Chapter 43 - Shadows Over the Shenandoah
The cool mountain air tasted like salvation as we broke through the camouflaged exhaust hatch on the northern ridge of Mount Weather. I pulled Arthur up onto the pine-needle carpet just as a violent shudder rumbled through the earth below us. The auxiliary generators in the lower bunker had detonated, sending a geyser of black soot and flame leaping thirty feet into the twilight sky from the very duct we had crawled through seconds earlier.
Arthur collapsed onto his hands and knees, retching up black phlegm. I didn't give him time to recover. I dragged him under the shadow of a dense copse of hemlock trees and tapped the encrypted tactical transponder clipped inside my service belt.
"Valkyrie Actual, this is Captain Vance. Authentication Code: Sierra-Seven-Niner-Echo. Do you read?"
A crackle of sharp static hissed in my ear, followed by the crisp, unshakeable tone of Admiral Sterling. *"Captain Vance! Thank God. NORAD just lit up with an unscheduled strategic telemetry request originating from the Blue Ridge redoubt. We thought you were lost with the bunker."*
"We're alive, Admiral. But Eleanor isn't in custody. The federal marshals at the airfield were her plants. She has Julian strapped into an experimental neural linkage at Site Raven-Nine—an old Cold War autonomous retaliatory silo."
*"Mother of God,"* Sterling breathed, the sound of shouting staff and rapid keystrokes echoing in the background of his command deck. *"Raven-Nine was decommissioned in 1989. It was supposed to be filled with six thousand tons of concrete!"*
"She didn't fill it; she modernized it," I said, gazing across the valley where a jagged limestone peak rose three miles to the northwest. Through the gathering mist, an unnatural shimmer flickered around the mountain's crown—a cloaking emitter distorting the twilight sky. "Julian has no operational agency left. She’s using his biometric signature and his synaptic implant—the one they installed to treat his cranial trauma from his fake war heroics—to spoof the Dead Hand launch codes."
"Marcus," Arthur spoke up, his voice trembling as he hauled himself against the trunk of a pine. "The weapons in Raven-Nine... they aren't nuclear."
I lowered the transponder and stared at him. "What did she put in those silos, Arthur?"
The General closed his eyes, tears carving pale tracks through the soot on his cheeks. "Project Eclipse. Chemical neuro-toxins suspended in aerosol hypersonic glide vehicles. Capable of blanketing the Eastern seaboard from Washington to Boston within twenty minutes of deployment. She told me the project was terminated twenty years ago when Julian was born. She lied to me, Marcus. She built a private doomsday device in the heart of Virginia."
May you like
*"Marcus, listen to me,"* Sterling's voice cut through the earpiece. *"I have a flight of two MH-60 Black Hawks from the 160th SOAR diverting to your position. ETA four minutes. But they cannot breach the airspace around Raven-Nine—automated radar-guided CIWS turrets are locking onto anything within five miles."*
"Keep them outside the perimeter," I replied, chambering a round in the service sidearm I had taken from the bunker's dead guard. "Arthur and I are going in on foot. We know the terrain. And Eleanor expects an army, not two broken Vances."
