Chapter 9 - The Fire on the Water
The detonation was not a single bang; it was an apocalyptic roar that tore the shoreline apart.
The perimeter claymores exploded in a synchronized, horizontal wall of five thousand steel ball-bearings traveling at four thousand feet per second.
The wooden dock vanished into splinters. The lead Zodiac boat was ripped to shreds. The four operatives on the front porch were lifted off their feet and hurled through the shattered balustrade like broken ragdolls.
The shockwave hit the hovering helicopter, catching the tail rotor in a maelstrom of flying debris. The black bird pitched violently to the right, its rotors screaming in metallic agony as the pilot lost hydraulic control. The aircraft spun twice, clipped the top of a century-old white pine, and slammed into the rocky shallows of the lake in a catastrophic fireball of aviation fuel and torn aluminum.
The world went white. Then orange. Then deafeningly quiet, save for the crackle of burning jet fuel and the hiss of water against hot steel.
I was thrown backward against the stone fireplace, my ears ringing with a high-pitched scream, blood trickling from a cut on my forehead.
Coughing through the thick, oily black smoke, I pushed myself up.
Through the burning haze on the ruined lawn, a figure was crawling through the mud.
It was Arthur Davis.
His cashmere coat was shredded, his face blackened with soot and blood, his right leg twisted at an unnatural angle. Yet his fingers were clawing toward a dropped handgun lying in the wet grass.
I didn't hesitate.
I picked up Christopher’s 9mm Glock from the mantle, stepped through the smoking wreckage of the French doors, and walked down the splintered porch steps onto the blackened grass.
Davis heard my boots in the mud. He rolled onto his back, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He looked up at me, his eyes wide with a mixture of disbelief and venomous hatred.
"You... you don't know what you've done," he wheezed, clutching his crushed ribs. "That ledger... it will destabilize the entire regional infrastructure. It will bring down senators... cabinet members... the people who keep this country moving."
"No, Davis," I said, leveling the barrel of the gun directly between his cold, gray eyes. "It will just bring down the monsters who murdered my father. And my husband."
"You won't pull that trigger," Davis sneered, blood bubbling on his lips. "You're an artist. A mother. You're Christopher's sweet little civilian."
"My name is Eleanor Vance," I whispered.
*Pff-thump.*
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The shot ended the sentence. Davis’s head snapped back against the wet slate, and the man who had orchestrated seventeen years of terror was gone.
***
