Chapter 70 - The Thunder Run
Sterling fell to his knees, his hands clawing at his crushed windpipe, his face turning a deep, hypoxic purple. He looked up at the terminal monitor, seeing the green progress bar switch to a solid blue shield with the seal of the United States Navy.
"It's over, General," I said, looking down at him with no triumph, no anger—only the cold, exhausting weariness of a soldier who had reached the end of the line.
Through the shattered blast door, the sounds of fighting in the cavern were dying down. The Coast Guard cutter’s boarding teams were securing the wreckage of the Mark VI. Heavy boots were splashing through the shallow water of the slipway, accompanied by the urgent shouted commands of naval officers:
"Secure the perimeter! Search and rescue, move in! Commander Vance, do you read?"
Miller stood up from his terminal, letting out a long, ragged exhale as he lowered his sidearm to the console desk. He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot, his face gray beneath the dirt and cordite. "We stopped it, Marcus. We actually stopped it."
Eleanor was sitting on the floor beside the server rack, her back against the cold steel, staring at Sterling with a look of pure, frozen contempt. She reached up with a trembling, bloody hand and adjusted the torn collar of her dress, attempting—even in the ruins of her life—to gather the shredded fragments of her dignity.
"The family name is ruined," she whispered, looking at neither of us. "The trials... the press... everything we built."
"The family name was built on blood and lies, Mother," I said, turning away from her to face the doorway. "Robert will spend the rest of his life in ADX Florence. And if there is any justice left in this country, you’ll share an adjoining cell."
She didn't answer. She simply lowered her head into her hands and began to weep—not for the lives that had been lost, but for the ballroom she would never enter again.
Sterling let out a wet, rattling laugh from the floor, coughing up dark flecks of blood onto his medals.
I turned back to him, my eyes narrowing. "What's funny, Sterling?"
"You think... you stopped it," he wheezed, his voice a broken, raspy hiss through his damaged larynx. "You think... this was the whole plan."
My stomach dropped with a sickening, visceral dread. "What did you do?"
Sterling raised his right hand. Tucked between his bloody fingers was a small, black plastic detonator, its red LED light flashing with a rapid, hysterical pulse.
"The override... aborted Dover," Sterling grinned, his bloody teeth gleaming in the phosphor light. "But it unlocked... the tertiary silos. The ones your father built... off the books."
"Marcus!" Miller screamed, lunging toward the terminal.
The main topological map on the screen flickered, the green lines dissolving into blood-red text that flashed with blinding speed:
*WARNING: HARD-KILL PROTOCOL 'OMEGA-ZERO' INITIATED.*
*LOCATION: CHESAPEAKE SUB-BASIN SILO 4.*
*PAYLOAD: ATMOSPHERIC NEUTRALIZATION SYSTEM.*
*TIME TO IGNITION: 00:03:00.*
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"He didn't want to rule the country, Marcus," Miller yelled, his fingers tearing across the keys in a frantic, hopeless attempt to halt the sequence. "If he couldn't take command... he set it to scorch the earth! The silo is beneath the bay! Right under our feet!"
***
