American Sniper: The Last Round – Episode 33
The automated guns swept toward the basement windows as Carl Oliver listened to his bullet travel through the furnace duct. Metal struck concrete once, then again. The final impact sounded too soft to defeat an armored control unit. Above them, the weapon motors reached firing position.
Lewis Valentine counted half a second longer than anyone else could bear. A sharp electrical pop came from the street, and the motors died. Carl’s round had entered beneath the van, ricocheted through the battery housing, and severed the power distributor without igniting the fuel cells.
Ruiz forced open the shutters while Alex restored emergency power. His agents surrounded the disabled van and found no operator inside. Mercer had attacked from a remote relay, leaving only a transmitter programmed to erase itself. Lewis insisted they abandon the safe house before a second trap arrived.
Rebecca came upstairs holding the old range trophy Alex had given her for protection. She tried to joke that Grandpa Lewis and Carl made an unfair team. The tremor in her voice exposed how much the locked basement had frightened her. Jane promised they were moving somewhere Mercer did not know.
Lewis suggested a rural veterans’ clinic once run by a medic from his unit. Carl rejected it immediately because Mercer would know every member of their old team. Jane chose a simpler refuge: the apartment above Benny Burton’s closed auto shop. No military file connected it to her, and Benny remained under court restrictions far from the city.
The abandoned rooms smelled of oil and stale smoke, but the locks were solid. Elena isolated their devices from every network Mercer might monitor. Since his rescue at Red Hollow, Lewis had not sat anywhere without a medic, guard, or explosive harness nearby. Freedom seemed to make him more restless rather than less.
Jane asked what Meridian had done to him. Lewis described repeated interrogations, false news reports, and years of being told his family had sold the range and left the country. Mara alternated threats with offers of release if he authenticated Meridian’s false orders. He survived by giving them fragments that appeared useful but never completed the master index.
Carl apologized for believing the death report. Lewis stopped him before guilt could become another prison. “You believed the evidence your commander manufactured,” he said. “If you want to blame someone, blame the man who signed it.” The distinction did not free Carl, but it gave his anger a direction beyond himself.
Ruiz needed admissible proof against Mercer. Lewis’s testimony could begin an investigation, yet Mercer would call him a traumatized prisoner manipulated by fugitives. The master index could verify every operational code in the ledger, but Mara had carried it away from Red Hollow.
Elena found a weakness in the drive’s design. Its encryption required synchronization with a Meridian authorization server every twelve hours. Mara would need to connect before dawn or lose access. If Elena created a false server response, she could trace the drive’s location.
Building the trap required one active Meridian credential. Lewis remembered a numeric phrase Mercer used during interrogations, but entering it incorrectly would alert him. Rebecca noticed the numbers matched dates printed beneath photographs in Lewis’s hidden archive. They were not access codes; they were mission anniversaries.
Jane combined the dates with the five measurements from the range maintenance log. The server accepted the credential. A connection appeared on Elena’s isolated screen from St. Adrian Military Hospital, where Matthew Valentine remained under guard after surgery.
Mara had gone to Matthew. He knew Meridian’s financial shell companies and had already tried to trade Red Hollow for protection. If she silenced him, Jane would lose the only witness outside their group who could connect her uncle’s bank to Mercer’s operations.
Lewis wanted to accompany them, but standing still left him exhausted. Jane told him surviving captivity did not require proving his strength in a single night. She asked him to stay with Rebecca and give her the grandfather she had just recovered.
Carl, Jane, Ruiz, and Chris Redford approached the hospital through an underground parking structure. Elena guided them from the apartment, using the index signal to locate Mara on the surgical floor. Official agents guarded Matthew’s room, but Ruiz recognized none of them from the protective detail assigned after the gala.
Chris entered as Matthew’s former competition judge and demanded a medical update. While the guards argued, Jane and Carl used a staff stairwell. They found a nurse unconscious beside an empty medication cart. Mara had already passed the outer security line.
Inside the room, Matthew lay awake with an oxygen tube beneath his nose. Mara stood beside his bed holding a syringe. She promised him a painless death and a public funeral worthy of the Valentine name. Matthew saw Jane through the glass and began pulling at his monitor leads.
Carl entered first, drawing Mara’s attention while Jane moved toward the bed. Mara pressed the syringe against Matthew’s IV port and warned that the plunger required less time than Carl needed to cross the room. He stopped, but his gaze shifted toward the chrome cabinet behind her.
Jane threw a metal tray into the cabinet. Its reflection made Mara flinch toward the false movement, and Carl closed the distance. He trapped her wrist before she could inject the drug. Matthew tore the IV line free as Ruiz burst through the door with genuine hospital security.
Mara smiled despite the handcuffs. The index drive they traced was not in her pocket or bag. A nurse screamed from the corridor, and Elena’s voice broke across Jane’s earpiece: the drive had connected again from Benny’s apartment. Mercer was inside with Lewis and Rebecca.