Chapter 23 - The Catwalk Crossfire
The first shot was not an explosion, but the distinct, whip-cracking snap of a suppressed .300 Winchester Magnum.
A shower of sparks exploded off the steel pillar six inches above Vance’s head. He screamed—a high, undignified shriek that sounded more like an animal caught in a combine than an heir to a defense dynasty. He threw himself flat into the mud, tucking his head under the bumper of the SUV, his polished oxfords kicking uselessly against the pavement.
"Miller! Flank left!" I roared, snapping my carbine up and driving three rounds directly into the darkness of the hangar’s upper gantry. The muzzle flashes strobe-lit the falling sheets of rain, the brass ejecting in glowing arcs into the dark.
From the shadow of a fuel bowser thirty yards out, Sergeant Miller answered with a sustained burst from his MK46 machine gun. The rhythmic *thump-thump-thump* of 5.56mm rounds hammered the catwalk railing, tearing through sheet metal and sending a sniper tumbling over the rusted edge. The body fell forty feet, crashing with a wet, brutal thud onto the roof of a parked utility van before sliding into the dark.
"Incoming! North perimeter!" Hayes barked, unholstering his service pistol and directing fire toward the perimeter fence.
Two unmarked matte-black tactical utility vehicles—Ghost Hawks with muffled turbine blades—swept in over the tree line, running entirely without navigation lights. They hovered ten feet off the deck, their downwash churning the rain into a blinding hurricane of white spray that blinded everyone on the tarmac. Heavy ropes dropped from the open side doors, and black-clad figures in full ballistic armor began sliding down to the tarmac with terrifying speed.
Eleanor fell to her knees. The fur coat she had worn with such imperious vanity was now a heavy, sodden rag dragging her down into the puddle. "Make them stop! Marcus, you swore an oath! You swore to protect this country!"
"I swore to protect the Republic against all enemies, foreign and domestic," I shouted over the deafening scream of the turbine downwash. I moved forward, grabbing the collar of her drenched coat with one gloved hand and dragging her behind the reinforced engine block of the Suburban. "And right now, Mother, you're the domestic."
"I did it for your brother!" she sobbed, rain plastering gray strands of hair across her face, stripping away the cosmetic veneer of the Washington elite to expose the withered, terrified woman underneath. "The contracts... the bank accounts in Zurich... Vance was meant for the Senate! He was meant to lead! He didn't have your brutality, Marcus! He couldn't survive in the mud!"
"So you buried me in it instead," I said, shoving her hard against the tire. "Stay down, or the next bullet finishes what Al-Qaim started."
A volley of armor-piercing rounds stitched a line across the hood of the Suburban, shattering the windshield into a spiderweb of frosted glass. A ricochet clipped Hayes's shoulder epaulet, tearing the gold braided thread and drawing a thin line of red across the two-star insignia.
"They're flanking the hangar doors!" Hayes yelled, checking his magazine. "Marcus, if they seal the access tunnel to Sub-Level 3, we're fish in a barrel out here! The encrypted server is beneath the deck!"
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"Miller!" I shouted over the comms. "Covering fire on the fast-ropes! We move to the maintenance bay on three!"
"Moving!" Miller’s voice crackled through my headset, followed by the relentless hammer of his light machine gun chewing into the first fire team descending from the Ghost Hawk.
