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John moved quickly to keep distance between himself and his pursuers. He rounded the corner of a short corridor that led to the main hallway, which would take him to the other side of the mansion.

The moment he stepped into the main hallway, he saw a man in the wrong time period. A soldier, wearing what looked at first like a heavy suit of medieval armor, was holding an AK-47 and standing in the middle of the path. John then noticed the more modern look of the soldier's armored suit. It resembled a dark metallic version of a bomb disposal outfit. John saw letters stenciled across the front: Juggernaut Prototype.

The soldier in the Juggernaut suit was facing the front door when he noticed John. He pivoted his armored bulk to square up with the new threat down the hall.

John's M4 rifle was coming up to fire at the same time as the armored man's AK. It was then that another shocking realization flew through John's mind at lightning speed. What he had thought was an AK-47 was fitted with a larger barrel than the rifle normally had. The drum magazine that stuck out of the bottom, already intimidating on its own, was also thicker than usual. John was face-to-barrel with the Saiga-12, a semiautomatic shotgun built on the legendary AK 47 platform.

Even though the metallic monster had the rifle up and ready, John's reflexes were quicker. He brought the M4 to his hip and fired a long burst into the man blocking his path. The bullets sparked and bounced off the armor, inflicting no visible damage at all. The Saiga-12 roared and released a series of rapid-fire booms. John pivoted away and retreated around the corner, but not before a shotgun blast slammed into the front plate of his tactical vest, his rifle partially absorbing some of the impact.

He nearly fell before making it back around the corner. Sections of the back wall disintegrated as the burst tracked John, destroying a large part of the structure.

That confirmed another worry he had. Since it was built similarly to an AK-47, it was relatively straightforward for a trained gunsmith to convert the Saiga-12 to fully automatic, making it capable of firing 600 rounds of 12-gauge ammunition per minute.

John had the wind knocked out of him from the hit he had taken. At such a close range, the buckshot was still in a tight enough pattern for the tac vest to catch all of the pellets, but that only meant he had suffered the full force of a 12-gauge shotgun blast to his body.

He turned and staggered back the way he had come as three men moved toward him from the opposite end of that short corridor. John rushed toward them and fired his carbine, hoping an aggressive tactic would give him a psychological advantage, causing them to retreat.

The M4 fired only a single round, striking the lead man in the neck, then fell silent. John instinctively performed a lightning-fast reload, but the carbine failed to fire again. The shotgun blast that had hit his M4 must have damaged it.

The two remaining mercenaries fired back, one with a pistol and the other with an AK-47. John had no choice now but to head back in the direction of the buckshot-breathing dragon.

John recalled a small section of the hallway with an open doorway leading into another room that he had seen when first entering the main hall. It had been on his left when he faced the Juggernaut and halfway between the two of them.

He turned and sprinted, zigzagging to avoid the gunfire following him, and rounded the corner at full speed. The Saiga was already aimed at John as he entered the hall, but his speed made him difficult to track. John covered the last 5 feet to the entryway. The shotgun started its fearsome roar as he leaped through the opening.

He crashed through a small glass table and onto the floor. The shards cut into him, but the pain wasn't even a blip on his mental radar as he scrambled away from the gunfire punching through the wall.

John saw he was in a den furnished as an office. He crawled to the closest corner of the room as the two men reached the doorway and fired blindly into the den. The shotgun ripped holes through the wall, and a ricochet from the AK-47 struck his thigh. John sprayed his MP5 through the barrier, trying to get his opponents to take cover. He rolled behind the desk amid the rain of wood, lead, and glass. There was a lull in the shooting as the soldiers approached outside the room. John caught a small glimpse of the gunmen through missing sections of the drywall.

He dropped the empty magazine from the H&K and reloaded it with the partially full magazine he had replaced earlier. This one had fewer than ten rounds left. John took the frag grenade off his vest and pulled the pin, still holding the spoon tight to its side, keeping the explosive from arming itself. He emptied the MP5 at the opening, forcing the two men to step away from it. Once the submachine gun ran dry, John scrambled to the wall.

He held the grenade in his tightly clenched left fist and punched directly through the den wall, into the hallway. John dropped the grenade on the other side and pulled his arm back. More gunfire greeted him near where his fist had punched through, and he lunged back under the desk, pulling the big office chair in front for any bit of cover he could get. The man in the Juggernaut realized too late what was happening.

He yelled a warning through his armored helmet, "Grena—"

The explosion overpowered every other sound in the room. The blast shredded the wall between them. The blast wave shoved John and the desk back a couple of feet, and a bit of shrapnel punched into the side of his vest, penetrating the thinner protective material at that point. Another grazed John on the side of his head, causing him to black out for a moment.

He snapped awake and saw that smoke and dust had filled the room. His ears were ringing, and blood flowed down from his nose, soaking his mustache. He was disoriented, but he drove his heavily muscled frame forward, nearly on pure instinct, and smashed through the hole where the grenade had exploded.

John fell to the floor on the other side, next to the now-dead armored man. The two other men, also hurt from the grenade blast, started getting back to their feet. John scooped up the automatic Saiga-12 and fired at the soldiers as they brought their guns up. The 00-buckshot storm took them off their feet and sent them to meet their respective makers.

John pulled a fresh drum magazine from a belt of drums on the Juggernaut and reloaded the shotgun. He dropped the MP5 and M4 carbine to the floor and attached two more drum magazines to his tactical vest wherever he could. John limped down the long hallway, toward the other end of the mansion. Once there, he would fight his way outside and to the shed where Emily was hiding. He would get to her. He would protect her.