Chapter 21 - The Board’s Ultimatum
The laser painted a ruby-red dot against the center of Mara Bennett’s tactical vest, shimmering through the blizzard’s swirling fury.
Ten seconds. The timer on Eleanor Voss’s detonator screamed its rhythmic death march, each electronic chirp slicing through the howling wind over Lake Michigan. Below the sheared concrete ledge, David’s gloves clawed frantically against slick granite.
"Clara! For the love of God, don't let me drown!" David shrieked, his boots kicking into empty air above the churning black abyss. The sub-zero spray coated his face in instant frost.
Clara stood frozen at the lip of the drop, clutching her swollen belly. Every instinct screamed at her to turn away, to let the man who had bartered her firstborn daughter into a human trafficking syndicate vanish into the icy depths. Yet, seeing him dangle by raw fingernails dredged up an unbearable flash of the vows they had made seven years earlier.
"Mara, move!" Clara screamed over the roar of the gale.
"Nobody moves," the synthesized, mechanical voice echoed from the shadows of the Navy Pier pavilion. Four operatives stepped out of the swirling snow, their charcoal-grey combat suits devoid of insignia, night-vision optics glowing venomous green. "Case to the ground, Miss Bennett. The Board does not tolerate rogue assets."
Eleanor Voss, standing on the yacht's heated bridge wing fifty yards out across the churn, laughed—a jagged, venomous sound that cut through the engine rumble. "You fools think you can take my empire? If that ledger doesn't cross this gangway, Chicago's shoreline becomes a crater!"
Five seconds on the detonator.
Mara didn't drop the titanium case. Instead, she calculated the geometry of death in a fraction of a heartbeat. She threw her weight backward, snagging Clara’s coat collar and wrenching her pregnant sister down behind a heavy cast-iron mooring bitt just as she brought her customized SIG Sauer up.
Mara fired three rapid rounds not at the yacht, and not at the Board's operatives—she fired directly into the high-voltage electrical junction box mounted on the pier's light tower.
The box erupted in a shower of white-hot magnesium sparks. The short-circuit cascaded across the pier’s grid, exploding the overhead halogen banks in a blinding chain reaction of shattered glass and blinding electrical fire.
"David!" Clara gasped.
David’s strength gave out. With a strangled wail, his fingers peeled away from the frost-covered stone. He plummeted twenty feet straight into the churning, sub-zero jaws of the lake. The black water swallowed him without a trace, leaving only bubbles and the swirling foam of the yacht’s twin screws.
Simultaneously, Eleanor slammed her thumb onto the detonator.
A dull, subterranean thud shuddered through the bedrock beneath their boots. But the catastrophic fireball that was supposed to vaporize the Navy Pier gas mains didn't rise from beneath them. Instead, half a mile west, along the Grand Avenue feeder line, a brilliant plume of orange fire erupted into the winter sky, rattling windows across the Gold Coast.
"Primary line failed!" one of the Board's operatives yelled, opening fire on the yacht's bridge. "Suppress the matriarch!"
Armor-piercing rounds stitched across the luxury vessel's bulletproof glazing. Eleanor Voss ducked behind the reinforced helm, the yacht's engines roaring as the vessel surged forward, cutting through floating ice floes to flee toward the open waters of the lake.
"Run!" Mara barked, hauling Clara to her feet. Mara grabbed the titanium case, its cold metal biting through her gloves. "They’re not here for Voss anymore. They’re here for what's inside this case!"
Bullets ricocheted off the frozen concrete at their heels. Mara fired suppressive rounds blind over her shoulder as she shoved Clara through the side access door of the historic Navy Pier freight tunnels. They tumbled inside, slamming the heavy blast door shut and dropping the iron security bar just as a hail of automatic fire slammed into the exterior steel with the sound of a thousand sledgehammers.
Inside, the tunnel was pitch-black, smelling of rust, stagnant bilge, and hundred-year-old river damp.
Clara collapsed against the cold brick wall, gasping for breath, both hands wrapped tightly around her lower abdomen. A sharp, guttural moan tore from her throat.
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"Clara?" Mara dropped to her knees, her tactical flashlight illuminating her sister’s pale, sweat-streaked face. "Clara, look at me. What is it?"
Clara looked up, tears freezing at the corners of her eyes. "Mara... the fall. The shock... my water just broke."
