Never Cross the Back-Gate Guard

Chapter 005

The woman in the crimson dress glanced sideways at Cole, a spark of genuine intrigue flickering in her dark eyes. General Kane didn’t entertain ordinary guests, and clearly, this young man was anything but ordinary. Everyone in Havenport knew the Hayes family was backed by Commissioner Pendelton, yet Cole had just put the Hayes heir on the pavement without a second thought.

Cole turned back to her, his expression softening into polite composure. “Sorry you had to see that, ma’am.”

She offered a faint, captivating smile. “Not at all. I’m Elena Cross. Most people around here just call me Lena.”

As Cole followed Lena through the wrought-iron gates, Julian clawed his way off the asphalt, spitting blood as he glared at their retreating backs. “Cole Mercer… you asked for this. You’re a dead man.” He yanked the door of the Rolls-Royce open and threw himself into the back seat.

The driver hesitated, looking into the rearview mirror. “M-Mr. Julian… aren’t we still going in to see Commissioner Pendelton?”

“Do I look like I’m in any shape to meet the Commissioner right now, you idiot?! Drive!” Julian roared, cradling a jaw that was already swelling to the size of a grapefruit.

Ten minutes later, Lena stopped in front of Villa One at the very crest of the hill and rapped lightly on the heavy oak door.

It swung open to reveal a broad-shouldered man in his forties wearing dark aviator sunglasses. Even through the tinted lenses, Cole could feel the man’s gaze dissecting him—balanced weight, coiled muscle, zero wasted movement. An elite close-quarters specialist, and a damn strong one.

“He’s here to examine the General,” Lena said softly.

The man stared at Cole for a beat longer, then stepped aside. “Come in.”

The living room was vast and sunlit, yet furnished with spartan simplicity. On a worn leather armchair near the bay window, a silver-haired old man in a loose wool robe sat with his back to the door, reading a hardcover book.

The bodyguard stepped forward and lowered his voice. “General, your visitor is here.”

General Alistair Kane closed his book and chuckled warmly. “Which one of those meddling brats sent someone to disturb my afternoon peace this time?”

Cole walked around the armchair and stopped in front of him. Alistair pushed his reading glasses up his nose and looked up.

Instantly, the old man’s easy smile froze. His eyes widened, and he pushed himself upright out of the chair, staring at Cole in shock. “You’re… Talon? Cole Mercer of Task Force Wraith?”

Standing by the doorway, Lena felt a jolt of astonishment run through her. She had guessed Cole had a serious background, but she had never imagined he could make General Alistair Kane rise from his seat in sheer disbelief.

At the same time, recognizing the weathered, scar-lined face from the portrait hanging in the Wraith command bunker, Cole’s calm demeanor vanished, replaced by profound reverence. He snapped to attention and delivered the sharpest salute of his life. “Cole Mercer, Task Force Wraith, reporting as ordered, General Kane!”

With a trembling hand, the old man raised his arm to return the salute.

Cole immediately stepped forward and gently caught the General’s frail hands before he could complete the gesture. “General, please don’t. Coming from you, I couldn’t possibly accept that.”

Alistair’s eyes crinkled with fierce pride. “You’re Talon—the sharpest blade this country has forged in thirty years. If anyone has earned my salute, son, it’s you.”

Even in retirement, Alistair had heard the classified debriefings on what Cole had done six years ago—crossing an international border alone to avenge thirty fallen brothers, then walking into Ironwood Penitentiary and turning the most violent maximum-security prison in the country into his personal fiefdom. That kind of iron spine and lethal dominance belonged only to true legends of the battlefield.

Cole gave an inward sigh. No wonder Victor Hale had been so cryptic about who the letter was for. If he’d known Victor was sending him to see Alistair Kane, he would have thought twice before taking the envelope.

Fifty years ago, Alistair Kane’s name had been spoken in hushed terror across every mercenary syndicate and intelligence agency on the globe. He was the only operative in modern history to solo-clear a Tier-Five omega-level black op. Twenty years ago, when the two largest foreign paramilitary cartels formed a joint strike force of nearly two thousand men on the border, Alistair had led a shadow detachment into the mountains and wiped every last one of them off the map.

