I didn't even make it past the treeline before I heard 'em coming.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
Two heavy pickup trucks and an armored flatbed came screaming up the ridge, kicking up a massive cloud of dust in the moonlight. Cruz didn't wait, bro. The bastard sent an advance squad of about fifteen cracked-out fools to burn my place down while the coffee was still warm.
I crouched low in the thick brush on the high ridge, pulling my custom Rambo blade from my chest sheath and resting the heavy 12-gauge across my knee. I had a front-row seat to the show, homie.
The lead truck smashed right through the iron gate at forty miles an hour, feeling tough, feeling bulletproof.
BOOM!
The front tire hit the first pressure plate. A buried pipe bomb detonated right underneath the engine block, flipping that three-ton truck into the air like a toy box and raining hot iron down on the trees! The second truck swerved hard to dodge the wreck, plowing straight into the high-tension aircraft cable anchored across the choke point.
CLACK!
The tripwire snatched a whole row of spring-loaded steel spikes hidden in the dirt. Tires blew out, the axles snapped, and the flatbed behind 'em slammed into the pileup. Before those disoriented bastards could even crawl out of the cabs, the secondary charges went off in a chain reaction—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Fireballs lit up the dark sky, throwing smoke, shrapnel, and screams all over my dirt road. It was a complete, beautiful meat grinder, dog.
"Stupid motherfuckers," I chuckled under my breath, my eyes glowing in the firelight.
I didn't rush in with the shotgun. Guns were too merciful for these bitches. I slipped out of the brush like a phantom, stepping through the burning wreckage and thick smoke with my heavy custom blade held low.
I found the first survivor stumbling out of the passenger side, coughing up blood, reaching for his pistol. I stepped up behind him, grabbed his tactical vest, and buried eight inches of forged steel right under his ribs, twisting hard. Gasp. He went limp instantly. I wiped the blade on his jacket and kept moving.
Second guy was crawling through the dirt, weeping, dragging a broken arm. I didn't even pause—just brought the heavy spine of my bowie down across the back of his neck, snapping it clean. CRACK.
Then I heard someone groaning near the flipped lead truck.
I walked over, pulling the smoke aside, and spotted a guy pinned under the crumpled door. The blast had chewed his leg up bad—completely severed from the knee down, gushing dark blood into the dust. He was wearing high-grade body armor, a tailored jacket, and a gold chain hanging out of his shirt. Not some low-level grunt, bro.
I leaned down, squinted through the haze, and recognized his ugly mug from the regional threat lists.
"Well, look at this shit," I laughed out loud, a mean, dark belly laugh echoing through the fires. "If it ain't Hector. Cruz's big-shot lieutenant."
"Fuck... fuck you..." Hector gasped, his eyes wide with blinding panic as he looked at my face, then down at the blood-drenched Rambo blade in my hand. "You're... you're a fuckin' monster, man..."
"Nah, homie. I was just a guy trying to have a peaceful Tuesday," I said, grabbing him by the collar of his heavy vest with one hand.
I yanked him out from under the crushed door like a sack of dead meat, ignoring his high-pitched screaming as his bloody stump dragged across the rough gravel. I hauled his ass twenty yards back into the shadows, propping him up against an unburnt oak tree right out of sight.
I slid my heavy bowie back into my chest sheath and pulled out my compact, serrated karambit, letting the curved steel catch the orange glow of the burning trucks.
"Alright, Hector," I whispered, stepping close enough for him to smell the gun oil and blood on my breath. "You're gonna tell me exactly where Cruz is hiding his bitch ass tonight... or I'm gonna start carving you up piece by piece."