Chapter 8 - Under Lockdown
“Cover your eyes!” Elena yelled.
A blinding white flash tore through the darkness, accompanied by a concussive shockwave that rattled the fillings in their teeth: *CRACK!*
The high-pitched ringing in their ears was instantaneous, but Elena had already turned her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Operating purely on muscle memory and spatial awareness, she pivoted around the corner of the doorframe the second the light faded.
Two mercenaries were charging through the breach, their carbines aimed at the dazed sergeants.
Elena didn't hesitate. She squeezed the trigger of her SIG Sauer three times.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
Her rounds struck the first operative in the center-mass triangle above his ballistic plate; he dropped instantly. General Vance fired simultaneously, his heavy nine-millimeter rounds dropping the second man before he could raise his muzzle.
“Clear!” Vance bellowed through the smoke.
“More coming from the south stairs!” Major Davis yelled, peering at the tactical feed on his battery-powered tablet. “Sir, they’ve set a thermite charge on the backup data vault! If that burns, the operational logs for Iron Veil are gone!”
“That’s their extraction route,” Elena said, her eyes flashing in the crimson emergency lighting. “Hangar Four connects to the subterranean drainage tunnel that leads outside the perimeter fence. There’s an unmarked twin-engine turboprop waiting on the secondary runway—I saw it when I landed this morning.”
She looked down at Marcus Sterling, who was cowering beneath the metal table, his hands wrapped over his head, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Sterling knows the access codes to the drainage tunnel,” Elena said. “That’s why they’re here for him. He’s their ticket through the biometric perimeter.”
General Vance grabbed Sterling by the scruff of his neck, hauling him to his feet like a rag doll. “Move, you coward! You’re going to walk in front of us.”
“No! Please!” Sterling screamed, his teeth chattering in terror. “They’ll kill me! They won’t leave witnesses!”
“Then you should have thought about that before you put them on the payroll,” Vance growled, shoving the barrel of his M17 into Sterling’s spine.
With Sergeant Miller taking the point, his carbine sweeping the smoky hallway, the small group moved out of the SCIF. The air was thick with the chemical stench of burned powder and melting insulation. The emergency lights cast long, macabre shadows across the subterranean corridor.
Around the corner, three more hostiles lay dead—neutralized by the base security team before they had been overrun.
“We have sixty seconds before the emergency generator kicks the perimeter defenses back online,” Major Davis warned, trailing closely behind Elena with the encrypted laptop clutched to his chest. “Once the base goes into total lockdown, nobody leaves this installation alive.”
“Then we end this in the hangar,” Elena said, her voice steady, her eyes cold as slate.
They moved swiftly down the access tunnel toward Hangar Four. The heavy metal doors at the end of the corridor were already ajar, glowing with the natural morning light filtering in from the airfield above.
Suddenly, a heavy burst of machine-gun fire ripped through the metal walls of the tunnel.
*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
Sergeant Hayes took a round to the shoulder, spinning around and slamming into the wall with a grunt of agony. Sergeant Miller immediately laid down covering fire, emptying half his magazine into the hangar doorway.
“Go! Go! Push through!” Vance roared.
Elena darted through the threshold, rolling across the smooth concrete floor of Hangar Four, coming to rest behind the massive landing gear of a C-130 Hercules transport plane. She raised her weapon, scanning the cavernous space.
At the far end of the hangar, the massive bay doors were wide open, revealing the rain-swept tarmac outside.
Standing beside an idling, unmarked black Gulfstream jet was a man in civilian combat clothes, holding a satellite detonator in one hand and a modified submachine gun in the other.
It was Colonel Viktor Vance—no relation to the general—a cashiered former private security commander who had run logistics for the cartel in Istanbul.
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And he was waiting for Marcus Sterling.
***
