Part 2
The heavy boot of the military police officer pressed agonizingly into my shoulder blade, pinning me to the floor while Dr. Aris moved in to deliver the fatal dose of epinephrine to the convulsing Admiral.
I didn’t have time to argue. I let my body go completely limp, feigning surrender for a fraction of a second. The guard’s weight shifted slightly, anticipating my compliance. That was all the leverage I needed.
I violently rolled my hips, wrapping my free leg around the guard’s ankle, and executed a brutal Krav Maga sweep. The massive officer shouted as his legs were kicked out from under him, crashing heavily into a catering table. I snapped upward, my hand closing around Dr. Aris’s wrist right as the epi-pen descended toward Sterling’s leg. I wrenched his arm backward with a sickening pop, ripping the auto-injector from his grasp and tossing it across the room.
“Are you blind?” I yelled, grabbing Aris by the lapels of his suit. “Look at his pupils! Look at the puncture wound on his hand! He’s not having a stroke, he’s paralyzed!”
I dove into my scattered medical kit, my fingers bypassing the cardiac meds and closing over a vial of Atropine. I didn’t bother swabbing the skin. I jammed the needle directly through the thick fabric of Admiral Sterling’s dress trousers and pushed the plunger to the hilt, flooding his system with the counteragent.
The room held its breath. Four military police officers had their sidearms drawn and aimed squarely at my chest. General Hoffman was standing protectively in front of General Braun, his eyes darting between me and the dying American commander.
One second. Two seconds. Three.
Admiral Sterling’s back arched violently off the marble floor. He sucked in a massive, ragged lungful of air, coughing violently as the paralysis in his diaphragm broke. His natural skin tone began to battle the horrifying purplish hue. He was alive.
“Stand down!” General Hoffman barked at the guards, his booming voice echoing off the high ceilings. He pointed a trembling finger at me. “Who are you? A simple nurse does not speak operational German and combat-triage a poisoning.”
“My name is Maya Vance,” I breathed, slowly standing up and keeping my hands visible. “Former Field Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency. The Admiral was injected with a synthetic paralytic, likely passed during a handshake or brushed against him in the crowd. And the man who orchestrated this just walked out the door.”
I spun around. The spot near the heavy oak doors where Dieter Vogel had been standing was empty.
“Lock down the base! No one leaves this wing!” I commanded, pointing at the stunned head of security. Before he could respond, I bolted through the exit doors, my sensible nursing shoes slipping wildly on the polished floor.
I sprinted down the hushed, carpeted corridors of the VIP wing. Dieter was smart; he wouldn’t head for the main entrance where the checkpoints were. He would go for the service exits. I rounded a corner toward the kitchen and loading dock, the heavy scent of industrial cleaner hitting my nose.
Through the small window of the double swinging doors, I saw him. Dieter was hurriedly shoving his way toward the loading bay. But he wasn’t alone. Standing by a parked catering van was a massive, thick-necked man wearing a chef’s coat.
I burst through the doors into the humid night air of the loading dock. “Dieter!” I shouted.
The translator jumped, spinning around. The man in the chef’s coat didn’t flinch. He simply reached under his white apron and pulled out a suppressed 9mm pistol. This was the assassin. Dieter was just the mouthpiece; this guy was the muscle who actually delivered the poison.
The assassin raised the weapon. I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself sideways behind a stack of metal beer kegs just as a muffled pfft-pfft sounded, sparks showering the concrete where my head had been a millisecond before.
“Kill her!” Dieter screamed, his slick veneer completely shattered. “We need to go, now!”
I heard the heavy, deliberate footsteps of the assassin closing in on my position. I had no gun. I was armed only with the heavy titanium trauma shears still clipped to my scrub pocket. I unclipped them, feeling the cold metal in my palm. The footsteps stopped right on the other side of the kegs. The assassin was hunting me. The danger was palpable, the metallic taste of adrenaline flooding my mouth as I readied myself to fight for my life in the shadows.
Part 3
The shadow of the assassin stretched across the damp concrete, the elongated silhouette of his suppressed pistol leading the way. He stepped around the stack of kegs, his weapon raised, expecting to shoot downward at a cowering nurse.
