Chapter 14 - The Final Contingency
Two operators descended upon Clara, violently tearing through her pockets and searching the discarded satchel.
""Nothing, sir,"" one operator reported. ""Satchel is empty.""
Marcus frowned, his cold eyes turning slowly toward Lucas. ""Turn him over.""
The guard wrenched Lucas onto his back. Marcus knelt beside his nephew, resting the tip of his heavy umbrella against Lucas’s chest wound. He pressed down slowly, deliberately, watching Lucas’s jaw clench as agony tore through his torn flesh.
""Where is it, Lucas? Tell me, and Dr. Sterling dies painlessly. Lie to me, and I’ll have them use the neurotoxin on her right here. You can watch her lungs dissolve just like your sergeant in Sector 4.""
Lucas didn't scream. He locked his eyes onto his uncle’s, his breathing ragged, fighting through the blinding pain. He smiled—a bloody, feral baring of teeth.
""You always underestimated the men on the ground, Marcus,"" Lucas whispered.
From the fog-draped mouth of the harbor, a long, low horn shattered the silence.
A high-intensity searchlight—ten times brighter than the contractors' lights—blazed across the pier from the deck of an incoming 110-foot United States Coast Guard cutter.
Above them, the thundering roar of dual turbine engines descended as a MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter dropped out of the low cloud cover, its side-mounted minigun tracking directly onto Marcus’s private security detail.
""Drop your weapons! This is the United States Coast Guard and Federal Marshals Service! Lay down your arms and step away from the prisoners!"" the loudspeaker boomed, shaking the very timber beneath their feet.
May you like
Marcus’s face turned gray. ""How?""
""Before I entered Courtroom 4B,"" Lucas whispered, his voice steady and deadly, ""I set a military distress beacon keyed to my vitals. If my heart rate dropped below thirty for more than five seconds—like when Clara gave me the signal to play dead—the distress ping routed directly to Special Operations Command.""
