Chapter 9 - THE SIEGE OF ANNANDALE
"Stay in this room!" Kane roared, drawing his weapon and blocking the main double doors. "Nobody moves! Foreperson, gather your notes! This is a deliberate diversion!"
Through the reinforced vision panels in the grand jury doors, we could see smoke billowing down the marbled hallway—not the black, toxic smoke of an electrical fire, but the thick, chalky white fog of military-grade CS gas.
"They aren't trying to evacuate the building," I said, my pulse spiking. "They're clearing the floors so they can retrieve the physical drive before it enters the clerk's official record."
Suddenly, the glass pane of the door shattered inward. A flashbang grenade rolled across the carpet.
"Down!" I screamed, lunging with my good arm to knock the court reporter beneath her heavy oak desk.
The detonation was concussive, a deafening white roar that shook the plaster from the ceiling and tore the air from my lungs. Through the ringing in my ears, the tactical team struck. Two men in unmarked black assault gear, wearing full-face respirators, burst into the room. Their submachine guns were leveled directly at the evidence table where the hard drives lay.
Kane fired twice from behind a counsel pillar, dropping the lead operative instantly. The second shooter returned fire, sweeping the ceiling tiles in a desperate arc.
Ignoring the blinding agony in my shattered shoulder, I kicked the heavy wooden lectern across the floorboards. It slammed into the gunman's knees, destabilizing his stance. In that half-second window, Norris—unarmed, wearing nothing but his civilian courage—dove forward, tackling the intruder to the floor and pinning his weapon against the hardwood.
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I stepped over the fallen operative, planted my boot on the gun's receiver, and leveled my sidearm at the man's throat. "Take off the mask," I commanded.
Norris ripped away the respirator. The face beneath belonged to Lieutenant Miller—one of the private security supervisors Finch had stationed in the courthouse lobby.
