"Clay," Salazar murmured, tasting the name on his tongue like poison. He took a slow sip of his rum, never breaking eye contact with the trembling thug. "So the old dog crawled out of his cave to defend a piece of chrome and a waitress."
Without warning, Salazar drew a gold-plated, suppressed pistol from his jacket holster. Before the younger punk could even draw a breath to scream, Salazar raised the weapon and fired twice. Puff-puff. The silenced shots echoed softly in the luxurious room. The young punk collapsed instantly, a spreading crimson stain blooming across the front of his grey hoodie as he hit the polished hardwood floor, lifeless.
The tattooed man shrieked, dropping to his knees and pressing his hands over his face, trembling violently as the warm blood of his partner pooled near his boots.
"Incompetence is a luxury I do not permit in my organization," Salazar said coldly, stepping over the corpse without a glance. He walked up to the kneeling thug, pressing the cold barrel of the pistol directly against the man's forehead. "You saw them. You know where they are. You are going to lead a full strike team to that mountain sanctuary tonight. Burn the compound to the ground. Bring me the encrypted drives, bring me the girl, and bring me Clay's head on a spike. Do we understand each other?"
"Y-Yes, boss! Yes! I'll do anything!" the thug wept, staring cross-eyed at the black metal barrel.
Salazar pulled the pistol away with a disgusted sneer. "Get out of my sight and prepare the convoy. We are going to war."
Chapter 10: The Ambush on Route 66
The sun was barely beginning to crest over the jagged horizon of the Mojave Desert, painting the sky in violent shades of burnt orange and bruised purple. Route 66 was mostly deserted at this early hour, a ribbon of cracked asphalt stretching endlessly through the wasteland of Joshua trees and sun-baked dunes.
A heavy, matte-black utility truck bearing the faded insignia of an independent freight company rumbled down the highway at a steady fifty miles per hour. Inside the cab sat two patched members of the Iron Wraiths—Grim, a massive brute with a braided beard, and Miller, a younger recruit tasked with hauling emergency medical supplies and spare engine parts back to the mountain stronghold.
"You feel that?" Miller asked, gripping the steering wheel tightly as a strange vibration shuddered through the floorboards. "Something feels off about this stretch of road."
Grim grunted, squinting through the dusty windshield. "Relax, kid. We're thirty miles away from the compound. Nobody hits us this close to home."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the horizon behind them filled with sudden, blinding glare. Two sleek, midnight-black SUVs crested the distant dune, their engines roaring with modified superchargers as they accelerated at terrifying speeds. Within seconds, they had closed the gap, boxing the Wraith supply truck in from both sides.