New Action Thriller: "Welcome to Sanguine Springs"
(Chapter 1 + Where to Read More)
The time has come to shift from alluding to my serial novel to actually launching the project. This morning I posted chapters one through three on Royal Road, a robustly active fiction website. Unlike most of the LitRPG and portal fantasies on the platform, this story is a high-octane action thriller set in a sleepy Adirondack Mountain town. The town itself is fictional, but only just—the heroes, villains, and folks in-between? They're as real as I can make them.
what follows is the synopsis, and first chapter.
When Allison Myles left her tech job to settle her father's estate in the Adirondack Mountains, she stepped into the crosshairs.
But when a corporate hit squad descends on the sleepy town, they discover Sanguine Springs is where the world's most dangerous people go to disappear—and they don't take kindly to being found.
Chapter One
Matthias stood in frigid darkness, rifle heavy against his hip. The composite buttstock exerted a familiar pressure as he swept the safety selector down, skipping full auto. Semi was all he needed.
His breath rose in steam, visible as smoke in the green world of night vision. Three men stood behind him, stacked so close he could feel the heat from their bodies against the chill night air. His element of Horus Overwatch's Alpha team. His men.
He glanced at the Lange & Söhne watch on his wrist. The crisp minute hand told him all he needed to know.
2:55 AM.
Go time.
Matthias raised his AK-pattern rifle to the doorknob and pulled the trigger. The rifle coughed three times. The controlled shots disintegrated the door's lock and latch.
Matthias's amplified headset muted against the eardrum-shattering report of the 7.62×39 rounds. The electronic ear protection switched back on milliseconds after the last shot. Despite the suppressor, the rap-rap-rap of gunfire echoed flatly off the trees.
To any neighbors, it would have sounded like a car's backfire. Except here, a hundred klicks from Helsinki, there weren't any neighbors.
The target building? A single-family dwelling. One small farmhouse, with a weathered grey wood barn close beside. The buildings stood alone, clustered shapes of civilization amid the towering forest of night. A moonless night. Doubly dark, as winter launched its first volley of snow on the Finnish landscape.
Matthias stepped off the line as two of his alphas moved in, a breaching ram between them. They battered the door like a truck collision. The door swung inward. Their earpro cut to silence, returning in time to capture the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood.
Lukas's men had breached the back door. The two prongs of the attack closed in. A pincer move.
A routine ambush, by the books. The sort each brother had performed dozens of times—even before joining Horus Overwatch.
Officially, the company didn't exist. A battlefield rumor, the muttering of pipe hitters who'd seen too many high-value targets slip through their fingers. A black books private military company with substantial resources and few restrictions. An operator's dream.
A target's nightmare.
Matthias clicked the selector on his rifle to full auto. Best for engaging targets. He gave a hand signal to his men, then advanced.
The opened door revealed a medium-sized room, with a straight stairwell ascending the left-hand wall. He sliced the pie with the AK, covering a wide arc of the room as he entered. He hooked right, trusting his men to each cover their area of responsibility.
Clear.
Matthias slid along the front wall, rotating and raising his rifle to cover the second-floor landing. His men poured into the domicile like oil into a puddle. To his right, the doorless archway of the farmhouse's kitchen echoed with heavy boots on ancient floorboards. Matthias groaned silently.
Lukas. His lack of stealth was notorious. Something to bring up in the after-action report. Not that it would do any good. Aside from his brother's heavy feet, the house was silent—an oddity, given their percussive entrance.
Matthias waited, the pause in operation giving him a chance to take in his surroundings. Through the strange green light of his night vision goggles, he studied a house trapped in time. The walls sported wood paneling from the 1980s, the ceiling festooned with bulbous glass pendant lights. A distressed corduroy couch slouched, hemmed in on either side by a pair of tall pinewood bookshelves, their tiers bending perilously under their weighty load of books. He couldn't read the titles.
He didn't need to, didn't want to know what sort of books a zealot would read.
Not just a zealot. A terrorist.
The fireteam had arrived in Finland 18 hours earlier, the target package still hot from the printer. Their target?
Leevi Jokinen, right-wing nationalist. The fifty-eight-year-old first drew the attention of Horus Overwatch's secretive employer through vitriolic posts online. A deeper search on the college dropout revealed local infractions for building structures without a permit and illegal taking of game animals out of season. As always, the mission dossier brimmed with intel. Photos, timelines, and movement patterns.
The days of men disregarding the rule of law were coming to an end. And the Horus Overwatch was here to make it happen.
Which is why Matthias joined up.
Three years in, the unit's employer remained anonymous. Neither brother knew who sent the checks.
The UN? America? Israel? The Vatican?
Unknown.
But it paid well—well enough to keep most of the contractors from asking where their target packages originated.
The footsteps drew nearer. Lukas emerged from the shadows, leading his men through the kitchen. Small house—Matthias could see the dining table, with its five chairs, and a single high-topped seat in the corner, with its own tray.
Something seemed off. Matthias signaled for a stop. The six other pairs of feet froze to the floor, waiting for his next order.
That was when the screaming started. A feminine voice in terror on the second floor.
Matthias's blood ran cold. The woman sounded like his Oma, bolt upright in her bed, her sheets damp with sweat. Nightmares of the old days. Gestapo. Stasi. "Their boots," she would moan, until peaceful oblivion reclaimed her. As a boy, he'd shared a room with Oma. She didn't always get terrors—but when she did, it was always 3 AM.
The screams stopped. Replaced by a muffled voice. Then, the metallic crunch of bedsprings, followed by the creak of floorboards. Heavy tread, crossing the floor, followed by a scrape. A rifle, its butt dragging across the ancient wood.
A hostile.
