Chapter 53 - The Broken Aegis
Automatic gunfire tore through the mist, the sharp, rhythmic crack of suppressed 5.56mm rounds pinging off the Greyhound’s aluminum fuselage like hail on a tin roof.
I didn't wait to see Hayes bleed out. I grabbed Abigail by the arm, dragging her across the slick tarmac as the headlights of the lead Suburban swerved violently toward us. The Cerberus operators were well-trained, but they were private contractors; they expected targets to surrender when cornered by corporate authority. They did not expect an infantry general to fight a point-blank delaying action in the dark.
I fired three rounds into the radiator grille of the lead Suburban, then two more into the driver's side windshield. The tempered glass spider-webbed into opaque white, forcing the driver to slam on the brakes, the heavy armored truck skidding sideways across the jet fuel slick.
"In here!" Abigail shouted.
She wasn't panicking. Weeks of terror in the Vance estate had burned away her fragility, leaving behind something terrifyingly sharp. She had already reached the heavy steel emergency door of Hangar Four, wedging a titanium multi-tool into the magnetic lock release.
A shower of orange sparks flared against her face as the electronic latch died, and she hauled the heavy door open just as a burst of automatic fire chewed through the corrugated siding an inch above her ear.
I threw myself through the opening behind her, slamming the heavy blast door shut and dropping the manual mechanical dogging bar into place. Outside, bullets hammered against the three-inch steel plate with the dull thud of lead against an anvil.
"We have two minutes before they bring up thermite or breach the ventilation ducts," I said, panting, dropping the empty magazine from my SIG and slapping a fresh one home from my vest. "Abigail, what did you see on the network before they pulled the plug?"
She dropped to her knees on the cold concrete floor of the hangar, the tactical slate humming as she bypassed the base's localized blackout using the submersible’s satellite cache.
"It’s not just San Francisco, Dad," she breathed, her fingers flying across the cracked glass. "Claire isn't running the Apex root server from an office building. That was a lie Hayes told to redirect you. The financial liquidation ledger is being broadcast from a hardened subterranean transmission site."
"Where?"
"Cheyenne Mountain," she said, looking up, her eyes wide with shock. "The decommissioned nuclear command bunker in Colorado. The Vance Corporation bought the auxiliary communication tunnels from the federal surplus board seven years ago during the infrastructure privatization act."
"Cheyenne Mountain was purged of strategic command equipment in 2006," I countered, checking the hangar’s interior. It was filled with decommissioned F/A-18 airframes stripped of avionics—hulks of gray aluminum resting in the shadows.
"They purged the military hardware, Dad," Abigail said, turning the slate toward me. "And Vance-Aegis installed six thousand quantum processing nodes in the deep granite. They don't need the President. They don't need Congress. The Apex Protocol is running autonomously on the bunker’s geothermal backup. Every sovereign treasury that defaults is immediately re-indexed as an asset of the Apex Directorate. The countdown hits zero in sixty-nine hours. When it does, the ledger permanently seals. The entire Western banking system becomes Claire Vance’s private estate."
"And Julian?" I asked, my blood running cold at the thought of her ex-husband. "You saw him in the control chamber before Tartarus fell. Did he drown?"
Abigail's hands froze over the screen. A dark, visceral shiver ran through her frame, but she forced her head up.
"Julian didn't die in the ocean, Dad," she whispered. "He took the primary escape capsule twenty minutes before the hull breached. He’s already in Colorado. He’s waiting for us. He knows we can't let the ledger lock."
A heavy explosion shook the steel door behind us. The smell of burning magnesium began to seep through the seals—a chemical cutting torch was already eating through the hinges.
"They're through in sixty seconds," I muttered.
I looked into the dim cavern of Hangar Four. In the far corner, half-hidden beneath an oil-stained canvas tarp, sat a twin-engine UH-1Y Venom utility helicopter belonging to the base's search-and-rescue detachment.
"Abigail," I said, pulling her to her feet. "Do you still remember how to hot-wire a military turbine starter from your engineering days at Fort Belvoir?"
She looked at the helicopter, then at the melting steel door. A grim, predatory smile touched her bruised lips.
May you like
"Dad," she said, pulling a wire-stripping tool from her belt. "I designed the auxiliary harness for that bird. Get to the cockpit. I'll have the engines turning before their boots hit the floor."
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