John opened his eyes in the pitch black.
The heavy curtains shimmered faintly with the distant, hazy glow of the city lights. He dressed in absolute silence, easing his bedroom door open to find a single dim bulb casting long shadows across the living room. Marcus was already standing flush against the wall by the front door.
Marcus offered a curt nod without uttering a single word. He slowly raised his open palm, signaling contact.
John cast a brief glance toward Anthony's closed door before melting into the shadows to take up his own position.
A hundred meters away in the dark, five spectral figures approached the apartment complex with lethal intent.
The strike team was led by Riccardo, Santino D'Antonio's most trusted covert asset in New York. He was a mountain of muscle, advancing with a heavily modified, suppressed AK-47 pressed tight to his shoulder.
Vito broke off from the main group and headed toward the treeline. He was carrying a precision AWM sniper rifle, its stock wrapped tightly in matte black duct tape to prevent glare. He had been a designated marksman in the Italian military before being dishonorably discharged for murdering two squadmates in a drunken rage.
The remaining three men were the assault element.
Tony and the eldest Luca brother were armed with compact HK MP5 submachine guns. Bringing up the rear was Salvatore, a brutal enforcer gripping an eighteen-inch tactical machete and holstering dual Beretta Px4 Storm pistols.
Riccardo checked the luminous dial of his tactical watch.
"Three, two, one, move out," he whispered over the comms.
One man broke off toward the east bedroom window. The other two stacked up and rushed straight for the front door.
John had already ghosted his way to the rear window. He held his signature Heckler & Koch P30L in a tight grip, the weapon resting in his hands like a natural extension of his own body.
Marcus casually racked the bolt of his MAC-11 submachine gun by the front door. A dangerous, jagged smile played across his weathered face.
"Let's show these Italians some proper New York hospitality," Marcus muttered.
Through the sheer fabric of the rear curtains, John watched the shadowy silhouette of an assassin pry the window open and slide half his torso inside.
The P30L flashed in the dark.
The 9mm round tore through the air at supersonic speed, catching the intruder dead center in the forehead. Hydrostatic shock did the rest, blowing out the back of his skull in a violent spray of crimson and gray. The man never even made a sound. His lifeless body just slumped heavily over the window sill like a sack of dead weight.
Almost simultaneously, Marcus's MAC-11 roared to life.
He didn't bother aiming for the gap in the door frame. He just dumped the trigger straight through the center of the solid wood door. The .380 caliber rounds shredded the locking mechanism and pulverized the reinforced timber, sending lethal splinters and jagged metal fragments exploding outward into the hall.
A muffled, agonizing groan echoed from the corridor as the shrapnel found its mark.
"Surprise, you sons of bitches!" Marcus roared.
He spun on his heel and delivered a brutal Sparta kick to the splintered door, blowing it wide open.
Tony and Luca were caught completely off guard by the ferocious counterattack. Tony instinctively raised his MP5, but Marcus was already bringing the MAC-11 back onto the target.
A three-round burst ripped through the hallway in a tight fan.
The first bullet shattered Tony's shoulder. The second round grazed his cheek, carving a deep trench right down to the bone. The third bullet punched directly through his right eye socket.
Tony's remaining eye widened in brief, utter disbelief before his body folded like a cheap suit.
Further down the hall, Riccardo reacted with terrifying speed.
"Damn it, we're walking into an ambush!" Riccardo bellowed.
He dove hard behind the concrete lip of the corridor stairwell, his suppressed AK-47 spitting a relentless stream of fire. Heavy 7.62mm rounds chewed through the drywall exactly where Marcus had been standing seconds prior, filling the air with a blinding cloud of pulverized plaster and wood chips.
Suddenly, the rear kitchen door was kicked off its hinges.
Salvatore stormed in, firing both of his Beretta pistols wildly through the threshold at John.
John pivoted smoothly. His return fire grazed the side of Salvatore's head, entirely severing his left earlobe. Salvatore screamed in agony as hot blood and torn cartilage splattered across his vision.
"Fuck!" Salvatore hissed, stumbling backward into the kitchen to find cover.
Without warning, Anthony's bedroom door swung open.
His Walther P99 barked twice in the confined space. The first shot took Salvatore squarely in the thigh, shattering his femur. The second round punched clean through his right bicep, forcing him to drop one of the Berettas.
Before the hitman could even hit the floor, John delivered the execution shot. The 9mm bullet entered flawlessly just below Salvatore's jawline, severed his brainstem, and blew out the top of his skull.
Outside, Riccardo heard the overlapping gunshots echoing from deep inside the apartment. He realized with a sinking dread that the target was not alone.
He never imagined that he would be walking into a meat grinder manned by two legendary assassins.
