Chapter 27 - Blood and Treason
The bunker in Fauquier County sat buried beneath fifty feet of red Virginia clay, disguised as an agricultural storage warehouse surrounded by double-row razor wire. Heavy rain turned the access roads into rivers of red mud as our three tactical vehicles breached the perimeter gates, tires throwing rooster tails of grit.
The outer security shack was abandoned, its monitors smashed and phone lines severed.
"Perimeter team was neutralized with non-lethal flash charges," Agent Vance reported, inspecting two unconscious federal agents lying in the mud. "They were ambushed by private contractors. Marcus Vance brought his own security detail."
"Form up on the reinforced blast door," I ordered, unholstering my service weapon.
Beside me, Owen Vance—flanked by two armed federal marshals—was brought forward in tactical zip-cuffs. His face was streaked with sweat and rain, his eyes wild with terror.
"Avery, you don't understand!" Owen stammered, teeth chattering against the biting wind. "Marcus was always the violent one! When we were kids, if he couldn't win a game, he burned the board! If he knows the perimeter is breached, he will trigger the self-destruct mechanism on the mainframe and bury everyone alive!"
I grabbed Owen by the lapels of his wet jacket, pulling him within inches of my eyes. "Then you are going to walk up to that intercom, Owen, and you are going to give him the override code only the two of you share. You are going to look into that camera and tell your brother that our mother has already surrendered the primary keys."
"He won't believe me!" Owen wept.
"He will believe you," I said coldly, "because if he doesn't open that door in the next sixty seconds, I will authorize a thermal shaped charge to blow this entrance into shrapnel, and you will be the first man through the breach."
Owen stared into my eyes, searching for a trace of the woman who used to overlook his family’s casual cruelty. He found nothing but the absolute, merciless resolve of a Flag Officer of the United States Navy.
"Okay... okay! I'll do it!" Owen choked out.
The marshals shoved him toward the blast door’s armored intercom panel. Owen pressed the button with a shaking finger.
"Marcus! It's Owen!" he screamed into the grill. "Listen to me! Avery has Mother in custody! The Pentagon has the offshore accounts frozen! The foreign buyers backed out—they know the SEALs boarded the freighter! It's over, Marcus! Open the door before they call an airstrike!"
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Silence stretched across the wet compound for three torturous seconds.
Then, with a heavy pneumatic hiss, the hydraulic locks inside the blast door groaned and began to turn.
