Chapter 50 - The Dead Man's Fall
The rear cargo bay was a screaming vortex of freezing fog, screaming alarms, and tearing metal.
The hydraulic lines operating the primary loading ramp had severed under the G-forces, leaving the massive steel ramp cracked open by eighteen inches. Through that jagged gap, the black, frothing waves of the Atlantic Ocean were rushing upward at six hundred miles per hour.
There was no time to calculate an approach. There was no time to deploy an emergency drogue chute.
The structural integrity of the *Volga-One* failed at three thousand feet.
The port wing sheared off in an ear-splitting explosion of carbon composite and burning jet fuel. The transport rolled instantly onto its back, the centrifugal force slamming my body into the ceiling of the cargo bay.
I saw Arthur Vance—the father who had traded his soul for shadow power—tumble through the shattered bulkhead door, screaming as he was sucked out of the fuselage into the burning jet wash of the remaining engine. He was gone in a fraction of a second, swallowed by the sky he had sought to rule.
I clamped my arms across my chest, protecting the pouch containing Clara’s enzyme with my own flesh and bone, and kicked off the buckled ceiling with everything I had.
I launched myself through the eighteen-inch crack of the loading ramp into the void.
The moment my body cleared the aircraft, the slipstream hit me like a train made of ice.
Fifty yards behind me, the remaining fuselage of the *Volga-One* struck the surface of the Atlantic Ocean at terminal velocity. The resulting explosion was catastrophic—a towering pillar of white water and orange fire that lit up the stormy horizon for ten miles.
I was tumbling through the darkness, falling through the storm at two hundred feet per second.
*One thousand... two thousand...*
I reached for the rip-cord of my emergency high-altitude parachute.
*PULL.*
The pilot chute caught the freezing air, ripping the main canopy from the container with a violent, spine-jarring deceleration that ripped the air completely from my lungs.
The silk canopy deployed five hundred feet above the water.
Before I could even adjust the steering toggles, my boots plunged into the freezing, salt-heavy swell of the Atlantic Ocean.
The shock of the arctic water was paralyzing. The heavy parachute canopy collapsed across the surface, threatening to drag me under into the black depths.
I drew my dive knife, severed the riser lines in two frantic strokes, and surfaced into the freezing rain, gasping for air.
I immediately reached inside my tactical vest.
The hard-shell aluminum canister was intact. The amber vial inside was unbroken.
*I have it. Clara, I have it.*
Fifty yards away, cutting through the heavy storm swells, the low, thrumming beat of helicopter rotors broke through the sound of the waves.
The searchlight of Chief Miller’s Silent Hawk cut through the darkness, locking onto my position in the churning water. The extraction hoist cable came whistling down through the freezing spray.
"I’ve got her! I’ve got the Colonel!" Miller’s voice echoed through my helmet comms.
Within ninety seconds, the hoist had hauled me out of the freezing ocean and into the warm, illuminated cargo bay of the helicopter.
I stripped the wet helmet from my head, coughing up seawater, my hands trembling with hypothermic shock as I handed the cryogenic canister to the flight medic.
"Andrews... full throttle," I wheezed, my voice cracked and hoarse. "Get us back to M Street... NOW!"
"We’re already flying at maximum torque, Maya!" Miller shouted over his shoulder. "ETA to the Georgetown safehouse is eight minutes!"
I pulled out my satellite radio, my hands shaking violently as I dialed the encrypted channel for the sub-basement bunker.
"Hicks!" I cried out, my heart pounding so hard I could barely breathe. "Hicks, I’ve got the enzyme! I’m landing in seven minutes! Get Clara prepped for immediate intravenous administration!"
There was no answer.
Only a strange, rhythmic electronic beeping coming through the speaker.
*Beep... Beep... Beep...*
"Hicks! Answer me! Hicks, do you copy?!"
The radio hissed with sudden interference. Then, the heavy, ragged breathing of a dying man came through the line.
*"...olonel..."* Hicks’s voice was barely a whisper, choking on his own blood. *"She... she took it..."*
My blood turned to ice. "What did you say, Hicks?! Who took what?!"
*"Your mother..."* Hicks wheezed, his voice fading rapidly into the abyss of death. *"She... she stood up... she took Clara... and she put two rounds... into my chest..."*
The sound of a heavy slide racking came through the open microphone.
Then, a voice I had known my entire life—a voice that had read me bedtime stories, a voice that had played the frail, sick, helpless mother confined to a wheelchair—spoke into the radio with bone-chilling, terrifying clarity.
*"Did you really think Arthur was the one giving the orders, Maya?"* my mother said, her tone cool, elegant, and devoid of a single ounce of illness. *"Arthur was just the shield. I was the architect."*
Through the receiver, the high-frequency tone of Clara’s heart monitor flatlined into a continuous, deafening, unbroken scream.
May you like
*"Clara has twelve minutes, my dear,"* my mother whispered into the dark. *"If you want her to draw another breath... bring the enzyme to the Capitol Rotunda. Alone."*
The line went dead.
