The Ascension

Jacob wasn’t exactly sure what woke him up, but he sat up and listened carefully for a few seconds. Soon, his sixth sense was screaming with alarm bells. It had been many years since his sixth sense had screamed at him like this, but it was clear. Several men, maybe three or four, were in the house and soon started up the stairs slowly and quietly. He grabbed Linh roughly, covered her mouth, pulled her off the bed, lifted her up, and scrambled to their walk-in closet. In desperation, he punched in the code to the vault on the back wall of the large closet and opened it, telling Linh to be quiet. He laid her down on the floor and grabbed his daggers, a .45 caliber pistol, and several magazines of ammunition before crawling out of the vault on his hands and knees. He closed the vault door just as he saw two men rush into the dark bedroom and fire their silenced submachine guns blindly into the bed that he and Linh had just vacated. They were followed almost immediately by two more men who began spraying the entire room with submachine gunfire. Moving swiftly to the entrance of the walk-in closet, Jacob, lying flat on his stomach with most of his body behind the wall of the closet, quickly emptied the magazine of his .45 caliber pistol at the four men. Before gauging the effectiveness of his shots, he reloaded as fast as he could and rolled his body to the side of the bed while the surviving Chinese gunmen turned their weapons in the direction of the still-darkened closet and continued firing their submachine guns on automatic, ripping the closet apart. In the still-dark bedroom, Jacob fired multiple rounds underneath the bed, emptying a magazine and hitting the ankles of the two surviving gunmen who dropped their submachine guns and fell to the floor. He reloaded quickly, rushed over to the four men, and fired into the still-writhing gunmen, killing them instantly. Calming himself, Jacob listened carefully and realized that more men were in the house, likely downstairs. He hurried back to the vault and opened it. Linh was frightened, but he told her as calmly as he could to go and wake up Jing Shan. They were to get into the safe room as quickly as possible, he said, and they were not to come out until he told her that it was safe. She knew Jacob well enough to understand the seriousness of his command and knew that for Jacob, he didn’t need help in these situations; he just needed one less thing to worry about, which was her being safe. He then turned to the silent alarm on the wall by the vault and pushed it. That would get the security team’s attention, assuming they were still alive. He hoped that his new security chief who had replaced Rufus, Tom Donaldson, would react well and get more people to the compound quickly. He dressed hurriedly and grabbed another .45 caliber pistol and an M16 rifle, wrapped a magazine belt around his waist, and filled it quickly with ammunition for the rifle and pistol. He pulled out his cellphone and tried to call Tom but got no answer, reiterating to him in a voice message to get out to the compound fast with as many men as possible. As he walked out of the vault, Linh was standing by the bed staring at the four dead men. As he walked by, she said, “Kill them all, Jacob. All of them.”