Chapter 8 - The Ambush in the Dark
Night fell over Redstone Air Base, but there was no sleep to be found.
The entire installation was operating under the glare of mobile halogen floodlights. Federal transport planes from the Department of Defense Special Investigations Division were landing every forty minutes, bringing in forensic accountants, structural engineers, and federal prosecutors.
Major General Evelyn Cross sat in a temporary briefing office inside Hangar 7, reviewing the final impound manifests.
Suddenly, the overhead lights flickered once. Twice. Then plunged into complete darkness.
The steady hum of the hangar’s auxiliary generators sputtered and died with a sickening mechanical groan.
Inside the briefing room, Evelyn moved purely on instinct. Before the emergency battery-operated red lights could even hum to life, she had drawn her 9mm sidearm and dropped low behind the heavy steel desk.
Outside the office door, the distinctive muffled pop of a suppressed firearm echoed through the cavernous hangar bay.
*Phut. Phut.*
Two rounds struck the reinforced steel door, punching through the thin metal framing.
"Clear the office!" a voice hissed from the darkness—a voice that did not belong to any military police officer on the base. It was cold, professional, and ruthless.
Evelyn’s eyes adapted instantly to the crimson glow of the emergency lights. She wasn't dealing with terrified airmen or corrupt brass.
Apex Aero-Defense was a multi-billion-dollar private entity with private security contracts across three continents. Victor Caldwell hadn't been the only corporate asset on site. They had sent a cleanup team to erase the server backups stored in the base logistics hub—and General Evelyn Cross was the only person standing between them and the hard evidence.
A shadow moved past the office’s frosted window.
Evelyn didn't wait for them to breach. She aimed three inches below the shadow’s center mass and squeezed the trigger twice.
*BANG! BANG!*
The deafening roar of her unsuppressed service weapon ripped through the silence of the hangar. Glass shattered outward. A heavy grunt followed as a mercenary dressed in sterile black tactical gear collapsed onto the concrete floor, his suppressed carbine clattering away.
Evelyn rolled out of the doorway, staying low beneath the shadow of a maintenance crane.
Across the bay, three more armed operatives were advancing toward the central logistics vault where Airman Miller’s hard drives and the seized turbine blades were stored. They moved in tactical formation, their night-vision goggles glowing like eerie green insect eyes in the dark.
"Target is mobile!" one of the mercenaries whispered over his comm-link. "Execute the General! Plant the incendiary charges on the vault!"
Evelyn’s mind calculated the tactical geometry in a fraction of a second. She was outnumbered three to one, armed only with a sidearm against tactical rifles, with no body armor.
She didn't need body armor. She had thirty years of combat experience and intimate knowledge of the hangar's layout.
Reaching up into the darkness, Evelyn gripped the manual release valve of the high-pressure nitrogen servicing line mounted along the hangar wall.
With a violent twist of her wrist, she cracked the valve wide open.
A deafening, pressurized roar—thousands of pounds of freezing liquid nitrogen gas—erupted across the floor, creating an impenetrable wall of freezing white fog and roaring sound.
The mercenaries' thermal and night-vision optics were instantly blinded by the flash-freezing cloud.
"I can't see! Thermal is whited out!" one of the gunmen shouted.
Evelyn stepped through the fog like a phantom.
She closed the distance on the nearest shooter, struck his rifle barrel aside with her forearm, and drove the butt of her pistol hard into his temple. The man dropped instantly. She spun, firing two rounds into the chest plate of the second operative, knocking him backward over a rolling tool chest.
The third mercenary panicked. He raised his rifle toward the fog, firing blindly in full auto.
Rounds sparked violently against the concrete and ricocheted off the steel undercarriage of an F-35.
*Click.*
His magazine ran dry.
Before he could drop the spent mag, Evelyn stepped out of the freezing mist directly behind him. The cold muzzle of her 9mm pressed firmly against the base of his skull.
"Drop the weapon," she whispered, her voice colder than the liquid nitrogen swirling around their boots. "Or your brains will be decorating that airframe."
The mercenary froze. His fingers slowly released the rifle, letting it clatter to the concrete.
"Hands behind your head. Down on your knees."
The man dropped onto his knees, trembling violently.
Ten seconds later, the heavy blast doors at the far end of the hangar were blown inward as a platoon of Base Security Police, led by the tactical response commander, stormed the bay with rifles raised and flashlights cutting through the mist.
"Federal Agents! Secure the area!"
The powerful searchlights illuminated the scene: two incapacitated mercenaries on the floor, one on his knees, and General Evelyn Cross standing tall amidst the drifting nitrogen smoke, her weapon holstered, her uniform unblemished.
The tactical captain ran up to her, breathless. "General Cross! Are you alright?!"
Evelyn glanced down at the kneeling mercenary, then back at the captain.
May you like
"I'm fine, Captain," she said coldly. "Apex just sent us the final piece of our RICO indictment. Bag them, secure their encrypted radios, and trace their extraction bird. No one leaves this valley alive without a federal warrant."
***
