suite. He locked the heavy steel doors from the inside, his eyes sharp and focused.
"Mason, you can't go out there alone!" Sienna cried, grabbing his tactical jacket.
"I built this panic room when I moved into this building, Sienna," Mason said, handing her a satellite phone. "The walls are reinforced steel. The doors are biometric. Stay here, call Major Vance, and do not open this door for anyone except me."
"Mason..." Ava called out softly from her seat near the monitor console.
Mason turned to her. Ava looked at him without fear, her eyes shining in the red light.
"Left foot, right foot," Ava said softly, offering him his own words of strength.
Mason grinned, a spark of lethal confidence returning to his eyes. "Left foot, right foot, kiddo."
Mason stepped out of the panic room, allowing the heavy vault doors to seal shut behind him. He moved through the shadowed hallways of the penthouse with silent, deadly grace. He knew every corner, every angle, every shadow of the space.
Two armed operatives from Vanguard moved through the main living room, their night-vision goggles glowing green in the dim light. They were professionals, but they were operating on unfamiliar ground against a former Special Forces operator who had spent fourteen years hunting in the dark.
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Mason hit the first operative from the shadows, disarming him with a brutal wrist lock and driving him into the wall before the man could draw his weapon. He swept the second operative's legs out from under him, securing both men with heavy cable ties before they could even sound an alarm.
By the time Major Vance and a team of federal marshals burst through the front doors ten minutes later, they found Mason sitting calmly on the sofa, drinking a glass of water, while two of the world's most dangerous mercenaries sat bound and disarmed on the rug before him.
