Chapter 105 - Shadows Over the Potomac
The cold morning mist was rising off the Potomac River like white smoke when they surfaced near the Navy Yard.
Dawn had not yet broken, leaving the Washington sky a bruised shade of violet and slate gray.
Claire led the small group through the labyrinth of maintenance alleyways behind the rail yards.
Margaret was struggling to keep up, her designer shoes ruined, her breath rattling painfully in her chest.
"I can't... I can't walk anymore," Margaret whimpered, leaning against a rusted chain-link fence.
Claire didn't slow down.
"You keep moving, Margaret, or I leave you on the curb for Sterling’s cleaners," Claire said without looking back.
"You're a monster," Margaret gasped, clutching her side.
"I'm what you made me," Claire answered cleanly.
Admiral Vance walked beside Claire, his eyes scanning the rooftops of the federal office buildings looming in the distance.
"Brody won't be able to bring heavy armor into the city, Claire," Vance warned. "The Secret Service and Capitol Police have already cordoned off the entire National Mall."
"We don't need heavy armor," Claire replied. "We need confusion."
Suddenly, the low, rhythmic thumping of twin turbine blades vibrated through the damp morning air.
Miller froze, glancing toward the southern sky.
A black, unmarked MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter swept low over the tree line along the river, its navigation lights completely dark.
"Is that Brody?" Miller asked, a flicker of hope in his voice.
Claire grabbed Miller’s collar and yanked him into the shadow of a brick warehouse loading dock just as a spotlight tore through the fog.
The blinding beam of light illuminated the gravel where they had been standing a second before.
"That's not Brody," Claire whispered.
On the side of the helicopter's fuselage, visible for only an instant under the harbor lights, was the silver serpent emblem.
"Sterling’s private air asset," Vance cursed quietly. "They have air superiority over the district."
The helicopter banked sharply, hovering directly above the rail yard.
Two fast ropes dropped from the open cargo doors.
Six heavily armed operators slid down through the mist, landing on the gravel tracks with effortless, military precision.
"They anticipated our egress point," Miller whispered, his hands trembling as he checked his remaining ammunition. "Claire, we have eighteen rounds total. We can't fight a fully equipped assault team in an open rail yard."
Margaret dropped to her knees in the dirt, her face buried in her hands.
"It’s over," Margaret sobbed quietly. "We're dead. We're all dead."
Claire didn't listen to the despair.
She watched the lead operator deploy a handheld thermal scanner.
In less than ten seconds, the heat signatures of their bodies behind the thin brick wall would illuminate on his heads-up display like flares in the dark.
"Vance, take Margaret and Miller inside the maintenance shed," Claire commanded softly.
"What are you going to do?" Vance asked.
"Buy ten seconds," Claire replied.
She didn't wait for an objection.
Claire grabbed an abandoned iron coupling link from the railroad tracks, weighed it in her palm, and sprinted away from the shed toward a line of parked diesel fuel tankers.
She threw the heavy iron piece with all her strength against the steel hull of the furthest tanker.
*CLANG!*
The sharp metallic report rang through the silent rail yard like a gunshot.
"Thermal contact moving east!" a synthesized voice barked over the tactical radio net.
The six operators immediately turned in unison, their weapons raised, moving in an aggressive wedge formation toward the sound.
Claire moved through the shadows between the railcars like a wraith.
She knew these tactics intimately; she had trained the men who wrote the doctrine.
As the rear operator passed the narrow gap between two boxcars, Claire struck.
She didn't use a firearm.
She reached out from the darkness, hooked her arm around his neck, and drove his head violently against the iron coupling pin of the train car.
The impact was silent and catastrophic.
The operator went limp instantly.
Before he could touch the ground, Claire caught his body, stripped his tactical vest, and confiscated his suppressed MPX submachine gun and three flashbang canisters.
She let the unconscious man slide silently beneath the undercarriage of the train.
Up ahead, the remaining five operators reached the fuel tanker.
"Clear! False alarm—it was debris!" the point man reported.
"Where is rear guard?" the second man called out, turning around.
From the top of the boxcar directly above their heads, Claire pulled the pins on two flashbangs simultaneously.
"Right above you," Claire whispered.
She dropped the canisters right into the center of their formation.
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Two deafening, concussive explosions turned the predawn darkness into a blinding wall of white fury.
***
