Chapter 33 - The Siege of the Hangar
"Get down!" my father roared, grabbing the back of my coat and shoving me violently behind the steel landing gear of the Gulfstream just as a burst of automatic gunfire chewed through the corrugated siding above our heads.
Wood splinters and shards of metal rained down like shrapnel. Through the gaps in the landing gear, I saw figures in unmarked black tactical gear dropping from the overhead rafters on heavy nylon ropes, their weapons raised, moving with the cold, mechanical precision of an execution squad. These weren't regular soldiers or even Secret Service agents; they were the Directorate’s internal cleanup crew—the ones who left no witnesses and no paper trails.
"They lied to us!" I yelled over the deafening roar of the jet engines, pulling my medical shears from my pocket by pure instinct, though I knew a pair of surgical scissors was useless against assault rifles. "Cross said you were my father, but this is an ambush!"
"She *is* my daughter, but she works for the other side now!" my father shouted back, sliding a heavy Glock pistol across the concrete floor toward me. "Catch! And for God's sake, keep your head down!"
I dropped to my knees, my fingers closing around the cold, checkered grip of the firearm. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird, but the panic that had threatened to paralyze me earlier vanished, replaced by the razor-sharp focus of an army medic under fire. I remembered Nathan in the hospital bed, battered and bleeding, refusing to surrender. I wasn't going to die in a forgotten hangar in the middle of nowhere.
A burst of gunfire hammered against the jet's titanium alloy wing, sending sparks cascading over our heads. One of the tactical operatives was moving fast along the starboard side, his rifle leveled directly at our position, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Without thinking, I rolled out from behind the landing gear, brought the Glock up with both hands, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil slammed into my shoulder with a sharp, violent kick. The first round went wide, pinging off the concrete, but the second caught the operative in the upper thigh. He cried out, dropping his weapon as he collapsed against a metal tool chest.
"Move! To the rear exit!" my father yelled, firing a suppressing volley upward to keep the remaining operatives pinned behind the scaffolding.
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We scrambled across the open tarmac toward a small personnel door at the back of the hangar. The bullets whined past my ears, biting into the asphalt inches from my boots. My father shoved the door open with his shoulder, and we tumbled out into the freezing mud just as a massive explosion ripped through the front of the structure.
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