Chapter 10: The Stairwell Stand
The smoke alarm in the hallway shrieked, a piercing, rhythmic scream that covered the sound of heavy boots on the hardwood floor below.
Marcus stood perfectly still at the top of the narrow stairwell. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe heavily. He just waited in the suffocating gray smoke.
At the bottom of the stairs, a heavy tactical flashlight cut through the haze.
“We know you’re up there!” a rough voice called out in heavily accented English. “Your team is bleeding out on the floor. It’s over, man. Just send the woman and the kid down, and you get to walk away.”
Marcus recognized the tactic. It was standard siege psychology. Offer the cornered animal an illusion of safety to lower their guard.
“Who’s in charge down there?” Marcus called back, his voice projecting a terrifying, unnatural calm.
The flashlight beam swept up the stairs, trying to blind him. Marcus didn’t flinch.
“I am,” the voice replied. A man stepped onto the first landing, his assault rifle raised. “They call me Mateo. Now throw your weapon down the stairs, bodyguard. I won’t ask twice.”
Marcus let out a slow, dark chuckle that echoed off the drywall.
“You’ve got bad intel, Mateo. I’m not a bodyguard. And you’re not making it to the second floor.”
Mateo scoffed, waving two of his heavily armed men forward. “We have six guns pointed at that landing. You have a pump-action toy. Do the math, hero.”
“I did the math ten minutes ago,” Marcus stated flatly.
He didn’t aim down the sights. At this range, in this chokepoint, he didn’t need to. He simply pulled the trigger.
The deafening roar of the shotgun blast in the enclosed space was catastrophic. The drywall on the right side of the stairwell exploded into a cloud of white dust and jagged splinters, raining down on the cartel soldiers.
Mateo’s men screamed, stumbling backward, completely blinded by the debris and the concussive force.
“He’s crazy! He’s shooting blindly!” one of the men yelled, firing wildly up into the ceiling.
“I’m not shooting blindly,” Marcus whispered to himself.
He pumped the action, the spent red shell clattering onto the floorboards.
“I told you,” Marcus yelled over the ringing in their ears. “You crossed the wrong threshold today. Every step you take up these stairs costs you a man. Do you really want to die for a paycheck, Mateo?”
Mateo gritted his teeth, pressing his back against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. “Covering fire! Rip the whole ceiling apart!”
The cartel soldiers unleashed a torrent of automatic fire. Bullets chewed through the floorboards just inches from Marcus’s boots, shredding the carpet and filling the air with toxic drywall dust.
Marcus dropped flat to his stomach, sliding backward into the master bedroom. He had bought Elena exactly ninety seconds. It had to be enough.
Most men would break under the sheer volume of automatic gunfire, surrendering to save their own lives. But when your entire existence is built on protecting the innocent, surrender is a foreign concept. What would you do?
