Chapter 33 - The Breaching Protocol
Sterling wasn't waiting twelve hours.
Through the security feed patched into an auxiliary monitor, I watched four operatives in heavy fire-retardant suits rolling pressurized tanks of oxygen and magnesium wire toward the outer titanium door. A blinding blue-white flame erupted from the nozzle of their thermal lance, biting greedily into the six-inch forged steel plate. The heat through the cameras was so intense that the exterior lens began to warp and bubble.
"They brought industrial cutting rigs," I shouted over the blare of the klaxon. "Arthur, they’re going to burn right through!"
Arthur didn't panic. He reached into his coat and produced an old, dented silver flask, unscrewed the cap with his teeth, and took a long, burning swallow.
"Forty minutes is a lifetime in a fire fight, kid," he said, pulling himself up onto his feet by gripping the edge of the mainframe. His face was entirely devoid of color now, but his eyes burned with a lethal clarity. "This vault wasn't designed to be a safe. It was designed to be a trap."
He shuffled toward a narrow utility corridor at the rear of the mainframe room, gesturing for me to follow. The air back here was thicker, heavy with the sharp smell of ozone and hydraulic fluid.
"The General knew they’d come with lances if they ever traced you here," Arthur explained, his shoulder scraping against the rock wall as he moved. "There’s an auxiliary egress shaft. It runs through the old vertical drainage well we used in seventy-four to run water out of the lower shaft. It terminates directly beneath the floorboards of the study—the room your mother and father are currently tearing to pieces."
"We're going back up?" I asked, incredulous. "Into the house? They have a dozen men up there!"
"Sterling has his combat team down here on the catwalk," Arthur said, reaching the foot of a rusted vertical iron ladder that vanished into a black chimney above. "Upstairs, you’ve only got his logistics people and those two pathetic scavengers you called your folks. But you aren't going up empty-handed."
He turned, reaching into an open equipment locker bolted to the bedrock. He pulled out a heavy canvas satchel containing an armored, military-spec hard drive cased in waterproof rubber, along with a dull black Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol. He thrust the gun into my hands.
"The drive contains the core encryption hash," Arthur said. "Without it, whatever Sterling cuts out of this vault is nothing but scrambled electronic garbage. Take it, climb the ladder, and don't stop until you reach the surface."
I looked at the ladder, then down at Arthur. He wasn't reaching for the rungs.
"What about you?" I demanded.
May you like
"I weigh two hundred pounds, Mark, and I’ve got an Agency hollow-point expanding in my right lung," he smiled faintly, blood coating his teeth. "I wouldn't make it up three rungs before I peeled off and broke my neck. My job was to get the key to the lock. Your job is to survive."
***
