Chapter 72 - The Ghost Corridor
Abigail did not hesitate. The terrified daughter who had wept in the cellar of the Vance estate had vanished, forged anew in the fire of survival. She lunged forward on her knees, unbuckling the fallen operator’s secondary tactical belt with shaking but efficient fingers. She ripped the sidearm—a tactical SIG Sauer P320—from its retention holster and racked the slide cleanly, just as I had drilled into her when she was sixteen.
"Armed," she breathed, her voice hard despite the darkness.
"Stay on my six. Low posture. Do not fire unless something touches your perimeter," I ordered, ripping the night-vision goggles off the dead man’s helmet and snapping the mount onto my head.
The green-phosphor phosphor tube whirred to life, illuminating the hallway in sickly shades of emerald and shadow.
The corridor of Walter Reed was a slaughterhouse. Two Secret Service agents assigned to post security lay motionless fifty feet away near the nursing station, their defensive postures indicating they had been taken down by precision fire before they could even unholster their service weapons. Near the stairwell door, thick gray smoke was billowing—smoke mixed with the distinct, ozone-heavy stench of burning electrical wire.
My earpiece, tuned to the dead operative's captured comm channel, suddenly crackled to life.
"Echo Leader, report. Is the General neutralized?"
The accent was distinctly mid-Atlantic, cultured, completely devoid of panic. It was the voice of the man with the anchor scar from the surveillance monitor—the man who had left the silver pen for Claire Vance.
I pressed the transmit switch on the operator's throat mic. "Echo Leader is dead. And your scrub uniform didn't fit you, you son of a bitch."
A low, dry chuckle buzzed through the speaker. It was a sound of genuine amusement, chilling in its absolute lack of human warmth.
"General Victoria Gardner," the man replied smoothly. "A pleasure to hear your voice unbroken. Arthur Sterling always swore you were nothing more than a stubborn bureaucrat who hid behind stars and brass. I told him he was underestimating the maternal instinct when combined with thirty years of unconventional warfare."
"Who are you?" I demanded, moving Abigail swiftly down the hall toward the fire escape, stepping over the glass-strewn floor.
"A custodian," the voice murmured. "Arthur Sterling thought he was a king because he controlled real estate, shell companies, and crooked senators. The Vance family thought they were untouchables because they possessed a few billion dollars and an old-money pedigree. They were children playing with matches in the basement of an empire they didn't understand. We allowed them to exist because their arrogance created very useful noise."
"And now you're cleaning house."
"The board must be pristine before Phase Two begins, General. Claire Vance took her own life twenty seconds after I walked out of her cell. Arthur is floating beneath the Greenland ice sheet. That leaves only you, your daughter, and the master key you recovered from the vault."
My hand tightened around the grip of my weapon. The micro-drive recovered from the Arctic bunker—the one containing the ledger of every shadow node in the sovereign network—was currently secured in my hospital lockbox.
"You won't get it," I whispered.
"I don't need to get it from your hands, General. I only need you dead so no one can testify to its authenticity. Look out the east stairwell window."
I froze three paces from the heavy steel fire door. Slowly, keeping low, I angled my head toward the reinforced glass overlooking the north lawn of the medical center.
Through the night-vision tubes, the open lawn was completely deserted. But hovering two hundred feet above the treeline, running without navigation strobes, were two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters. They weren't military rescue craft. Mounted beneath their light airframes were forward-firing rotary cannons.
"Heads down!" I roared, throwing my body across Abigail, slamming her down against the reinforced concrete base of the outer wall.
May you like
The world outside erupted into thunder.
***
