Chapter 17 - The Face of the Serpent
Raymond Vance didn't drop the gun; instead, a sickening, arrogant sneer slowly spread across his rain-slicked face.
"You think you’ve won, Claire?" Raymond laughed, his voice laced with the desperate bravado of a trapped predator.
"You’re just a grunt who knows how to pull a trigger," Raymond mocked, backing slowly toward the edge of the hangar wall.
"You have no idea how deep this network goes," he shouted over the howling wind.
"I know it ends with you," Claire answered calmly, advancing one steady step at a time.
"Do you really think my father didn't know?" Raymond sneered, his eyes glittering with manic triumph.
Claire halted ten paces away, the rain running cold down her neck, Marcus flanking silent as a shadow to Raymond's blind spot.
"What did you say?" Claire asked, her voice dangerously quiet.
"General Vance gave you that drive because he knew you'd come here and clean up his mess!" Raymond laughed bitterly.
"He created The Falcon Consortium, Claire! Not me! Not your mother!" Raymond screamed into the storm.
"My father was the architect who authorized the coordinates for Sangin Pass!" Raymond yelled.
Evelyn sat on the wet metal stairs, sobbing violently, covering her ears against the thunder.
"Shut up, Raymond! Just take the briefcase and run!" Evelyn screamed in hysterical panic.
"There is nowhere to run, Mother," Claire said, her eyes never leaving Raymond's gun hand.
"He’s lying to save his neck," Marcus growled from the darkness, his rifle laser painting a bright red dot directly on Raymond's chest.
"Am I?" Raymond countered, tapping the carbon-fiber briefcase chained to his wrist with his pistol barrel.
"Inside this case are thirty years of offshore account ledgers, Claire," Raymond spat, rain pouring over his slicked-back hair.
"Every single bribe to Congress. Every classified arms shipment diverted to the Middle East," Raymond continued.
"And right at the top of every authorization sheet from 2010 to 2018 is the digital signature of Four-Star General Thomas Vance."
Claire felt a cold fist squeeze around her heart, the betrayal cutting deeper than any insurgent shrapnel ever had.
General Vance hadn't sent them here as an act of redemption.
He had sent them here as an erasure team—to eliminate the witnesses before the Department of Justice could tie the treason back to his office.
"He used us," Claire whispered, the realization tasting like ashes in her mouth.
"He used all of us!" Raymond shouted, suddenly pivoting and raising his weapon directly at Claire's forehead.
"And now none of you are leaving this swamp alive!"
A deafening crack split the night air, but it didn't come from Raymond's pistol.
Raymond gasped, his eyes bulging wide as a heavy round struck his right shoulder, shattering the bone and sending his gun flying into the mud.
Miller’s voice crackled calmly over the tactical comms: "Target neutralized. Right arm disabled. Threat suppressed."
Raymond collapsed onto his knees in the marsh grass, screaming in agony as blood seeped through his soaked tailored suit.
Claire walked over, kicking the discarded weapon far into the darkness of the marsh.
She pulled out her combat knife and cleanly severed the chain connecting the briefcase to Raymond’s wrist.
"It’s over, Raymond," Claire said, picking up the heavy case.
"You’re a dead woman, Claire," Raymond groaned, clutching his shattered shoulder in the mud. "My father will never let you leave Maryland."
Suddenly, the night sky above the marsh erupted into blinding white light.
May you like
The deafening thump-thump-thump of twin military rotor blades beat the rain into a hurricane-force mist around them.
Two unmarked Black Hawk helicopters descended over the runway, their mounted spotlights locking directly onto the hangar floor.
