Chapter 40 - The Terminal Signal
Seventy-two hours later.
The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. was completely silent under a heavy morning mist.
A private, closed-casket service had been held for Margaret Walker. Despite her sins, Claire and Ethan had ensured she was buried with the family name, honoring the final sacrifice she had made on that burning roof to save Maya’s life.
Ethan sat in a wheelchair at the front pew, wearing a fresh dress uniform, his face cleaned, holding seven-year-old Maya on his lap. Maya was smiling, pointing at the stained-glass windows, safe in the arms of the father who had returned from the dead.
Claire stood behind them in her pristine Army service uniform, the Medal of Honor resting heavy against her chest, the One-Eighty-Seven insignia pinned proudly above her heart.
Marcus Vance approached quietly from the back of the cathedral, his boots echoing softly against the stone floor. His face was grim, devoid of the relief they had felt at Walter Reed.
He stopped beside Claire, leaning down to speak in a whisper that Ethan couldn't hear.
"Claire. We have a problem."
Claire didn't turn her head, but her body went instantly rigid, slipping back into combat readiness. "Speak."
"The FBI processed Julian Vance's private server farm in Zurich this morning," Marcus whispered, his hand sliding into his inner coat pocket and pulling out a decrypted satellite transcript. "Julian wasn't the head of Operation Obsidian."
Claire’s eyes narrowed into slits of ice. "What did you say?"
"Julian was just the paymaster, Claire," Marcus continued, his voice trembling with an underlying dread. "The ledger we recovered... it was only Volume One. There was an offshore syndicate backing Vance. A private military conglomerate operating out of deep international waters in the North Atlantic."
Marcus handed her a printed satellite photograph taken less than an hour ago.
The photograph showed a massive, unmarked stealth carrier vessel navigating through heavy arctic fog off the coast of Greenland. On the flight deck sat four unmarked combat gunships.
And scrawled across the bottom of the encrypted intercept was a single intercepted audio transmission routed directly to Julian Vance's dead-man switch:
*"Target Ethan Walker was secured as collateral, but the true asset was always the One-Eighty-Seven. She took the bait. Deploy the clean-up armada to Sector Four. Erase them all."*
Suddenly, the stained-glass windows of the National Cathedral rattled violently.
A low, deep, subsonic rumble shook the stone foundations of the church.
Claire looked up. Through the high arched windows, three black, unmarked stealth drones—drones not belonging to the United States military—broke through the low clouds above the National Mall, their targeting sensors locking directly onto the cathedral's nave.
Ethan looked up from his wheelchair, his eyes widening in horror as he heard the unmistakable whine of high-altitude turbine engines.
"Claire..." Ethan gasped, pulling Maya tightly against his chest. "They're here."
Claire’s hand went instantly to the concealed combat pistol inside her dress jacket, her eyes flashing with a terrifying, apocalyptic fury.
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The war hadn't ended.
It had only just begun.
