Chapter 18 - Eleanor's Arrival
We broke from the cover of the blast barriers using the low hum of the idling turbofans to mask the sound of our boots hitting the standing water. General Hayes and one aide moved along the perimeter fence to cut off the access lane to the cockpit ladder, while Captain Miller and I moved directly through the shadow of the hangar's main support pillars.
The storm reached a crescendo, the wind screaming off the flat concrete of the runway, driving sheets of water horizontally across the tarmac.
A contractor operative turned from the rear bumper of the Suburban, his hand reaching for the suppressed carbine slung across his chest, but he never completed the motion. Miller stepped out from behind the pillar, the crack of her rifle muffled by the roar of the engines. The operative crumpled into the puddles without a cry.
"Security breach!" someone shouted from the ramp.
Chaos erupted in an instant. Red tracer fire sliced through the darkness, chewing chunks of concrete from the hangar floor. Vance dropped behind the armored door of the lead Suburban, while his private detail scrambled to form a defensive perimeter around the cargo ramp.
I didn't take cover behind the pillar. I stepped into the light of the tarmac floods, my dress uniform soaked through, my Silver Star gleaming wetly against the dark fabric of my chest, my weapon leveled at the center of the ramp.
"Hold your fire!" General Hayes's voice boomed over the base auxiliary public address horn, which he had hotwired from the hangar control box. "This is General Thomas Hayes, Commanding Officer! Disarm and drop your weapons! You are firing on active-duty United States military personnel!"
The gunfire hesitated. The contractor operators were mercenaries, but they were American mercenaries; shooting an unidentified intruder in the dark was one thing, but engaging a three-star general on an open tarmac under floodlights carried the immediate penalty of military execution.
In that brief, frozen pocket of silence, Eleanor Carter stepped out from behind the armored glass of the sedan.
May you like
She looked at the soldiers ringing the tarmac, then her gaze drifted across the concrete until it landed directly on me. For a moment, a single, fleeting second, I saw a flicker of disbelief in her eyes—the shock of a woman who had spent thirty years believing she was the author of reality, suddenly discovering that the ink was running in the rain.
"Marcus," she called out, her voice cutting through the damp chill, perfectly pitched, carrying the same icy, condescending cadence she had used at breakfast tables, at family funerals, and in the ballroom two hours ago. "Put the gun down, you foolish boy. You have no idea what you are interfering with."
