Chapter 6 - The Ghost in the Operating Theater
The first guard never saw the muzzle flash.
Dominic fired twice through the gloom—two muffled *phuts* that sounded no louder than a heavy book dropping onto a thick rug. The two .45 ACP hollow points struck the sentry in the upper chest, lifting his two-hundred-pound frame off his feet and slamming him into a rusted steel shelving unit before he could even raise his tactical shotgun. He was dead before his knees hit the wet concrete.
Around the corner, Marco’s team breached the southern bay with terrifying efficiency. Gunfire erupted—short, disciplined bursts of suppressed 9mm rounds that tore through drywall and glass. Screams of shock were cut short by the wet thuds of collapsing bodies.
Dominic didn't pause to secure the perimeter. He followed the sound of the cardiac monitor, his shoes splashing through pools of contaminated water, his weapon leading the way.
He kicked open the frosted-glass door of the central clinic office.
Inside, standing beside a portable surgical gurney bathed under the harsh glow of an industrial LED work light, was Dr. Robert Sterling.
The disgraced former chief of surgery looked haggard, his surgical scrubs splattered with saline and betadine, his hands trembling as he clutched a pre-loaded syringe of epinephrine. When Dominic stepped into the light, his massive frame silhouetted by the darkness of the corridor, the gun pointed dead center at the doctor's forehead, Sterling let out a pathetic, high-pitched whimper and dropped the syringe onto the floor.
"D-Dominic..." Sterling stammered, raising his gloved hands, his knees shaking violently. "Please! I had no choice! They threatened my family! Matteo Russo... he showed me the files! He said the feds would indict me as an accessory to capital murder for Elena Vance!"
"Where is she?" Dominic asked, his voice deathly soft, taking three slow, deliberate steps toward the doctor.
Sterling pointed an unsteady finger toward an adjoining isolation chamber separated by a thick pane of observation glass.
Dominic looked through the window.
Sofia lay on an antique examination table, wrapped in silver emergency thermal blankets. A portable IV pole stood beside her, clear fluids dripping rapidly into the back of her bruised left hand. Her eyes were closed, her face as white as fresh snow, her lips carrying a faint, terrifying shade of lavender. Her breathing was shallow, rapid, her chest barely rising beneath the heavy blankets.
Beside her, leaning against the examination table with an M4 carbine rested across his chest, stood Matteo Russo.
Matteo didn't raise his rifle. He looked through the glass at Dominic with the cold, resigned exhaustion of a man who had known this confrontation was inevitable since the day he took the FBI’s oath.
"Break the glass, and you kill her, Dominic," Matteo’s voice echoed through the two-way intercom on the wall. "She’s in acute cardiogenic shock. Her body is trying to reject the tissue. Her systolic pressure is sitting at sixty. Any sudden shock, any sudden shift in pressure, and that heart Sterling stitched into her chest will rupture the aortic graft."
Dominic slowly lowered his Kimber, his eyes never leaving Sofia’s pale, beautiful face through the glass.
"Open the door, Matteo," Dominic whispered into the intercom microphone. "You walked out of the harbor alive once. If you open that door, I will let you walk out of this pier alive again. That is the only mercy you will ever receive from me."
Matteo let out a dry, bitter laugh that crackled through the small speaker.
"You think this is about my life, Dominic? You think I took a federal badge and spent three years eating rat poison in safe houses because I was afraid of dying?"
Matteo stepped closer to the glass, his face tightening with a fury that mirrored Dominic’s own.
"Sofia is my cousin! My sister! Her father took me in when my parents were murdered by your father’s enforcers thirty years ago! I swore an oath to protect her from you! From the disease of the Falco name!"
"I saved her life!" Dominic roared, slamming his palm against the glass, leaving a smudge of rain and grease. "She was dying! Her own body was killing her! If I hadn't taken that heart, she would be six feet under the frozen dirt in Saint Michael’s Cemetery!"
"You didn't save her, you sick bastard!" Matteo shouted back, his composure finally breaking, his finger stabbing violently toward the woman on the gurney. "YOU STOLE HER! You hunted down Elena Vance! An innocent girl who volunteered at homeless shelters! A girl who had a mother, a father, a fiancé who was waiting for her to come home for Thanksgiving dinner!"
Matteo leaned into the glass until his breath fogged the surface.
"You had her skull crushed on Route 9, Dominic. And you put that bloody, stolen heart into the woman you claim to love. Do you have any idea what happened when she read that autopsy report tonight? She didn't cry for her own life. She tried to tear her own stitches open with her bare hands! She wanted to rip that heart out of her chest because she couldn't bear to carry the weight of your murder!"
Dominic felt the room spinning. The air in his lungs felt like boiling oil. He looked down at Sofia. Her eyes fluttered open.
Slowly, agonizingly, her head turned toward the observation window.
Her dark, sorrowful eyes—the eyes Dominic had fallen in love with in an art gallery eight years ago, the eyes that had been his only sanctuary from the blood-soaked nightmare of his existence—locked onto his.
There was no fear in her gaze.
There was only an infinite, bottomless abyss of grief.
Sofia’s dry, pale lips parted. She didn't speak into an intercom. She simply looked at him, tears cutting clean paths through the dried salt on her cheeks, and shook her head once.
*No.*
A silent, absolute rejection of his entire existence.
Before Dominic could utter another word, the world outside the clinic erupted into thunder.
BOOM!
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A high-explosive rocket struck the western loading bay of the clinic, the shockwave shattering the observation glass into ten thousand glistening shards and throwing Dominic violently across the concrete floor.
***
