Chapter 29 - The Breach at Sub-Level 3
"Vance!" Eleanor’s voice tore out of her throat in a ragged, animalistic wail that shook with pure agony. She fought against my grip, scratching at my tactical vest, her tears cutting clean lines through the soot and rain on her face. "My boy! Vance! Marcus, save him! Go get him!"
"He's gone, Eleanor," I said without looking at her, my eyes locked on the advancing muzzle flashes in the smoke. "He was dead the minute he signed those manifests."
"Miller, push them back!" Hayes yelled from behind the pillar, his pistol barking three times in rapid succession. One of the operators staggered, caught in the shoulder, but his body armor absorbed the kinetic shock, and he adjusted his aim instantly toward Hayes's position.
I stood up from behind the elevator coaming, fully exposing myself to the incoming fire, and dumped the rest of my thirty-round magazine straight into the center operator's chest and neck. The high-velocity rounds chewed through his ceramic plates, driving him backward into the debris.
"Elevator! Now!" I barked.
Miller lunged across the open space, sliding into the freight cage and slamming the emergency override lever. Hayes followed, clutching the satellite terminal against his chest, his uniform soaked in grease and blood.
I grabbed Eleanor by the scruff of her sodden coat, hoisting her off her feet with one arm, and threw her into the cage just as a volley of armor-piercing fire shattered the control box on the wall behind me.
"Marcus, jump!" Miller yelled.
I dove backward through the closing scissor-gate of the elevator as the heavy steel floor dropped out from under us. Bullets pinged harmlessly off the steel mesh ceiling of the cage as we descended rapidly into the cold, concrete throat of Sub-Level 3.
The descent was deafening, the grinding gears of the old Cold War hoist echoing against the narrow reinforced shaft. Above us, the sounds of gunfire faded, replaced by the deep, rhythmic hum of massive ventilation turbines and the subterranean chill of the bunker below.
Eleanor sat huddled in the corner of the elevator floor, her hands pressed against her face, rocking back and forth in total psychological collapse. "He killed him... they killed Vance... my beautiful boy..."
"Your beautiful boy sold weapons to the men who slaughtered American soldiers," Hayes said, leaning against the cage wall, his breathing ragged. He looked down at the satellite terminal. "Marcus... we have ninety seconds before the strike flight drops the bunker-busters on the hangar above. If we're down here when that ordnance hits, the shaft will collapse. We'll be buried alive under two hundred feet of reinforced concrete."
"Where does the tunnel lead?" I asked, stripping another empty magazine from my belt and slamming my final fresh one into the receiver.
"It connects to the old Strategic Air Command command bunker two miles east," Hayes said, wiping blood from his forehead. "Under the river. But the blast doors at the end of the corridor require biometric clearance."
The elevator slammed into the concrete floor of Sub-Level 3 with a bone-jarring crash. The gates rattled open.
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Standing on the subterranean platform, bathed in the sickly yellow glare of emergency sodium lights, was a squad of six men in unmarked desert combat uniforms—not Cleanslate operators, but veterans bearing the patch of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment.
And at the center of the squad stood a man with three stars pinned to his combat collar.
