Chapter 24 - Smoke and Glass
A heavy boot struck the reinforced metal door at the top of the basement stairs. The hinges groaned under the force of a breaching charge.
"Fire in the hole!" a voice shouted from above.
Daniel lunged forward, grabbing both Mia and Natalie and pulling them behind the blast curtain of the old furnace room just as the door was blown inward by a concussive blast. Plaster dust filled the air, thick and grey. Through the ringing in his ears, Daniel heard the rhythmic clatter of boots descending the iron stairs.
"Two targets down here! Move in!"
Daniel didn't hesitate. He pulled the manual pressure release on the commercial industrial boiler.
A high-pitched scream tore through the basement as superheated white steam erupted from four primary overhead conduits, instantly blinding the mercenaries and raising the temperature in the room to over one hundred and forty degrees. Shouts of agony echoed through the haze as the men stumbled blindly, their thermal sights whited out by the wall of heat.
Daniel burst from the shadows. He grabbed an iron fire extinguisher from the wall and slammed it into the weapon of the lead operative, disarming him in a single fluid motion. Before the second guard could swing his rifle, Daniel tackled him into the brick support pillar, driving the wind from the man’s lungs.
"Move! Up through the cellar doors!" Daniel shouted to Natalie and Mia.
Julian Graves emerged from the top of the stairs, a silver semi-automatic pistol leveled directly at Daniel's chest. "End of the line, Mercer."
"Look behind you, Graves," Daniel said, standing tall amidst the billowing steam, not flinching an inch.
Through the broken shattered glass of the conservatory above them, red and blue strobe lights painted the night sky. But these were not local police cruisers. The heavy thrum of twin turbine engines shook the foundation of the house as a black Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter hovered fifty feet above the Havenwood lawn, illuminating the grounds with a blinding five-million-candlepower searchlight.
A megaphone boomed from the aircraft, rattling the windowpanes:
*"This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Coast Guard Criminal Investigative Service. Lay down your weapons and step away from the building immediately. The property is federalized under executive maritime order!"*
Graves’s aristocratic face twisted into pure panic. "What... what did you do?"
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"I didn't do anything," Daniel smiled, a cold, ruthless grin. "Natalie forwarded Eleanor’s 1940 manifest and your port shipping manifests to Homeland Security forty-five minutes ago. You aren't defending an inheritance, Graves. You're standing in the middle of a federal treason sting."
***
