Chapter 9 - The Last Order
Z
I dropped to my knees beside my father. My military firearm went back into its holster, and my hands immediately went to his wound.
The bullet had entered the right upper quadrant of his chest. Blood was spurting rhythmically—a damaged subclavian artery. Without immediate surgical intervention, he had less than ninety seconds before his brain starved of oxygen.
I pressed both hands firmly against the wound, placing my full weight over his chest to apply arterial pressure.
"Hold... hold on," I gritted out, my hands slick with his blood.
Richard looked up at me. The rage in his eyes was gone, replaced by a sudden, terrifying confusion. He looked down at my hands, covered in his blood, pressing desperately to keep him alive.
"Why...?" Richard gasped, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. "Why are you... saving me...?"
"Because I'm a doctor, Richard," I said, my voice shaking despite my absolute physical control over his pressure points. "And because unlike you, I don't decide who lives and who dies based on whether they are useful to me."
He stared at me, his eyes wide, searching my face as if looking for something he had missed for thirty-eight years. He saw no hatred in my eyes. He saw no victory. He saw only the cold, tireless dedication of a person who cared for human life—even the life of her worst enemy.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the basement stairs.
"Evelyn! Clear!" Thomas Whitmore’s voice echoed through the hallway, followed by the heavy tactical boots of six FBI Hostage Rescue Team operators wearing full body armor.
"In here!" I shouted back, never easing the pressure on Richard’s chest. "Guns down! I need a medical kit! Sucking chest wound, arterial bleed! Get an MEDEVAC helicopter on the lawn now!"
The tactical operators swarmed the vault, securing the wounded contractor and clearing the thermite charges. Two military paramedics dropped their trauma kits beside me, opening field dressings and tourniquets.
"Colonel, let us take over," one of the paramedics said, placing his hands near mine.
"Apply the chest seal first," I instructed precisely, my voice calm and commanding. "Hold this pressure point on the collarbone while I slide the packing gauze in. Do not release pressure until the line is set!"
Together, we stabilized Richard enough to lift him onto a folding stretcher. As the paramedics strapped him in, Richard reached out with his right hand—weak, trembling, and covered in gray ash.
He grabbed my forearm. His grip was frail, devoid of the iron strength he had used to rule our lives for decades.
"Evelyn..." he whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the portable oxygen unit. "Arthur... Arthur knew..."
"Knew what, Richard?" I asked, leaning down near his mouth.
"He knew... you were... the only General... left in this family..."
His eyes closed as the paramedics wheeled the stretcher out of the vault, racing up the stairs toward the waiting medical helicopter hovering above Oakridge Manor.
I stood alone in the center of the vault. My hands were covered in red. My suit was ruined. The air was thick with the smell of copper, smoke, and burnt powder.
Thomas Whitmore stepped into the doorway, looking around the room before turning his gaze to me. He pulled a clean white cloth from his pocket and held it out.
"It's over, Evelyn," Whitmore said quietly. "The federal marshals have secured the executive board members in D.C. The press has been briefed. Your father will survive the surgery, but he will spend the rest of his life in a federal medical facility."
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I took the cloth and slowly wiped the blood from my fingers.
"He thought power was something you take from people, Thomas," I said, looking at the empty safe where my grandfather’s files had rested. "He never understood that real power is what people give you when they trust you to save them."
