Chapter 53 - Blood Beneath the Dome
A heavy-caliber round tore through the gloom.
It hit Eleanor’s right shoulder with brutal kinetic force.
The impact spun her around, sending her SIG Sauer skittering across the marble floor.
She let out a sharp, ragged gasp of pain, but she did not fall.
She threw herself behind the reinforced steel frame of Clara’s medical gurney, using my dying daughter as a human shield.
"Sniper!" Eleanor shouted into a radio pinned to her lapel. "Peristyle level! Eliminate him!"
Instantly, the shadow-draped alcoves of the Rotunda erupted into muzzle flashes.
Three hidden syndicate gunmen, clad in unmarked urban assault gear, opened fire toward the ceiling catwalks.
The deafening chatter of suppressed automatic weapons echoed through the dome.
I didn't look up to see if Miller was hit.
I surged forward in a dead sprint, closing the twenty-foot gap between myself and the gurney.
One of the syndicate operators turned his rifle toward me.
I dropped into a combat slide, drawing my backup Glock from my ankle holster.
I fired twice from the floor.
The two nine-millimeter hollow points took the operative directly in the throat, sending him collapsing backward over the bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln.
The remaining two mercenaries shifted their fire down to me.
Bullets chipped the marble floor around my legs, sending white dust and stone fragments biting into my skin.
I rolled behind a granite pedestal, breathing hard.
Five minutes left on Clara’s monitor.
The beeping was becoming more erratic, the pitch climbing toward an irreversible arrest.
"Maya!" Eleanor’s voice called out from behind the gurney, strained with pain. "You always were too sentimental! You let your soldier's instinct get in the way of survival!"
I leaned around the corner of the pedestal and fired a three-round burst to keep the gunmen pinned.
"Give me my daughter, Eleanor!" I roared back.
"She won't survive the next four minutes without the cold syringe!" Eleanor shouted. "And you can't reach her without killing me first!"
Through the dust and strobe of gunfire, I saw Eleanor dragging the cryogenic case behind the gurney with her good hand.
She was crawling backward toward the southern exit leading to the subterranean tunnels of the Capitol crypt.
She wasn't trying to fight.
She was trying to extract Clara into the maze beneath the city.
A high-pitched crack echoed from the dome above.
Miller fired again.
The second round tore through the forearm of the second mercenary, obliterating his weapon.
The man screamed, stumbling out into the open floor.
I stepped out from behind the pedestal and put a clean shot through the center of his chest.
The third mercenary realized he was outmatched.
He dropped a flashbang grenade onto the floor and bolted into the shadows of the Senate corridor.
*CRACK-BANG!*
The blinding white light and concussive shockwave slammed into my senses.
My ears rang with a piercing shriek.
My vision flared into searing white spots.
I fought the vertigo, shaking my head violently, forcing my eyes to adjust.
When the smoke began to clear, the Rotunda was quiet except for the continuous, frantic beeping of the monitor.
The gurney was gone.
A thick trail of dark blood led away from the center of the hall toward the heavy bronze gates that led down into the Crypt.
She had dragged Clara into the sub-levels.
"Miller!" I shouted into my comm piece, rubbing the ringing from my ears. "Report!"
Static crackled in my ear for three agonizing seconds.
"I'm hit in the shoulder, Maya," Miller groaned, his voice labored. "The third shooter grazed me before I took him down. I can't climb down the scaffold."
"Stay there," I ordered. "Call in the federal reserves. Tell them the mastermind is Eleanor Cross. If anyone tries to stop my extraction, consider them hostile."
"Maya... she's your mother," Miller wheezed.
"My mother died the day she touched Clara," I said.
I picked up the discarded syringe kit from the floor where Eleanor had dropped it in the panic.
I sprinted toward the descending stone stairs that vanished into the darkness beneath the Capitol.
Four minutes.
The air grew instantly colder as I plunged into the historical crypt.
Forty massive Doric columns stood in the dim emergency lighting, supporting the weight of the dome above.
In the center of the room lay the white marble star marking the literal center of the District of Columbia.
And right beside that star, collapsed against a stone pillar, was Eleanor.
She had run out of strength.
The gunshot wound from Miller’s rifle had torn through her subclavian artery, and dark arterial blood was pooling rapidly beneath her coat.
Beside her, Clara lay completely limp on the floor, her breathing reduced to shallow, rattling gasps.
"Clara!" I screamed, dropping my weapon and falling to my knees beside my daughter.
Her skin was ice-cold.
Her fingernails were completely blue.
I tore open the cryogenic canister, pulled out the vial of synthetic enzyme, and jammed the transfer needle into the septum.
"It... won't... matter..." Eleanor whispered from the shadows of the pillar, blood bubbling from her mouth.
I ignored her.
My hands, usually as steady as a surgeon's during combat, were shaking violently.
"Hold on, baby," I sobbed, tears cutting lines through the soot and powder burns on my face. "Mommy’s here. I’m right here."
I found the small titanium port implanted near Clara’s collarbone.
I locked the syringe into place.
The digital timer on Clara’s monitor read fifty-eight seconds.
May you like
I slammed the plunger home.
***