The seven fireteam members spread out, covering angles, their muzzles pointed toward the landing. Seven infrared lasers danced on the screens of seven pairs of Night Observation Devices. The illuminated tubes dimmed as the landing filled with light. Light that poured through a crack beneath the second-story hallway door.
The hostile approached.
There were steps, soft but audible to the enhancement of their electronic headsets. A voice called out.
Finnish.
Matthias knew the language. He didn't reply.
No one did.
The hostile called out again, voice cracking before fading to join the answering silence. Finally, the sound of a hand on an ancient doorknob, its mechanical bits rattling.
Fingers went to triggers and waited. The lasers danced on the green displays like fairies on midsummer's eve. The door opened inward, and a man stepped onto the landing.
Matthias saw the hostile as he emerged. A middle-aged man, shirtless, his potbelly sticking out like a thumb over long underwear. Leevi Jokinen, the night's primary target. His grey, shoulder-length hair and dandelion puff goatee glowed like emerald snow in his night-vision goggles.
The man carried a long-barreled antique, left hand wrapped around the muzzle like an oar. "Jons?" he asked, voice trembling almost as much as his right hand as it groped for the light switch on the landing's wall.
He never made it.
Seven AKs burped fire into the night, puncturing the silence. The man sank with a gurgle, his body collapsing into a corner as the rifle slid from a lifeless hand. The weapon bumped down the stairs, landing butt-first with enough force to engage the trigger. Matthias's earpro switched to silence as a 7.62×54 rifle round blew a hole between riser and tread of the fourth stair.
"Wunderbar," Lukas said. Matthias made a silencing gesture to his brother.
"He resisted—the report will look good," Lukas continued. Matthias gesticulated again for silence, following it up with a universal signal of disapproval. Lukas's shoulders slumped before he bowed, waving Matthias on.
Yes, Matthias thought, I will have to focus on his behavior during our debrief.
While his team covered the landing, he bent, retrieving the old rifle. A Mosin-Nagant, a mass-produced relic from before the First World War. He worked the bolt, shucking shells until the gun ran dry, then leaned it upright beside the door.
Matthias advanced up the stairs. His men followed. They couldn't know the frigid weight that had settled in their commander's stomach. Despite his caution, the pine board stairs creaked like an ice-locked ship with his every step.
Near the top he slowed, crouching to examine the hostile. The man lay face down, forehead against the topmost stair, in a posture of penance. A medieval scene, the penitent washed in a pool of blood.
A meter-long hall lay beyond the dead man. Two doors, one on the left and one at the end. Both shut. According to the target package, the left-hand door led to the upper bathroom. Their target's bedroom lay directly ahead.
"Leevi?" a woman called from the closed room. She said the name over and over, as if repetition could raise the dead.
Lukas clomped up the stairs as the unseen woman descended into hysterics. Matthias felt the landing shimmy with his brother's approach—saw the mishmash of crayon marks and fingerprints knee-high on the wall.
"Hold," he ordered. The target package had only mentioned the man. No one else. Something was off. Inside the bedroom, the woman sobbed a broken lullaby. Matthias's stomach dipped.
Alone, he approached the door and laid a black-gloved hand on the latch. No point man, no cover, no excuse. His training screamed that this was all wrong—but he had to know why.
Rifle at the ready, Matthias raised the latch and pushed the door open. It swung smoothly. Well-oiled, well-maintained. It bumped against the wall, giving him direct sight of a scarred wardrobe, hard up against a double bed. The bed lay open. Empty, its covers sloppily piled at the footboard. A pair of men's glasses and a thick hardback book all but filled the accompanying nightstand.
Matthias lowered his rifle. He stepped into the room, then turned back, left hand raised in a gesture of halt for his team.
The crack of metal on bone filled the room. Blinding pain exploded in Matthias's left knee. He cried out, the AKM in his right hand rising in reflex. His finger tightened in pain, jerking the trigger. The rifle barked, a burst of fire. The muzzle rose with the recoil.
Matthias released the trigger. He stared into the wrinkled face of an old woman. Her wild spray of white hair glowed like a radioactive dandelion through his NODs.
A steel pry bar fell to the floor, landing with the spent brass with a tinkling sound. The old woman's wide eyes rolled backward. She slumped to the floor, her body macerated by rifle rounds.
"Mummo!" A voice hollered. A child's voice.
Mummo? Like Oma…
Matthias collapsed against the door, sliding to the floorboards. From his cockeyed vantage point he could see, clustered in the corner, a little girl with ghost-wide eyes, holding a screaming baby in her arms. Between him and the children lay the frail body of their grandmother. Her blood spread across the floor to pool at Matthias's feet.
Alpha team surged into the room. Three of the contractors closed on the remaining children. Uncaring heels crunched the dead woman's knuckles underfoot. Matthias's head swam. He glanced around the room, trying to find his bearing. He noticed a Moomin clock on the wall, above the children. The wide-eyed cartoon character seemed to stare into his soul as the hands clicked onward to a new hour.
Three o'clock.
Lukas called out, his voice distant. The sound faded away until all Matthias could hear was his own labored breathing. His head swam as he surrendered to the pain. As his eyes closed, the last thing he saw was the grandmother's blood soaking into the leather of his boots.
Where is Allison in all this? Our "cover girl" shows up in Chapter Two, fighting a battle of her own. Each chapter will follow one of the protagonists or villains. To read Chapter Two, click here.
There are three chapters at the moment, with a new one scheduled for every Tuesday til the end, Lord willing. During the writing process, the story will remain free. If you know anyone who likes Jack Carr, Lee Child, Or Tom Clancy, point them my my way. I’d love to share my work with hungry fans.
Welcome To Sanguine Springs-on Royal Road.
Thanks for reading thus far, amigos. Godspeed for now.