Chapter 3 - Flight into the Dark
The Black Hawk rose into the stormy Washington night, its powerful rotors slicing through rain and turbulence as it banked sharply toward the east.
Inside the dimly lit cabin, the noise was a deafening roar. Avery sat in the canvas jump seat, wearing a dark green flight suit with the silver eagles of a full Colonel pinned to her collar. Over her uniform sat a heavy tactical medical vest packed with surgical tools, plasma units, and combat tourniquets.
Commander Kane sat across from her, handing her a ruggedized military tablet displaying real-time bio-metrics from an aircraft flying over the North Atlantic.
"His heart rate is ninety-eight, blood pressure dropping," Avery noted, her eyes scanning the complex medical telemetry with practiced speed. "The toxin is a modified organophosphate derivative. It’s binding to his acetylcholinesterase enzymes, causing respiratory depression and localized vascular collapse."
"Can you stabilize him?" Kane asked over the helmet radio headset.
"Not with standard atropine," Avery said, her brow furrowing. "I need high-dose pralidoxime and a double-volume exchange transfusion. Is the Maine facility stocked with negative-O whole blood?"
Kane hesitated.
Avery caught the delay instantly. She looked up from the tablet, her hazel eyes locking onto Kane’s face. "Marcus. Talk to me."
"The Maine facility was compromised forty minutes ago," Kane revealed grimly. "Someone inside the Pentagon redirected General Vance’s transport plane to an decommissioned SAC airbase in upstate New York. It’s an unregistered airfield."
"Who’s holding the perimeter?"
"A private security contractor calling themselves Apex Defense Solutions," Kane said. "They claim they were hired by the Department of Defense to secure the casualty. But my team intercepted an encrypted burst transmission from their commander to a server in Geneva."
Avery’s hands tightened around the edges of the tablet. "They aren't trying to save him. They're keeping him alive long enough to extract his bio-metric security clearance for the National Defense Medical Database."
"Precisely," Kane nodded. "If General Vance dies before they clear his retinal scan, their access to the biological defense protocols is wiped. If he lives long enough for them to scan him, they get the keys to every Class-4 pathogen facility in the Western hemisphere."
Avery looked out the small cabin window of the Black Hawk at the sea of pitch-black clouds below.
For two years, she had believed that escaping the military meant escaping the war. But she realized now that the war wasn't a place—it was a network of greedy, ruthless men who viewed human lives as currency.
"How many operators do we have on the ground in New York?" Avery asked.
"Six," Kane replied. "Plus you and me."
Avery unzipped a heavy pelican case at her feet. Inside lay two custom stainless-steel surgical kits, a portable blood centrifuge, and a compact 9mm SIG Sauer pistol resting in a kydex holster.
May you like
She picked up the pistol, checked the magazine, racked the slide with a clean, lethal efficiency, and holstered it against her ribcage.
"Then tell the pilot to push the engines," Colonel Lennox said coldly. "My patient is waiting."