Instead, I exploded upward from a crouch. I didn’t go for the gun; I went for his base. I drove my shoulder straight into his kneecap with all my momentum. His leg buckled with a sharp crack, and he grunted in pain, his shot going wide and burying itself into the brick wall above us.
As he fell forward, I grabbed the wrist holding the gun, using his downward momentum to slam his arm against the steel edge of a nearby dumpster. The pistol clattered into the darkness. But the man was a professional. Without missing a beat, he drove his massive forehead into my nose.
Pain exploded behind my eyes, blinding me. I stumbled backward, tasting copper. Through my blurred vision, I saw him reach into his boot and pull out a six-inch combat knife. He lunged, thrusting the blade directly at my stomach.
I parried the strike with my left forearm, the cold steel slicing a shallow gash through my scrub sleeve. With my right hand, I gripped the titanium trauma shears like a dagger. As he pulled back for a second strike, I stepped inside his guard and drove the blunt, heavy tip of the shears directly into the brachial plexus nerve cluster on the side of his neck.
His eyes rolled back. His nervous system short-circuited in an instant, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of dead weight, entirely unconscious.
Panting, clutching my bleeding arm, I looked up. Dieter was frantically trying to start the catering van. I sprinted across the loading dock, yanked the driver’s side door open, grabbed him by his silk tie, and hauled him forcefully onto the pavement. He scrambled backward like a crab, whimpering as I stood over him.
“Please!” Dieter begged, putting his hands up. “I’m just a translator!”
“You’re a traitor,” I spat, dragging him up by his collar.
Ten minutes later, I pushed Dieter through the double doors back into the ballroom. The room was heavily guarded now. Admiral Sterling was sitting up in a chair, looking pale and furious, an oxygen mask over his face. General Hoffman and General Braun stood nearby, arms crossed.
I shoved Dieter forward. He tripped and fell to his knees directly in front of the Admiral.
“Here is your translator, gentlemen,” I announced, breathing heavily, blood still dripping steadily from my left sleeve onto the marble floor. “He was trying to flee with the man who poisoned the Admiral.”
“Speak,” General Hoffman commanded, his voice rumbling like thunder. “Why would you alter the encryption clauses? Why attempt to assassinate the Admiral?”
Dieter looked at the armed guards, then at my cold, unforgiving stare. He broke completely. “Vanguard Dynamics,” he sobbed, his face buried in his hands. “They approached me two months ago. They offered me one million dollars. If this joint treaty succeeded, they would lose out on the domestic defense contracts for the next ten years. I was supposed to ruin the translation, make you hate each other, and if that failed… the assassin was the backup plan to cause an international incident.”
A stunned silence fell over the room. The geopolitical disaster had been nothing more than a case of corporate greed, paid for in blood.
Admiral Sterling slowly pulled the oxygen mask off his face. His arrogance was completely gone, replaced by a profound, humbling realization. He looked at me, taking in my torn scrubs, my bleeding arm, and the fierce fire in my eyes.
“Nurse Vance,” Sterling rasped, his voice weak but sincere. “You… you saved my life. You saved this entire alliance. I insulted you. I nearly had you arrested. I owe you the deepest apology a man can give.”
“Just remember next time, Admiral,” I said softly, grabbing a piece of gauze to press against my arm. “The people in the background are usually the ones keeping you alive.”
General Hoffman stepped forward. He reached into his immaculate uniform pocket and produced a heavy, dark metal challenge coin—an elite, unofficial unit commendation. He pressed it into my palm and closed my fingers around it. “Germany owes you a great debt, Maya Vance. True warriors do not always wear uniforms.”
The next morning, as I sat in the hospital breakroom patching up my arm, my burner phone rang. It was the Director of the DIA. He had already read the debrief. He offered me my old rank, my old clearance, and double the pay to come back to the shadows.
I looked at the sterile, brightly lit hospital corridor. I listened to the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitors, the sound of life continuing, fighting, enduring.
“Tell the Director thanks,” I smiled into the phone. “But I’ve got a double shift in the trauma ward tomorrow. My patients need me.”
I hung up, tossed the phone into the trash, and walked back out onto the floor.
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