Chapter 6 - Blood on the Clinic Floor
Adrien tore down the service stairwell four steps at a time, the heavy steel railings rattling under his grip.
The emergency backup generators had failed to kick in, leaving the lower concrete corridors bathed in the eerie amber glow of wall-mounted battery strobes.
The smell of cordite and burnt transformer oil hung thick in the cold underground air.
A second burst of submachine-gun fire echoed through the concrete foundations of the estate, followed by the wet thud of a falling body.
Adrien pressed his back against the cold cinderblock wall at the landing of the sub-basement.
He dropped his magazine, tapped the base against his palm to ensure smooth feeding, and reseated it with a sharp upward snap.
He peered around the steel doorframe into the long, white-tiled medical corridor.
Fluorescent fixtures hung by severed wires, sparking violently against the puddles of pooling water on the floor.
Ten yards away, Jackson lay crumpled on his side against the linen dispensary, his tactical vest shredded by high-velocity hollow points.
A wide smear of dark arterial blood marked where he had crawled before his strength gave out.
Past Jackson's motionless body, two men dressed in black tactical uniforms and unmarked balaclavas stood outside the fortified recovery room.
One of them wielded a suppressed MPX submachine gun, keeping watch on the stairwell corridor.
The other was violently working a hydraulic door-spreader into the reinforced steel frame of Elena’s recovery suite.
These were not street thugs or disheveled foot soldiers from the downtown docks.
They moved with military precision, clearing angles and communicating through hand signals without uttering a word.
Adrien stepped smoothly into the open corridor, raising his Glock to eye level in one continuous fluid motion.
He did not shout a warning.
He did not demand a surrender.
He squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession.
The first round struck the watchman in the throat just above the collar of his tactical vest.
The second round took him through the bridge of the nose before his finger could squeeze the trigger of his weapon.
The man collapsed backward into the sparking pool of water without making a sound.
The second operative abandoned the hydraulic tool instantly, whipping a sidearm from his hip holster as he spun toward the threat.
Adrien did not break his stride.
He advanced down the corridor, firing three controlled shots into the center of the shooter's chest plate.
The heavy nine-millimeter rounds pushed the intruder backward, knocking the breath from his lungs and destroying his balance.
Before the man could recover his aim, Adrien closed the distance, grabbed the barrel of the intruder's weapon, and drove the heavy steel slide of his own gun into the man's temple.
Bone cracked beneath the blow.
The intruder collapsed onto the wet linoleum, his weapon clattering into the bloody runoff.
Adrien placed his boot firmly on the man's throat, pressing down until the operative's struggling limbs went slack.
He kicked the dropped weapon down the hall, then crouched and ripped the balaclava from the unconscious man's face.
The face was unrecognizable, scarred across the jawline, but on the left side of his neck sat a freshly healed tattoo.
It was a black coiled rattlesnake wrapped around an obsidian dagger.
It was the execution mark of the Sierra cartel’s elite wet-work cell, known as Los Fantasmas.
Adrien stepped over the body and shouldered open the damaged door to the clinic room.
Dr. Marcus Vance was slumped behind the stainless-steel examination table, clutching his left shoulder where a rifle bullet had torn through his collarbone.
His surgical scrubs were soaked in crimson, but his eyes were wide and lucid.
"Adrien," Vance gasped, his breath wheezing through clenched teeth.
"They tried... they brought a sodium thiopental syringe... they wanted to terminate her life support."
Adrien crossed the room in two strides and checked Elena’s hospital bed.
The intravenous line was still dripping saline into her left arm.
Her chest rose and fell in a fragile, mechanical rhythm beneath the sterile sheet.
The cardiac monitor showed a faint but steady heart rate of fifty-eight beats per minute.
She had survived the assault by mere seconds.
"Did anyone else enter this hallway?" Adrien asked, his voice low and trembling with cold fury.
"No," Vance wheezed, pressing a sterile gauze roll against his bleeding shoulder.
"Only those two."
"They didn't come through the main security checkpoint."
"They used the old coal tunnel from the original boiler house."
Adrien’s heart turned to ice.
The old coal tunnel had been sealed with two inches of plate steel twenty years ago by Adrien’s father.
Only three people possessed the blueprint that showed the forgotten service hatch behind the southern garden wall.
And while two assassins had descended into the earth to finish off Elena Torres, the rest of the mansion remained virtually undefended above.
May you like
Adrien looked at the empty hallway, then up toward the ceiling.
Mia was sitting alone on the third floor.
