Chapter 68 - The Message Through the Static
Claire lay prone in the snow, locking the bipod of her rifle into the frozen earth.
The wind had picked up, howling across the open marsh at twelve knots. The helicopter’s turbine was screaming, the landing gear beginning to lift off the tarmac. Sterling was climbing the steps into the cabin, pulling his coat tight around his neck.
Through the high-magnification reticle, Claire didn't aim for Sterling. Sterling had the codes. Sterling had the names. She needed him alive—or broken.
She shifted the crosshairs three feet to the left, centering on the helicopter’s exposed tail-rotor gearbox.
*Exhale.*
*Steady the pulse.*
*Squeeze.*
The rifle roared, sending a .338 Lapua Magnum armor-piercing incendiary round cutting through the swirling blizzard.
A mile away, the tail rotor of the Mi-8 erupted in a shower of white-hot magnesium sparks. The composite blades shattered like dried glass. The helicopter instantly lost rotational stability, spinning violently out of control on the tarmac. The main rotors struck the asphalt with a cataclysmic shriek of twisting metal, flipping the multi-ton bird onto its side in an enormous ball of black smoke and burning aviation fuel.
Sterling’s bodyguards were thrown across the highway. Sterling himself crawled out of the wreckage, his clothes on fire, his face blackened, dragging his broken legs across the frozen road.
Claire stood up. She racked another round into the chamber, slung the rifle over her shoulder, and marched toward the burning wreckage like an inescapable judgment.
Sterling looked up through blistered eyes, coughing blood, to see a silhouette emerging through the blizzard. The dark coat, the cold eyes, the rifle resting casually in one hand.
“You’re… you’re a monster,” Sterling wheezed, clutching his shattered hip. “You think you won? Project Lazarus is backed by five members of the Senate Armed Services Committee! Your mother’s social circle built this! They’ll turn you into a terrorist by sunrise!”
Claire reached down, grabbed Sterling by his tie, and lifted his face inches from hers.
“My mother,” Claire whispered softly, “doesn't have a social circle anymore. And neither do you.”
She reached into his burning coat, pulled out the ruggedized military tablet containing the master decryption keys, and smashed his satellite transmitter with the heel of her combat boot.
Then, she pulled her own encrypted transceiver from her pocket, connected it directly to the military satellite uplink Sterling had set up, and opened a global tactical channel.
“Vance,” Claire said into the mic.
“I’m here, One-Eighty-Seven,” Vance’s voice responded instantly from a secure bunker in Europe. “I’m routing you through the Joint Chiefs’ closed-circuit network. Every television in the Pentagon, every screen in the White House, and Margaret Montgomery’s personal cell phone are tapped into this feed.”
Claire turned the tablet's camera toward the burning helicopter, toward Director Sterling weeping in the snow, and finally toward William, who was slowly pulling himself to his feet against the horizon, his shredded uniform revealing the American flag tattoo on his shoulder.
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“Listen carefully,” Claire said, her voice broadcasting across the highest echelons of power on the planet. “This is First Lieutenant Claire Montgomery. Call-sign One-Eighty-Seven.”
***
