Chapter 135 No Way Out
The two heavy metal objects arched through the freezing sky and dropped toward the helicopter.
One of them struck the icy ground right beside the landed craft with a dull thud. A split second later, it burst open with a loud pop, spewing a massive cloud of thick, white smoke into the air.
Tear gas.
The second canister landed even closer to the cockpit door. The gas pouring out of it was different from the first, denser, heavier, and tinted with a sickly gray color.
Dorian’s eyes immediately began to burn like fire, and his throat constricted tightly. He choked, completely unable to draw in a clean breath as his chest seized up.
Luckily, he had scouted this entire mountain route before setting out and knew the rocky terrain well. He had always planned for a potential emergency exit if things went south, but he had never expected to use it under a heavy chemical attack.
Yanking his heavy sleeve up over his nose and mouth, Dorian tumbled out of the cockpit and broke into a dead sprint.
The heavy gray cloud seemed to chase him, swirling violently in the icy wind.
He plunged straight into the line of pine trees, his boots sliding against the hidden ice under the snow. His lungs were burning, his chest felt like it was trapped in a vice, and tears poured down his face, blurring his vision until everything looked like smudged watercolors.
He ran blindly through the dense woods for over ten long minutes, pushing past frozen branches that whipped against his face.
Eventually, the trees thinned out, and his boots skidded to a sudden halt.
He had reached the absolute edge of the cliff.
Right in front of him, the rocky ground simply vanished into nothingness. The valley floor was hundreds of feet down, completely obscured by fog and jagged rock outcroppings. The freezing mountain wind howled violently as it rushed up the steep face of the cliff.
There was no path down this side. There was no way to loop around, and turning back meant running straight into the barrel of a gun.
He was completely trapped.
Dorian turned around slowly, resting his back near the drop.
Three heavy footsteps crunched through the snow as the mercenaries emerged from the treeline. All three of them were wearing full tactical gas masks, their sleek black submachine guns raised and leveled at his chest.
They stopped about twenty feet away, forming a tight semicircle to block any chance he had of slipping past.
The man in the center stepped forward and reached up to yank off his gas mask. His face was covered in jagged scars, and his dark eyes were completely cold and empty.
"You ran pretty far," the man said, his deep voice carrying a thick foreign accent. "But not nearly far enough, Mr. Thorne."
Dorian’s hand drifted down toward the holster at his hip, but he did not draw the weapon just yet. He needed time, and he needed information.
The mercenary leader let out a cruel, faint smile. "Don’t bother trying to stand tall. That tear gas was laced with M-209. It is a military-grade incapacitating nerve agent."
Dorian’s jaw clenched tight as he felt a sudden, heavy weakness spreading through his legs.
"Your eyesight is going first, isn’t it?" the mercenary continued in a conversational tone, taking a slow step closer. "Next, your hearing will start to ring and fade out. Then comes the total loss of muscle control. You will be blind, deaf, and paralyzed in less than an hour, lying out here in the snow."
Dorian kept his mouth shut, refusing to give the man the satisfaction of seeing him panic.
The mercenary tilted his head slightly. "A man like you should have just stayed in the city playing businessman."
Dorian’s mind was racing at maximum speed, trying to piece the puzzle together despite the blinding headache starting to bloom behind his eyes.
These men weren’t random mountain bandits. They were top-tier professionals, armed with rare military chemical weapons. Someone with deep pockets had hired them, someone who knew his exact flight path and had carefully planned this entire trap.
"Who sent you here?" Dorian asked, his voice rough and rasping from the gas.
The scarred mercenary shrugged his shoulders casually. "Does it really matter at this point?"
"It matters to me," Dorian spat out.
"We were given a large sum of cash to make sure you never leave these mountains alive," the man replied cleanly. "That is all we know, and that is all we care about and we also sabotaged your brother’s plane crash too."
The mercenary raised his rifle an inch higher.
"You aren’t going to get away with this," Dorian warned him. "Even if you shoot me right here, my people know where I went. They will track every single one of you down. They will hunt you to the ends of the earth, and they will make you talk."
The leader laughed out loud, a harsh, grating sound that echoed off the rocks. "Your people are already dead down at the landing zone, Mr. Thorne. Your security team is completely wiped out. You are standing on the edge of a cliff, blind and alone."
Dorian’s jaw set hard, his teeth grinding together.
"I am not alone," he whispered.
The mercenary leader’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You’re bluffing to buy time."
Before the man could finish his sentence, Dorian’s hand snapped down to his holster. In one smooth, practiced motion, he pulled his heavy pistol and aimed straight at the center mercenary.
BANG!
The heavy bullet caught the leader square in the chest, the force knocking him backward into the snow as his rifle clattered against the rocks.
The remaining two mercenaries reacted instantly, pulling their triggers and spraying a wild burst of automatic fire.
STREAM OF GUNFIRE
The heavy rounds slammed into Dorian’s body. One bullet tore straight through his right shoulder, another shattered the bone in his upper arm, and a third ripped into his side.
The impact threw Dorian backward. He staggered violently, his fingers losing all strength as his pistol slipped from his grip and fell into the snow. The world spun wildly around him, the black spots in his vision turning into complete darkness.
His legs gave out entirely, and he crashed down onto his knees near the edge.
The two surviving mercenaries walked forward slowly, their heavy boots crunching in the blood-stained snow.
One of them pulled a heavy black Desert Eagle from a chest holster, pulling the slide back to chamber a massive round before pointing the wide barrel directly at Dorian’s forehead.
"Any last words, rich boy?" the man asked coldly.
Dorian forced his head up to look at the man. His skin was deathly pale, and his entire body was shaking uncontrollably from the blood loss and the nerve agent rushing through his veins.
In those fleeting seconds, images flashed rapidly through his mind.
He thought about Percy lying dead in the snow. He thought about the cracked silver watch. He thought about the ruined airplane.
He refused to let his life end on a frozen rock at the hands of nameless scum.
With a ragged, desperate growl, Dorian shoved himself up using his one good leg. His torn muscles screamed in agony, and his open wounds burned like hot irons, but he forced his body to move.
Instead of lunging at the gunman, Dorian spun on his heel and charged straight toward the drop behind him.
He reached the very edge of the cliff and didn’t slow down for even a microsecond.
He threw his body forward and jumped into the empty air.
The freezing wind roared in his ears as he plummeted straight down.
The sheer face of the mountain blurred past his failing vision, gray rocks and white snow patches flashing by at terrifying speeds. The bottom of the canyon rushed up to meet him fast.
He fell through the heavy fog, the air whistling violently against his torn jacket.
And then, with a bone-shattering impact that knocked every last drop of air from his lungs, he smashed straight through the ice and slammed into the deep, rushing waters of the freezing mountain river below.