Chapter 34 - The Director’s Gambit
The beeping was steady. Precise. Irreversible.
Marcus Vance lunged forward, slamming the butt of his rifle directly into Julian Vance’s face. The Director of National Intelligence crashed backward over his desk, spitting blood and broken teeth onto the mahogany surface, laughing hysterically.
"Hit me all you want, Sergeant!" Julian coughed, blood bubbling on his lips. "The sequence is hardcoded into the municipal gas main underneath the building! You can’t disarm it from here! The signal went out to the trigger relay the moment my heart rate spiked above 140!"
"Claire!" Marcus shouted, turning back to the panic room. "He’s not bluffing! I smell natural gas venting through the maintenance risers! We have less than ninety seconds before this entire floor becomes an inferno!"
Claire didn’t panic. The training of the Special Forces, the cold, lethal logic of the One-Eighty-Seven overrode the chaos. She scooped Maya into her left arm, holding the child tightly against her chest, and used her right hand to slice through the zip-ties binding Aunt Evelyn’s wrists.
"Evelyn, can you run?" Claire demanded.
"I... I can run," Evelyn gasped, clutching Claire’s arm, her legs shaking but holding firm.
"Marcus, grab the ledger from the safe behind the desk," Claire ordered, her voice commanding, cutting through the rising terror. "We move to the roof. Now!"
"The roof?" Julian wheezed from the floor, his laughter turning manic. "There’s no way off that roof! The storm has grounded every civilian craft in the tri-state area! Your Black Hawk can’t hover in this wind for more than sixty seconds without clipping the communications mast!"
Claire walked over to where Julian lay sprawled among the scattered documents. She looked down at him, her boot coming down hard onto his right knee. A sickening *snap* echoed through the room, followed by Julian’s agonizing shriek of pure pain.
"You’re coming with us, Director," Claire said, grabbing him by the collar of his tailored suit and hauling his broken body off the floor with one arm like a sack of garbage. "You’re going to watch Ethan look you in the eyes before you die."
They burst out of the panic room, moving through the flaming ruins of the gallery. Smoke was thickening now, black and acrid, swirling up toward the shattered skylight. Below their feet, the concrete floor trembled as secondary explosions rumbled through the lower utility levels.
They reached the private elevator vestibule, where an emergency industrial ladder led directly up to the exterior helipad on the skyscraper's roof.
"Marcus, take Evelyn and Maya up first!" Claire ordered, shoving Julian against the wall and handing Marcus her sidearm. "Get them onto the roof! Signal the Black Hawk to drop the extraction sling!"
"Aunt Claire, don't leave me!" Maya cried, her tiny hands clutching Claire's tactical vest, terrified of the smoke and the roaring flames creeping up the walls.
Claire leaned down, kissing Maya's forehead. "I will be right behind you, Maya. I swear on your daddy's life. Close your eyes and hold onto Marcus. Go!"
Marcus slung his rifle, secured Maya into a chest-rig harness, and began hauling himself up the metal rungs with Evelyn right behind him.
Claire turned back toward the corridor. But as she moved to drag Julian toward the ladder, the double doors leading to the private terrace blasted inward.
A massive figure stepped through the swirling smoke and driving rain.
He was nearly six-foot-six, wearing heavy titanium-plated body armor, carrying a customized combat shotgun, his face scarred and brutalized by decades of covert violence. It was Cumberland's second-in-command—the ghost contractor known across the black-ops underworld only as "The Wolf."
"Captain Walker," The Wolf spoke, his voice a guttural, mechanical rumble through his ballistic mask. "The Director pays fifty million for your head. And I intend to collect before this matchbox falls."
May you like
The Wolf racked the shotgun with a thunderous metallic click.
***
