Chapter 67 - Infiltration of the Grid
The sensation of falling from eighty-five thousand feet is not flight; it is a violent, freezing plunge through the void of space.
The sound was an all-consuming roar of air tearing across the ceramic plates of our suits. Frost instantly formed on the outer glass of our visors as we plummeted through the stratospheric jet stream at two hundred and forty miles per hour. The altimeter on my heads-up display was a spinning blur of red numbers: *70,000... 60,000... 50,000.*
Through the heads-up display, the green tracking reticles showed Catherine, Miller, and me in a tight delta formation.
Below us, the cloud layer approached at terrifying speed—a wall of gray vapor that swallowed us whole at thirty thousand feet. The turbulence buffeted us like ragdolls, the air density increasing rapidly, hammering against our flight limbs.
*10,000 feet.*
*5,000 feet.*
The clouds parted, and the sprawling, dark expanse of Loudoun County materialized below us. I could see the familiar wooded hills, the winding silver ribbon of the Potomac River, and the grand, neoclassical silhouette of the Vance estate—a massive brick-and-stone compound sitting on eighty acres of manicured forest.
The estate was dark, save for the sweep of high-powered infrared searchlights patrolling the perimeter fence. Three armored Suburbans were parked in the circular driveway, their engines idling.
*1,500 feet.*
"Arming canopies," I announced through the throat mic.
*800 feet.*
*POP-CRACK.*
The small drogue chutes fired, instantly followed by the black rectangular ram-air canopies. The deceleration was violent, kicking the wind out of my lungs as the harness bit hard into my collarbones. We floated in absolute silence, the stealth canopies generating zero radar return, skimming over the tops of the seventy-foot oak trees guarding the eastern lawn.
I dropped my steering toggles, flaring hard ten feet above the grass. My boots hit the wet turf, rolling into the shock absorption before popping back up to a low crouch, rifle already raised.
Behind me, Miller and Catherine landed within seconds, executing clean tactical flares, collapsing their silk canopies and burying them beneath the thick rhododendron bushes beside the perimeter wall.
I scanned the grounds through my night-vision optic. The thermal signature of two guards appeared near the glass conservatory—contract mercenaries wearing balaclavas and tactical body armor, carrying short-barreled automatic weapons.
"They're sweeping the perimeter," Miller whispered, kneeling beside me with his suppressed weapon trained on the nearest thermal silhouette. "They’re preparing demolition charges. Look at the foundation walls."
He was right. Small, orange thermal rectangles were affixed every twenty feet along the exterior stone base of the house. C-4 plastic explosive blocks with remote radio triggers.
"Denise wasn't lying," Catherine hissed, her breathing ragged inside her helmet. "They're rigging the whole place to blow."
"Where is our father?" I asked.
Catherine tapped her wrist-mounted sensor console, which synchronized with the home's subterranean biometric monitoring grid—a system our mother had secretly wired into the structural steel decades ago. A faint, single heartbeat icon pulsed in the lower left quadrant of the blueprint.
"The study," Catherine said, her voice shaking slightly. "The master study on the second floor. He’s alone."
"And the server room?"
"Under the library cellar. Access code requires my retinal scan and the key card you took from Fort Meade."
I tapped Miller’s shoulder. "Miller, you take the perimeter charges. Find their receiver hub, cut the detonator signals, and give us a clean exit. If those charges go off while we're inside, this house becomes our tomb."
"Consider it done," Miller said, unholstering a wire-cutting multitool and fading into the shadows of the garden like a ghost.
May you like
I looked at Catherine. "Rifles up. We breach through the wine cellar exterior bulkhead. Move."
***
