Chapter 10 - The Price of Loyalty
Captain Sterling stood in the glare of the suburban's halogen headlights, his heavy rain poncho glistening like obsidian. The golden badge on his collar caught the yellow beams. Behind him, two armed men in sterile black tactical gear remained positioned beside the vehicle’s open sliding doors.
"Set the girl down, Mateo," Sterling said, his voice flat, carry over the rhythm of the falling rain. "You’ve done an admirable job surviving the night, but this operation is well above your pay grade."
"You sold out the precinct," Mateo said, keeping Elena shielded behind his frame, his service pistol leveled directly between Sterling’s eyes. "Cole didn't breach the front desk with superior firepower. You unlocked the back security gates for them."
"Nobody sold out anything," Sterling replied calmly, taking a slow step forward. "Project Eidolon was funded by state contractors who provide eighty percent of this department's tactical grants. We aren't developing bioweapons, Mateo. We were developing metabolic stabilizers for battlefield trauma. Your brother David stole proprietary property worth two hundred million dollars. He compromised national security for a sentimental crusade."
"He was protecting a human being!" Mateo shouted. "They turned a pregnant woman into a chemical vat! They harvested an infant!"
"The infant survives if you hand Elena over," Sterling stated without a trace of remorse. "The child holds the biometric key—David coded the synthesis formula to her retinal pattern using an ophthalmic imprint before he was eliminated. We don't need the baby's life; we only need the blood samples already drawn at the military lab. But without the decryption key stored in that girl's eyes, the entire research project collapses."
Elena gripped the back of Mateo’s uniform shirt with tiny, frantic fingers. "Don't let them take my eyes, Uncle Mateo," she sobbed.
Uncle. The word echoed like a thunderclap inside Mateo’s chest.
"You're not touching her," Mateo said.
"Look around you, Cruz," Sterling sighed, raising his hand. The red laser sights of two concealed snipers mounted on the railway gantry instantly snapped onto Mateo’s chest and forehead. "You have no cover. You have no backup. You have three seconds to walk away and keep your pension."
Mateo didn't drop his gun. Instead, he reached down to his duty belt with his left hand and pressed the manual test button on the municipal railroad control box beside the track.
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A deafening horn blasted through the rain as a two-hundred-ton automated diesel switcher engine surged forward on the bypass rail, crashing through the yard barrier directly between Mateo and Sterling's firing line.
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