Chapter 72 - Blood on the Parapet
"Maya! Chloe! Acknowledge!" I shouted into the encrypted comm-link resting against my collarbone.
Static hissed across the channel, punctuated by the metallic groan of bending I-beams. Then Maya’s crisp, disciplined voice broke through: "We hear them above us, Mother. Chloe has the emergency respiratory packs ready. I’ve triggered the magnetic deadbolts on the vault door. But the ceiling sensors indicate structural stress at seventy-two percent. If they detonate shaped thermite, the ceiling will collapse within ninety seconds."
"Hold your position," I ordered, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. "I am coming to clear that roof."
"Katherine, wait," Alexander warned, reloading his rifle behind the shattered remnants of an Italian marble pillar. "The parapet is an open kill zone. They have high-ground snipers stationed on the communications mast."
"Then we take the mast first," Liam said coldly.
Before Alexander could stop him, the boy reached into the locker beneath the terminal and pulled out a drone controller linked to Vanguard’s external defense grid. His fingers flicked two toggles. On the external camera feeds, four compact, carbon-fiber quadcopters shot out from the penthouse’s concealed exterior maintenance bays into the howling wind of the storm.
Each drone was armed with high-intensity magnesium flash payloads and directional acoustic emitters originally designed for maritime counter-piracy.
"Leo, blind their thermal optics," Liam commanded with the authority of a seasoned field commander. "Give me three seconds of dead air on their squad network."
"Network hijacked," Leo answered instantly. "Jamming their tactical link now!"
On the external feed, we saw the rooftop contractors suddenly stagger. Liam’s drones descended out of the pitch-black rain like vengeful hornets, detonating blinding magnesium flares directly in the faces of the two snipers perched on the antenna gantry. Even through the soundproof hurricane glass, the crack of Liam’s precision payload was deafening. The sniper on the left lost his footing on the rain-slicked catwalk, pitching backward into the dark void eighty stories above Manhattan.
"Move!" Alexander roared, taking the lead.
We surged up the spiral service stairs, Alexander in front, me covering his blind flank, and Liam bringing up the rear with clinical precision. We burst through the warped, blast-torn emergency door onto the windswept roof.
The rain slammed into us horizontally, freezing and relentless. The twin rotors of the heavy transport helicopter were idling fifty yards away, kicking up a cyclone of spray and aviation fuel exhaust.
Two contractors near the vault’s structural shaft turned toward us, their weapons coming up. Alexander fired on the move, dropping the first man with a clean shot through the neck. The second contractor lunged forward, tackling Alexander across the slick composite decking. Both men crashed into the maintenance rail, Alexander’s rifle clattering into the darkness below.
I leveled my weapon at the contractor pinning Alexander, but another figure stepped out from the shadow of the idling helicopter.
It was Tristan Vance.
He wore a tailored charcoal overcoat over a Kevlar vest, his eyes burning with an unhinged, aristocratic arrogance. In his right hand, he held a heavy chrome-plated semi-automatic; in his left, a remote detonator.
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"Drop the gun, Katherine!" Tristan screamed over the roar of the turbine engines. "Drop it, or I trigger the thermite right now! Your precious little girls will be crushed under two hundred tons of concrete before you can pull that trigger!"
Behind him, through the rain-streaked cabin window of the helicopter, sat Eleanor Vance. Her face was twisted into a grotesque mask of triumphant hatred, watching her son prepare to slaughter my family.