Just as Alistair opened his mouth to speak again, his knees buckled slightly, and he swayed on his feet.

Cole’s brow creased as he caught the old man’s elbow. “General—”

“Old age catches up with all of us, son,” Alistair said with a self-deprecating chuckle as Cole eased him back into the armchair. “Stand up too fast, and the room starts spinning.”

“Victor sent me here for a reason, sir,” Cole said firmly, keeping his fingers lightly on the General’s wrist as he guided his arm down. Beneath the heavy wool robe, the legendary commander’s forearm was little more than skin stretched over bone.

The bodyguard in the sunglasses took an aggressive step forward. “Hands off the General!”

Alistair waved him back without looking.

After checking the pulse for a few seconds, Cole reached into his coat and drew out his black leather needle roll. “During your campaigns decades ago, ballistic shrapnel damaged the primary nerve clusters along your thoracic spine and autonomic ganglia,” Cole said calmly. “Field surgeons saved your life, but the scar tissue has been slowly starving your organs of neural signaling ever since. With targeted percutaneous neuro-stimulation, I can break up the calcified lesions and reactivate the dormant pathways.”

He unrolled the leather kit and pinched a gleaming four-inch surgical needle between his fingers.

Click.

The cold muzzle of a custom Sig Sauer pressed hard against Cole’s temple. In the exact same heartbeat, Cole’s combat instincts flared—from the shadows of the second-floor gallery and the adjoining hallways, at least two dozen concealed marksmen had just locked onto his center mass. Even Lena had glided two steps closer, her weight shifting onto the balls of her feet.

Cole paused, his fingers still holding the needle steady. Of everyone in this room, the woman in the crimson dress was by far the most dangerous.

He took a slow breath. “I really hate having guns pointed at my head.”

The bodyguard’s lip curled into a cold smirk as his index finger took up the slack on the trigger. As Alistair Kane’s personal shield, he didn’t rattle at verbal threats.

“Briggs, holster your weapon,” Alistair said mildly. “At this range, against Talon, you wouldn’t even clear the leather if he wanted you dead.”

Briggs’s jaw clenched until the muscles bulged, his face flushing dark beneath his sunglasses. If anyone else had insulted his draw speed, he would have put them through the floor. Out of absolute obedience to the General, he engaged the decocker, holstered the Sig, and stepped back—though his hawk-like eyes stayed locked on every twitch of Cole’s fingers.

Alistair looked at Cole warmly. “Go ahead, son. And don’t put any pressure on yourself. At my age, every day is borrowed time anyway. Whatever happens, nobody in this house will hold you accountable.”

Cole met the old man’s gaze with quiet certainty. “Relax, General. Clearing a few pinched nerve pathways is routine work for me.”

Behind him, Briggs barely suppressed a scoff. The top neurosurgeons from Walter Reed and Mayo Clinic had declared the General’s nerve degeneration irreversible, and now some twenty-something special-ops kid was calling it routine work?

Ignoring the skepticism in the room, Cole went to work. One by one, he anchored the long surgical needles along the General’s spine, collarbones, and ribcage through the parted robe. As his fingertips brushed the ends of the needles, he channeled high-frequency kinetic micro-tremors down the steel shafts. Every needle began to hum with a faint, visible vibration, causing the atrophied muscle fibers beneath Alistair’s skin to ripple in rhythmic waves.

Watching from two paces away, both Lena and Briggs stiffened in shock. They knew Cole was a legendary sniper and CQC operative, but neither of them had expected him to possess this level of pinpoint neuromuscular kinetic control—the kind of terrifying physical mastery only a handful of grandmasters in the world could achieve.

Thirty minutes later, drenched in sweat, Cole smoothly plucked the last needle free and wiped his brow with a tissue. “The calcified lesions are cleared, and the nerve pathways are firing at full capacity again. Give it a week of rest, General, and you’ll be fit enough to lead another border campaign.”