Chapter 13 - Teeth in the Dark
The house became an echo chamber of shattering glass and choking chemical fog.
White phosphorus canisters hissed violently across the imported oak floors of the living room, spewing clouds of blinding, sulfurous vapor. Downstairs, the sharp, percussive crack of suppressed submachine-gun fire erupted as Marshal Barnes and his two-man detail engaged the breach team at the foyer.
"Get them into the reinforced panic room!" Barnes’s voice bellowed through the smoke, followed instantly by the wet slap of high-velocity rounds punching through drywall. A grunt of agony cut off his next order.
"David! Move!" I shouted, shoving the prosecutor, Sarah, and little Lily through the heavy steel-sheathed access door at the end of the second-floor gallery.
Lily was clutching her yellow frisbee to her chest, her pale face streaked with terror, but she didn't scream. She looked back at Titan, her small voice trembling. "Keep him safe, please!"
"I will," I said, slamming the steel door shut and throwing the heavy mechanical deadbolts.
Titan didn't flinch at the gunfire. He stood at my left knee, ears pinned hard against his skull, his ribcage expanding and contracting in short, silent breaths. In the pitch darkness, illuminated only by the erratic strobe of muzzle flashes leaking up the stairwell, his golden eyes burned with an incandescent, lethal focus.
Footsteps took the stairs—slow, tactical, heavy.
Two shooters moved up the steps in tight tandem, sweeping their weapon lights through the rising smoke. They wore night-vision goggles, matte-black ballistic armor, and suppressed MPX submachine guns. To them, the second floor was a clean-up lane.
They didn't factor in a Belgian Malinois bred for battlefield interdiction.
"Titan, voran!" I gave the German assault command in a razor-thin whisper.
He launched into the smoke without a single sound—no bark, no growl, just eighty-five pounds of pure velocity cutting through the blinding vapor.
The lead shooter’s tactical light swung upward just as Titan cleared the final flight of steps mid-air.
The Malinois struck the man’s upper chest at twenty-five miles an hour. The sickening crunch of Kevlar meeting bone echoed down the hall as the gunman was thrown backward down the stairs, his weapon discharging wildly into the ceiling plaster. Titan didn't stay on him. Using the man's chest as a launchpad, he pivoted in mid-descent, snapping his jaws directly into the shoulder joint of the second shooter.
The second man screamed, a high, panicked sound, as Titan’s canines sheared through tactical nylon and muscle, dragging him down onto the landing.
"Off!" I roared, descending the steps, my Glock spitting double taps into the surviving operator's weapon hand and thigh. The man collapsed, incapacitated, his weapon clattering down into the darkened foyer below.
Down in the main hall, two more contractors were moving toward the breaker box. One of them turned, raising a tactical shotgun toward me.
Titan didn't wait for an order. He vaulted the banister from four steps up, crashing onto the shotgunner’s back like an avalanche. The gun blasted into the hardwood floor, gouging a crater of splintered timber, before Titan's jaws clamped hard across the man's forearm, wrenching the barrel away from my chest.
I took the final mercenary with two center-mass shots from the bottom step.
The living room fell into sudden, ringing silence, save for the rain hammering against the blown-out windows and the wet, heavy breathing of my dog. Titan stood over the fallen shotgunner, one front paw planted squarely on the man's chest, his muzzle smeared with soot and blood, waiting for my release command.
"Aus, Titan," I breathed, lowering my smoking slide.
He released instantly, stepping to my side, his shoulder brushing my knee. His left ear was torn, a shallow groove cut by a ricocheting piece of plaster, but he stood square, unbroken, his spirit burning brighter than the storm raging outside.
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Marshal Barnes lay by the front door, clutching a shoulder wound, but his eyes were wide as he looked at the Malinois. "God Almighty... that isn't a dog. That's a whole platoon."
"He's an officer of the law," I said, reaching down to pull Barnes to his feet. "And we have an escort to make."
