Chapter 53 - Blood on the Thames
Lord Sterling’s face darkened from aristocratic calm to murderous fury.
"You dare question my honor before the Sovereign High Council?" he hissed, raising his hand toward the shadows.
"Kill her."
"Kill her and Marcus, and burn that drive to dust!"
Before the command even finished echoing off the vaulted ceiling, Marcus moved with terrifying speed.
His suppressed pistol barked twice in rapid succession, dropping the two nearest perimeter guards before their weapons could clear leather.
I kicked the heavy oak chair beside me with all my strength, driving its spiked legs into the shins of Alistair Vance as he reached for a concealed holster.
The old earl shrieked in agony as his knee shattered beneath the impact, his walking stick clattering across the flagstones.
"Vault door, Claire! Move!" Marcus roared, firing a three-round burst that shattered the hanging copper chandelier above the table.
The chamber plunged into semi-darkness as blazing oil and hot glass showered down upon the obsidian table.
Masked lords scrambled for the exits, shouting frantic orders in high-born accents, their veneer of ancient nobility peeling away in raw terror.
Sterling’s private elite guards surged from the side tunnels, submachine guns chattering in deafening bursts that chewed the stone walls into powder.
Marcus grabbed my collar, pulling me behind a massive stone pillar as concrete fragments stung our cheeks.
"Main exit is sealed from the outside," Marcus yelled over the gunfire, slamming a fresh magazine into his sidearm.
"They’ve locked down the entire Westminster subterranean grid!"
"They don't own the sewers beneath this palace, Marcus; my mother built the escape route thirty years ago," I replied coldly.
I reached beneath the carved relief of an iron dragon on the pillar's base, pressing my thumb firmly into the hidden biometric indentation.
The cipher ring on my neck hummed with a low magnetic pulse.
With a heavy hydraulic groan, a narrow stone slab beneath the flagstones dropped six feet down into a swirling black darkness that roared with rushing water.
"Down!" I commanded, dropping into the abyss without hesitation.
We landed hard on the slick metal catwalk of an ancient Victorian overflow channel directly above the swollen, black currents of the River Thames.
Behind us, automatic rifle fire tore through the open stone trapdoor, the rounds pinging harmlessly against the cast-iron beams above.
"They’ll have interceptor boats stationed at every drainage grate along the embankment," Marcus said, breathing hard as we sprinted along the rusted gangway.
"Let them come," I answered, checking my wrist monitor as the encrypted frequency synced with the city's private maritime grid.
"I didn't spend seventy-two hours preparing for London just to walk into Sterling's parlor empty-handed."
Fifty yards ahead, the drainage pipe opened into the open air beneath the massive stone pillars of Waterloo Bridge.
The cold, black water of the Thames raged beneath the rain, illuminated by the sweep of three military-grade searchlights mounted on black tactical gunboats.
"There she is!" a voice blared through a megaphone across the water.
"Take her alive! The Chairman wants her fingers broken one by one until she surrenders the master code!"
The heavy twin machine guns on the lead patrol boat rotated toward our catwalk, their barrels gleaming under the rain.
Marcus raised his handgun, knowing full well it was useless against armored hulls and heavy caliber ordnance.
I raised my left hand, holding a small titanium remote, and pressed the crimson switch on the casing.
A deafening roar erupted not from the catwalk, but from the engine bays of the two trailing patrol boats behind them.
The thermite charges Marcus had planted on Sterling’s private maritime fleet three hours before our arrival detonated in blinding pillars of white-hot phosphorus.
Secondary explosions tore through the fuel cells, lifting the sterns out of the water before snapping their keels in two.
The shockwave blew through the arches of Waterloo Bridge, sending a wall of scalding steam and debris raining into the black river.
The lead boat rocked violently, its crew throwing their arms up to shield their faces from the blinding thermal glare.
Through the burning fog of smoke and rain, a sleek, unmarked black interceptor vessel roared out from beneath the neighboring pier, cutting the water at fifty knots.
At the helm was an operative bearing the silver cipher of my mother’s private vanguard.
"End of the line, Sterling," I murmured under my breath as the interceptor pulled alongside our catwalk.
May you like
We leaped aboard, the twin turbine engines screaming as the boat banked hard toward the dark reaches of the Lower Thames.
Behind us, the flames reflected off the dark glass towers of the City of London, painting the imperial capital in the colors of war.
