Chapter 5 - Blood on the Floorboards
In combat medicine, panic is a death sentence.
When the bunker is taking incoming mortar fire and an artery is spraying across the ceiling, the human brain wants to scream and run. You train that instinct out of yourself until your heart rate actually drops when the sirens sound.
The floorboard creaked again. Step four of sixteen.
I didn't turn off the desk lamp. That would signal that I knew he was there.
Instead, I reached into the walnut box, my hand wrapping around the checkered walnut grips of Marcus’s Colt 1911. The metal was cold, solid, and familiar. I pulled back the slide with a smooth, silent motion.
A heavy .45 ACP round slid cleanly into the chamber.
I slipped off my wet boots, moving silently in my socks across the floorboards to the side of the doorway, using the heavy brick chimney as hard cover.
I slipped the thumb safety down.
Step twelve.
Step fourteen.
The doorknob turned slowly. The latch clicked open.
The door swung inward by two inches. A slender, matte-black suppressor slid through the opening, sweeping toward the desk where the banker's lamp was illuminating Marcus's open ledger.
The shooter stepped inside.
He was dressed in dark tactical rain gear, wearing a balaclava, his eyes cold, calculating, and focused entirely on the empty desk chair.
He raised his weapon.
Before his finger could touch the trigger, I stepped out from behind the chimney, pressing the muzzle of the 1911 against the base of his skull, right beneath the edge of his hood.
"Move an inch," I said, my voice ice-cold and utterly steady, "and you won't live long enough to hear the gunshot."
The man froze. He was a professional. He knew the heavy caliber pressed into the soft tissue behind his ear didn't leave room for mistakes.
"Drop it," I commanded.
He hesitated for half a second. I pressed the steel harder into his skull, thumbing the hammer back. The heavy mechanical *clack* was deafening in the small room.
He opened his fingers. The silenced pistol dropped to the floorboards with a dull thud.
"Kick it under the desk," I ordered.
He kicked it.
"Hands behind your head. Interlock your fingers. Down on your knees."
He complied slowly, dropping to his knees. I kept the .45 leveled at the back of his head with my right hand while my left hand ripped the balaclava from his face.
I expected a foreign mercenary. I expected a hitman hired through dark web channels by the Valmont Syndicate.
Instead, I was looking down at Thomas Webb.
Head of Corporate Security for Vance Aerospace. A former Secret Service agent whom Arthur had put on the company payroll eight years ago.
"Thomas," I said, my voice deadly quiet. "Did Arthur send you to clean up the mess?"
Webb chuckled, a low, wet sound, though his breathing was shallow with fear. "You're in over your head, Colonel. You think this is just about Arthur? You think this is just about Vance Aerospace?"
"Who poisoned my grandfather?"
"The old man wouldn't stop digging," Webb said, his eyes darting toward the open folder on the desk. "He was going to the Department of Justice on Monday. He had bank records, shipping manifests, customs bypass codes. He was going to put his own son in federal prison for the rest of his life."
"And Arthur couldn't have that," I said.
"Arthur didn't give the order," Webb hissed. "Julian did."
The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
Julian? My cowardly, entitled younger brother who threw tantrums when the private jet was delayed?
"Julian is the primary liaison with Valmont," Webb continued, realizing his only currency was information. "He took twenty million in kickbacks deposited in an offshore account in the Caymans. Marcus found the account three days ago. Marcus called Julian into this very room and told him to sign a confession, or he’d personally walk him into the FBI field office in handcuffs."
Webb looked up at me over his shoulder, his lips curling into a grimace. "Julian panicked. He came to me. He said the old man was going to ruin everything. He paid me two hundred thousand to switch Marcus's heart medication with suxamethonium."
The rage that surged through me wasn't wild; it was absolute zero. A cold, surgical fury.
"Where is Julian now?" I asked.
"Downstairs. In the main house. They're shredding the physical server backups in the basement. They have a helicopter inbound to the private pad on the west lawn. They're flying to Dulles, taking the corporate jet to Switzerland before the Pentagon can issue an airspace freeze."
From the courtyard outside, the sudden, heavy thrum of twin turboshaft engines rattled the windowpanes.
A Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, painted gloss black with Vance Aerospace gold lettering, was descending through the rain toward the estate’s private landing pad.
Webb seized the distraction.
He threw his weight backward, slamming his shoulder into my knees to take me off balance, his right arm sweeping toward his boot to draw a backup knife.
He was fast.
He was trained.
But he had spent the last eight years escorting corporate executives between penthouses and five-star restaurants. I had spent the last ten years fighting for my life in the dust of war zones.
I sidestepped his charge, swept his plant leg with my heel, and brought the heavy steel frame of the 1911 down across the side of his temple.
The crack was loud and definitive.
Webb crumpled onto the floorboards, limp and unconscious, his knife clattering harmlessly against the desk leg.
I didn't waste a second.
I picked up the manila folder and the encrypted hard drive, shoved them into the waterproof tactical pouch on my belt, zipped my dress coat over my uniform, and grabbed Webb’s discarded zip-ties from his tactical vest.
I bound his wrists and ankles, gagged him with his own balaclava, and bolted down the wooden stairs into the pouring rain.
The Old Guard sentries were already moving toward the landing pad, their weapons raised at low-ready as the helicopter touched down, whipping the manicured lawn into a hurricane of wet grass and exhaust fumes.
"Colonel Vance!" the squad sergeant shouted through the roar of the rotors. "We have unauthorized movement at the rear entrance!"
Across the terrace, the heavy mahogany doors of the manor burst open.
Julian and Arthur sprinted into the downpour, carrying heavy leather duffel bags, flanked by three armed private security guards.
May you like
They were running for the bird.
***
