With blinding, fluid velocity, she struck the operator’s carbine barrel sideways. The heavy steel bar collided with the weapon’s aluminum receiver with an explosive crack, deflecting the muzzle toward the ceiling just as the contractor pulled the trigger.
TAT-TAT-TAT!
Three high-velocity rounds tore into the acoustic ceiling tiles, showering the floor in white plaster dust and fiberglass insulation.
Before the contractor could adjust his point of aim, Rachel stepped inside his guard. Her left palm drove upward under his jaw, snapping his head back with concussive force, while her right knee drove into his solar plexus, completely emptying his lungs of oxygen.
The man gasped, his eyes rolling back in his head as he collapsed against the cinderblocks. Rachel caught him by the tactical vest before his head could hit the floor, guiding him down with professional care, checking his carotid pulse with two fingers, and sliding his fallen carbine twenty feet away across the slick varnish.
Two operators. Sixty seconds. Completely neutralized without a single fatal injury.
The white smoke was beginning to thin now, drifting up toward the ventilation grates near the roof, leaving the gym floor washed in cold, pale afternoon light.
Victor Vance was alone.
He stood in the center of the court, right on top of the large, painted blue-and-white Liberty Falls Patriot mascot. His slate overcoat was covered in white plaster dust, his expensive leather loafers scuffed and dirty. His hands, usually so steady when signing multimillion-dollar defense procurement contracts, were shaking so violently that the gold cigarette case slipped from his fingers, hitting the floor and spilling thin white cylinders across the court.
He looked around the gym, his breath coming in short, wheezing gasps, searching the thinning fog for his mercenaries.
All he saw were two unconscious bodies lying like discarded rags near the walls.
And then, walking slowly out of the mist from beneath the south backboard, came Rachel Morgan.
She held the iron pry bar loosely in her right hand, the tip dragging lightly across the floor, producing a faint, rhythmic screeech that made Victor’s stomach turn to ice. Her face was smudged with soot and white chalk, her dark hair coming loose from its tight bun, but her gray eyes were utterly clear, terrifying in their total absence of fear.
“Stay back,” Victor whispered, his voice cracking into a dry, pathetic rattle. He reached inside his overcoat with a trembling hand, fumbling for something in his breast pocket. “Stay away from me, Rachel. I am your family. I am your father’s brother.”
“My father worked forty years in the Bethlehem Steel mill until his lungs turned black,” Rachel said, not stopping her slow, deliberate advance. “He died in a county hospital bed because he couldn’t afford the supplemental oxygen. And while he was suffocating, you were transferring eight million dollars through shell companies in the Cayman Islands to buy a penthouse in Zurich.”
“I did it for the family name!” Victor spat, his face contorting into an ugly, desperate mask of self-righteous fury. “The mills were dying! The whole valley was turning into rust and heroin! Somebody had to preserve the capital! Somebody had to build something that would last!”
“You didn’t build anything, Victor,” Rachel said, stopping five feet from him. The tip of the iron bar came to rest on the hardwood floor between them. “You stole scrap metal from decommissioned rail cars, stamped it with counterfeit military hardness ratings, and sold it to the United States Army to bolt armor onto troop transports. You built your empire on the bones of twenty-year-old boys who thought their country was protecting them.”
“You don’t understand the world, little girl,” Victor hissed, his hand finally pulling a small, black electronic transponder unit from his pocket. The unit had a red toggle switch protected by a clear plastic safety cap. “You think you’re standing on moral high ground? Every general in the Pentagon knows how the contracting game works! The politicians in Harrisburg took their ten percent! The district judge took his cut! Even the state education commissioner signed off on the bonds! You think arresting Thomas and Vince fixes this? If I go down, half the state senate goes with me! The whole commonwealth will tear itself apart!”
“Good,” Rachel replied softly. “Let it burn clean.”
Victor’s thumb snapped the plastic safety cap off the transponder. A tiny red light began pulsing with rapid, frantic urgency on the device’s faceplate.
“Look at this, Rachel,” Victor sneered, his confidence returning like a toxic tide as he raised the black plastic box between them. “Do you know what this is? This isn’t a radio. It’s an encrypted radio-frequency trigger linked to three commercial demolition charges bolted to the structural columns in the high school’s central boiler room.”
