15 Miles: The H15 Miles: The Heist
By Rapwizzy Debaron
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Episode 3: The Enemy Within
The battlefield was a city block soaked in flame and fear.
Bullets flew like metal bees, ricocheting off armored trucks and cracking windows. Helicopters thundered overhead, casting long shadows that danced across the crumbling pavement. D7 fought like predators cornered—calculated, ruthless, and merciless.
Julian crouched behind the ruined shell of a burning sedan, his rifle hot against his shoulder. Smoke stung his eyes as he scanned the chaos. Across the street, Max slid behind a trash bin, hacking the comms of the FBI's forward unit. Sparks flew from his portable jammer as agents' radios screamed with static.
"We've got less than three minutes before backup arrives from the west side," Max shouted into Julian's earpiece. "I can jam their choppers for sixty seconds, tops!"
Julian responded without hesitation. "Make it count."
He stood, took two rapid shots—one clipped a sniper's scope, the other shattered a drone mid-air. "Eve, left flank!"
From the rooftop, Eve's cold voice responded, "Already there."
Her silencer whispered death across the city skyline.
But even as D7 held their own, the trap was tightening. The SUVs that blocked their path had deployed fully armed tactical squads—elite teams that didn't come to arrest. They came to kill.
Inside one of the armored trucks, Reese—D7's munitions specialist—was laying out a high-density explosive designed to collapse a parking structure nearby. "This'll buy us an exit, but we'll have to go underground. It's gonna be close."
Julian nodded. "Do it."
Boom.
The explosion rocked the street, sending debris into the air like a volcano of concrete and steel. The parking garage collapsed in a rolling avalanche of dust and metal, cutting off the enemy's reinforcements and giving D7 their moment.
"Go, go, go!" Julian barked.
The team moved in tight formation, sprinting through the choking smoke toward an old subway tunnel system mapped out months in advance by Carter.
But Carter wasn't here.
His absence throbbed in Julian's chest like a bruise. He couldn't shake the feeling that something was off—too many things had gone wrong too quickly.
"Eve," Julian murmured through comms, "how long have you been feeling it? The leak?"
Eve answered coolly. "Since Vienna. The mission felt too exposed. We walked into a net and barely made it out."
Julian cursed under his breath. "I should've listened."
They ducked into the shadows of the subway tunnels, where darkness swallowed them whole. Sweat clung to their skin, weapons tight in their hands.
But they weren't alone.
A faint beep echoed from Reese's utility belt.
Everyone froze.
"EMP mine," Max said, voice urgent. "Someone planted it on us. Someone who wants our tech fried."
Reese yanked it off, tossing it down the tunnel just as it went off in a muted blue pulse. Their lights flickered. Comms dropped to static. For a full second, the team stood in silence, blind and isolated.
Then, footsteps.
Julian raised his hand, signaling silence. His eyes adjusted fast.
A figure was walking toward them from the other end of the tunnel.
Unarmed. Hooded.
Julian stepped forward, weapon raised. "Identify yourself."
The figure stopped—then pulled back the hood.
It was Carter.
Disheveled. Bloody. Alive.
"I made it out," he rasped. "Barely. They caught me, Julian. I escaped… but not before they got to our systems."
The team stared at him.
Max was the first to speak. "They got to you? You could've led them straight here."
Carter looked torn between guilt and exhaustion. "I didn't have a choice. They wanted access to the vault codes. I didn't give them anything. I swear."
Julian narrowed his eyes. "We can't trust that. Not yet."
He turned to Eve.
"Watch him. If he makes a wrong move…"
Eve nodded, expression unreadable.
Julian walked ahead, deeper into the tunnel. The air grew colder, and the darkness denser. But it wasn't the shadows he feared. It was the silence between his team.
Something had changed.
The unity of D7—built on loyalty, precision, and purpose—was cracking. The heist was no longer just a mission. It had become a battlefield of survival and secrets.
And the worst was yet to come.
Because fifteen miles away, in a bunker buried deep beneath the Pentagon, a new task force had been activated.
Not just to stop D7.
But to erase them.
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> To be con
tinued…
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