Chapter 2 - The Sky Tears Open
They turned off the overhead lights, leaving me alone in the freezing shadow of the kitchen. Darkness swallowed the room, save for the faint glow of the streetlights outside. The floor tiles sucked the warmth right out of my skin. Every thirty seconds, a spasm crushed my abdomen. I pressed both palms against my belly, whispering through clenched teeth, praying to whatever angels existed in heaven to keep my little boy’s heart beating.
Just ten more minutes, sweetheart, I whispered into the dark floor. Grandpa promised. Grandpa never breaks a promise.
Upstairs, I could hear the muted hum of the television and Carter running a hot bath. They had literally gone to bed while I laid dying in a pool of my own amniotic fluid and blood. In their minds, I was an insignificant orphan of a blue-collar mechanic, someone whose dignity could be flushed down the toilet without consequence. Carter’s uncle was an influential deputy district attorney in Fairfax County; his family was deeply entrenched in local Virginia politics. To them, the law was a private country club, and I was just the hired help who got knocked up.
Then, the living room windows began to rattle.
At first, it sounded like distant thunder rumbling over the Potomac River. But within seconds, the vibration grew so intense that the chandelier in the foyer started shaking violently. Crystal pendants clinked together like frantic wind chimes.
A deafening, rhythmic mechanical roar slammed into the rooftop. Whump. Whump. Whump.
Upstairs, heavy footsteps hurried out of the master bedroom. Carter shouted down the hallway, "What in God's name is that? Did a gas main blow up?"
He rushed down the stairs in his silk bathrobe, his mother trailing behind him in her pink nightgown, clutching her pearl necklace in terror. "Carter! Look at the front lawn! What is happening to our yard?!"
Blinding, daylight-level spotlights flooded the entire two-story house from above. The beams pierced straight through the sheer curtains, illuminating every speck of dust in the air. Down in the kitchen, I dragged myself an inch closer to the back door, watching wind whip through the oak trees outside like a hurricane.
Two massive Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, completely unmarked save for dark federal insignias, hovered barely thirty feet above Carter's manicured emerald lawn. The violent downwash tore Eleanor's prize-winning rose bushes out of the soil, sending debris and mulch slamming against the double-paned front windows.
Before Carter could even reach for the front door handle, the heavy solid-oak doors were breached with a deafening boom.
Four men in tactical combat gear and Kevlar vests swarmed the foyer with weapon lights slicing through the dust. Their rifles were held at low-ready, their movements executing with robotic, terrifying efficiency.
"Federal agents! Do not move! Hands where we can see them!"
Carter shrieked like a frightened schoolgirl, falling backward onto his rear. "What is this?! You can't break into my home! I'm an attorney! Who authorized this?!"
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a charcoal suit stepped through the shattered doorway behind them, completely unfazed by the swirling storm outside. On his chest pinned a gold insignia, and behind him strode two naval medical officers carrying a trauma gurney and portable resuscitation kits.
"Where is she?" the man in the suit demanded.
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I managed to let out a weak, raspy sob from the kitchen. "I'm... I'm in here."
The lead paramedic was by my side in half a second, his combat boots splashing through the dark puddle on the tile. "We have the Admiral's daughter! Severe hemorrhage, fetal distress! Prep the IV lines and portable monitor, move, move!"
