Chapter 104 - Blood in the Rotunda
The fog rolling off the Anacostia River blanketed the Congressional Cemetery in a thick, suffocating shroud of white mist.
Centuries-old marble monuments and weathered gravestones stood like silent sentinels beneath the dripping willow branches.
Claire moved through the shadows with silent, predator-like fluidity, her thermal optics painting the graveyard in shades of emerald and neon green.
She was not alone.
Four heat signatures were positioned around the stone perimeter of the historic gothic chapel standing near the center of the grounds.
They were dressed in sterile tactical gear without insignia, carrying suppressed submachine guns and moving in overlapping security arcs.
"Contractors," Miller whispered over the localized bone-conduction radio frequency.
"Vance's private praetorian guard."
"They aren't guarding an empty chapel," Claire responded, crouching behind the granite obelisk of an 19th-century diplomat.
"The server is active; I'm picking up a localized RF bleed on the high-frequency scanner."
Inside the van parked two blocks away behind an abandoned warehouse, the Admiral was monitoring the satellite feeds.
"Claire, Vance's official motorcade just left the Russell Senate Office Building," the Admiral warned through the earpiece.
"He is scheduled to attend a private dinner at the Metropolitan Club in forty-five minutes."
"We don't need forty-five minutes," Claire said.
She signaled Miller to take the two sentries posted near the northern stained-glass windows while she circled the main crypt entrance.
The first sentry never heard her boot touch the damp grass behind him.
Claire’s forearm locked around his throat in a crushing carotid choke, simultaneously pinning his weapon against his chest to muffle any accidental discharge.
Within five seconds, the man went limp; Claire lowered him soundlessly into the sodden ivy.
To her left, two muffled pops signaled that Miller’s suppressed rounds had eliminated the eastern perimeter guards.
Claire reached the heavy iron doors of the chapel crypt, running her gloved fingers along the antique stone archway.
Beneath an ornamental stone gargoyle, she found the hidden fiber-optic relay feeding power to a modern keypad.
"The lock is active," Miller whispered, taking a defensive position at the base of the stone steps.
"Do we breach with thermite?"
"Thermite triggers the automated data incinerator inside the vault," Claire said, pulling a specialized decryption deck from her harness.
"Margaret said Vance’s signet ring holds the transponder frequency."
"I don't have the ring, but I have the frequency signature captured from his gala microphone transmission."
She spliced the terminal wires directly into the stone junction box.
The handheld deck cycled through millions of cryptographic hashes, humming softly against the night air.
For ten seconds, the only sound was the patter of cold rain against the chapel’s slate roof.
Then, a heavy mechanical click echoed from deep inside the crypt.
The stone slab forming the crypt entrance slid inward by three inches, releasing a blast of refrigerated, ozone-scented air.
Claire stepped over the threshold into the illuminated staircase descending into the earth.
The walls were lined with racks of commercial-grade blade servers, their blue LED arrays pulsing like a synthetic heartbeat.
At the far end of the underground bunker sat a polished ebony desk beneath a massive, gilded seal of the United States Senate.
Resting upon that desk was an open leather binder containing the original, unredacted roster of Operation Obsidian.
Claire walked forward, her combat boots clicking sharply against the sterile floor.
She looked down at the first page of the file, and her breath caught in her throat.
The top name on the assassination list—classified twenty years ago as killed in action during a training accident—was not an enemy combatant.
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It was David Montgomery.
Her older brother.
