Chapter 50 - Silo Ignition
The wall of heat hit me like a solid oak beam, knocking me to my knees. The air tasted of pure sulfur and melting copper, searing the lining of my throat with every desperate breath.
Below me, the *Eclipse-I* missile was a pillar of blinding, terrible sun. The flame trench Arthur had flooded was boiling violently; millions of gallons of water had turned instantly into high-pressure superheated steam, which was the only thing preventing the rocket from disintegrating on the pad. But the pressure within the enclosed silo was approaching critical limits. The steel bulkheads were warping, popping their two-inch rivets like rifle fire.
I wrapped my uniform tunic around my face, soaked with remaining water from my canteen, and charged out onto the narrow steel catwalk.
The handrails were so hot they melted the rubberized palms of my tactical gloves. Beneath my boots, the metal floor buckled and groaned. Fifty feet away, mounted on the rock wall of the mountain, sat the heavy iron lever labeled: *EMERGENCY EXHAUST MANIFOLD — MANUAL MECHANICAL BYPASS.*
Ten feet.
A rivet blew from the ceiling, grazing my shoulder and tearing flesh. The deafening roar of the rocket engine felt like it was tearing my eardrums apart from the inside; warm blood trickled down my neck from both ears.
Twenty feet.
My vision began to tunnel into blackness as oxygen was sucked out of the chamber by the colossal combustion engine below. My skin blistered through my undershirt. I stumbled, fell to one knee, the metal grating burning through the denim of my trousers.
*Get up, Marcus.*
I heard the voice in my head. Not the voice of my father, and certainly not Eleanor’s. It was the voice of the men I left in the sand at Al-Qaim—the men whose names were etched into the Silver Star I had left behind in the dirt of that Virginia bunker.
I lunged forward with the last ounce of strength in my marrow, throwing my arms around the heavy iron lever.
The metal bit into my palms, smelling of charred flesh. With a guttural, primal scream that was lost entirely in the roar of the apocalypse, I threw my entire body weight downward.
*CLANG-CLANG-CRUNCH.*
The mechanical counterweights deep inside the mountain granite finally yielded. Above, three thousand tons of blast-doors split down the middle with the shriek of tearing tectonic plates, opening a sixty-foot vent directly to the midnight sky.
The colossal plume of exhaust fire, held down like an over-pressurized bomb, found its release. A geyser of pure white flame roared upward through the open ceiling, illuminating the Virginia mountain range for fifty miles in every direction. The sudden drop in ambient pressure created a massive vacuum, sucking the toxic smoke and searing heat up into the heavens.
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I collapsed onto the catwalk, gasping for the cool mountain air that rushed down the open shaft like a blessing. Below me, the rocket engine exhausted the last of its booster stage propellant and died, leaving the silo in a ringing, smoking, surreal silence broken only by the crackle of burning electrical cables.
I lay on the scorched metal, staring up through the smoking hole in the mountain at the cold, quiet stars.
