Crack! Crack!
The two sentries were hit and pitched forward, falling from the ten-meter-high watchtowers.
Henry then began shooting out the gas lamps, starting with the two closest to him.
The muffled reports of his rifle echoed up the mountain, and the manor beyond erupted in a chorus of panicked shouts.
In about three seconds, the five nearest lamps were extinguished, plunging his position into total darkness.
"The devil is back!"
"Robert and Lampard are down!"
"Get on the machine gun, now!"
"My God, I can't see a thing!"
"What do we do? He's going to shoot out all the lights!"
Their frantic cries drifted down on the wind.
Henry aimed with a steady hand. Ten seconds later, all eighteen gas lamps were dark.
The shooting stopped. The final 400-meter approach to the manor was now a pitch-black abyss, a hunting ground for ghosts. To the eight remaining sentries, it felt as if the darkness was filled with a thousand monsters, ready to charge out and devour them.
Henry slipped back behind the corner and quietly reloaded. It was only 5 AM; the sky was still dark. He had time.
Dak-dak-dak-dak-dak!
The frantic roar of a Gatling gun shattered the silence, followed by a deranged scream. "Come on out, you bastard!"
The second machine gun joined in, its crew firing blindly into the night.
A minute later, the firing stopped, replaced by the faint sound of a commander's angry shouts.
Henry remained still.
A few moments later, a dozen new gas lamps were lit inside the manor grounds. Four of them were quickly moved to the main gate, hung behind the iron bars for protection. They cast a weak, ten-meter pool of light.
Light has always been mankind's weapon against the dark. The faint glow was enough to calm the sentries' frayed nerves. The two remaining German Shepherds, however, continued to bark furiously at the darkness beyond the gate.
Commander Sam's heart was a lump of ice, but he quickly ordered the remaining sixteen guards into defensive positions behind the various planters and walls of the manor's garden, ready to ambush any enemy who breached the gate.
Sean McKinley was already dressed, sitting on the sofa in the main hall. The devil hadn't even given him half a day's respite. He wished he had evacuated the night before, but he had been afraid of an ambush on the road. Now, his only hope was that the Gatling guns could hold them off.
Please, God, Sean prayed quietly, trying to quell the tremor in his hands. Let the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us… But he knew, with a sickening certainty, that if the enemy had returned, it was because they already had a way to deal with his machine guns.
Ten minutes passed. A faint, milky-white line appeared on the eastern horizon.
The sky was filled with a dim, hazy light. An ordinary man would still be blind, but for Henry, it was enough to make out the silhouettes of objects more than a dozen meters away.
He stepped out from behind the corner, hugging the rock face to his left, and began to run, his cloth shoes making no sound.
The two German Shepherds at the gate exploded into a fresh frenzy of barking. The sentries tensed, but they could see nothing in the gloom.
After a few seconds, the dogs suddenly ran to the right side of the gate, barking at the cliff face. The sentries all turned their attention in that direction. One of the machine gun crews, panicking, opened fire, raking the area a hundred meters out from the right side of the road.
By now, Henry had already covered a hundred meters on the left.
Seeing the angle of the machine gun's fire, he knew he was out of its cone of destruction. He continued to run at a steady pace.
After another dozen seconds, he felt he was nearing the edge of the bullet-swept zone and veered to his right, sprinting diagonally toward the gate. He was now just over a hundred meters away.
The two dogs, sensing his new position, ran back to the center of the gate, barking wildly. But the massive Gatling gun couldn't be traversed that quickly. The other crew opened fire as well, spraying the center of the road fifty or sixty meters out, trying to block any direct approach.
Henry ignored them and charged. He could cover ten meters in a second. Even if he ran into the hail of bullets, he would be through it in two seconds at most. He could take six or seven hits. He could afford it.
He burst through the storm of lead and reached the twenty-meter mark. He tossed a 5-pound TNT charge toward the first watchtower. It arced through the air and landed squarely on the roof.
He threw a second charge toward the other tower.
Then, two revolvers appeared in his hands. Bang! Bang! The two German Shepherds yelped and fell silent.
Henry immediately turned and ran. He had only gone a few meters when the first charge detonated.
BOOM!
The top of the watchtower disintegrated in a storm of fire, shrapnel, and gore. The Gatling gun was blasted into pieces.
The shockwave hit Henry from thirty meters away, but it was harmless.
He kept running. A few meters later, the second tower was likewise annihilated.
He stopped, turned, and ran back to within ten meters of the gate. He took out a 20-pound charge, lit the fuse, and hurled it at the iron gate. Then he turned and sprinted away.
He counted silently to four, putting about fifty meters between himself and the gate. He summoned the granite block from his storage and ducked behind it.
An instant later, a massive explosion tore the night apart. The shockwave slammed into the granite block, sending a shower of debris whistling over Henry's head.
In his past life, Henry had used C4, TNT, and RDX. He knew their power. A 20-pound charge of TNT had a theoretical kill radius of twenty to thirty meters. But in the real world, the secondary effects—shrapnel, collapsing structures, flying debris—extended that radius by at least double.
At fifty meters, behind a solid granite shield, he was perfectly safe.