"Vito, give me suppressing fire on the shooters!" Riccardo screamed into his earpiece.
He hoisted his AK-47 and dumped the rest of his magazine blindly through the front windows. Heavy caliber rounds shredded the living room furniture, completely annihilating the decorative lamps and sending a lethal hail of shattered glass raining across the hardwood floor.
Marcus flattened himself against the floorboards as bullets snapped inches above his head.
"This Italian bastard brought a lot of hardware!" Marcus shouted over the deafening roar of gunfire, waiting for the distinct click of an empty AK magazine.
Anthony remained dead silent in the hallway.
His passive system had already mapped the entire battlefield. The simulated telemetry of Compensatory Perception had transformed the apartment and the surrounding block into his absolute domain. Every micro-vibration, footstep, and shift in the wind within a two-hundred-meter radius fed directly into his cerebral cortex.
He instantly detected the subtle metallic shift of a heavy sniper barrel resting against tree bark roughly one hundred and eighty meters to the south.
"Marcus, sniper!" Anthony barked.
Hearing the tactical callout, John threw his entire body sideways in a desperate lunging roll.
A fraction of a second later, a massive .338 Lapua Magnum round detonated the remaining window glass. The bullet violently grazed John's shoulder pad, tearing through his tailored suit jacket before punching a terrifying, fist-sized crater into the reinforced concrete pillar behind him.
"Damn, John, that bastard almost took your head off!" Marcus yelled, spitting drywall dust from his lips.
John pressed his back tight against the opposite side of the pillar. "They still have two men left. We don't have the range to return fire from here."
John cast a sideways, deadpan look at his mentor. "Where's your rifle, Master Sniper?"
Marcus glanced down at the compact MAC-11 in his hands, offered a helpless shrug, and stayed perfectly quiet.
It was a .380 ACP submachine gun, designed to fire Browning Short cartridges. It was an exclusive close-quarters defense weapon with an effective, accurate range of barely fifty meters. Both John and Anthony were holding standard handguns.
Against a military-grade sniper rifle and an assault rifle, they were completely pinned down.
"They might have frag grenades," John warned, his breathing entirely steady. "We need to push them out of cover."
"The sniper is dead south," Anthony analyzed, his back flat against the hallway wall. "Exactly one hundred and eighty meters out, positioned in the middle layer of the tree canopy."
"The assault rifle is out," John noted. "He'll finish reloading in two seconds."
The deafening roar of the AK-47 had stopped abruptly.
John didn't waste the half-second window. He flowed along the perforated wall like a ghost, keeping the muzzle of his P30L trained firmly on the shattered doorway. The moonlight poured through the bullet holes in the apartment walls, casting eerie, silver beams of light across the dust-filled room.
Click.
Riccardo flawlessly slammed a fresh magazine into his AK-47, but just as his hand reached over to rack the charging handle, the trap was sprung.
"Now!" John commanded.
Marcus vaulted up from the floor and delivered a devastating front kick to the solid oak dining table. The massive slab of heavy wood flipped upward, crashing violently into the ruined doorway to form an instant barricade.
Riccardo panicked and pulled the trigger, burying half his magazine into the thick oak without penetrating the other side.
Under the cover of Marcus's distraction, John had already slipped out the side window, vanishing completely into the pitch-black night.
One hundred and eighty meters away, Vito's eye was glued to the illuminated reticle of his sniper scope.
He rested high in the branches of an old oak tree, his breathing slow and methodical. His finger hovered over the trigger, patiently waiting for the next target to expose themselves in the ruined apartment.
"Stronzo," Vito cursed under his breath.
He adjusted his magnification dial, focusing squarely on the living room. Through the scope, he could clearly see the barrel of Marcus's MAC-11 poking defiantly over the edge of the overturned dining table.
Vito's lips curled into a cruel smirk.
It was almost too easy.
He slowly squeezed the trigger.
Bang!
John Wick had already flanked hard around the rear perimeter of the cabin.
He dropped to one knee in the wet grass, drawing the custom Glock 34 that Anthony had gifted him from his tactical waistband.
John squinted into the suffocating darkness, rapidly calculating the math in his head.
A hundred and eighty meters pushed the absolute physical limits of a 9mm pistol.
Wind speed was a level two cross-breeze. Factoring in the high humidity.
He couldn't even see the sniper's muzzle or silhouette through the dense foliage. All he had was Anthony's coordinates. One hundred and eighty meters, middle layer of the canopy.
John took a deep, centering breath and locked his arms out straight in a flawless Weaver stance.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three rounds cracked through the night in a rapid, stepped-elevation sequence.
The first bullet sliced through the empty night air, fired purely to gauge the atmospheric drop.
The second round shattered a thick, leafy branch directly above Vito's head.
The third round...
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