Chapter 13 - Blood and Brass
"Down on the floor! Hands behind your head, Captain!" a voice rasped from the threshold, muffled through a tactical balaclava.
Evelyn didn't drop. She dropped her center of gravity, rolling hard behind Samuel’s solid mahogany desk just as a suppressed burst of 5.56mm rounds tore through the drywall, showering the room in plaster and splintered antique wood.
The assassin moved forward with mechanical efficiency, relying on his night-vision optics. But he made one critical mistake: he assumed a female officer who spent her recent years in logistics was an easy target, forgetting that Evelyn had earned her Combat Action Badge surviving room-clearing ambushes in Sangin.
As the intruder rounded the corner of the desk, rifle raised, Evelyn kicked the heavy swivel chair straight into his knees. The sudden impact knocked his balance off by two inches—enough time.
She lunged from the floor, batting the rifle barrel outward with her left forearm while driving the heel of her boot directly into his pelvic bone. The man grunted, swinging a heavy elbow toward her temple. Evelyn ducked under the blow, drove her Sig Sauer up beneath his chin, and squeezed the trigger twice.
The muffled double-tap echoed through the confined space. The man collapsed like a cut puppet, his rifle clattering against the Persian rug.
Without pausing to breathe, Evelyn snatched his tactical radio from his chest rig.
A distorted voice crackled through the earpiece: *"Team Alpha, report. Did you secure the transponder? The principal wants the Hayes house sanitized before the Virginia State Police triangulate the cell towers. Sweep and burn."*
Evelyn pressed the transmit button. Her voice was pure ice. "Tell the principal that if he wants Samuel Hayes's transponder, he'll have to come take it from his daughter himself."
She released the button, tossed the radio aside, and grabbed the fallen operative's combat go-bag and keys. She knew she couldn't stay. Her house was compromised, local law enforcement was either outmatched or bought off, and her brother was currently dying in an isolated prison ward.
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Slipping out through the storm-battered side entrance into the garage, she fired up her classic 1969 Mustang—the car she and her father had restored with their own hands—and slammed through the wooden garage doors, tires smoking as she fishtailed onto the rain-slicked highway into the pitch-black Virginia night.
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