Chapter 92 - The Silo Inversion
At Mach 5.2, the continent blurred beneath us like a smear of dark charcoal and scattered embers. Inside the cramped cabin of the transport, the heat from atmospheric friction radiated through the composite bulkheads, filling the air with the smell of scorched ceramic and pure oxygen.
"Eighteen minutes remaining," Vance announced, his hands steady as he loaded thirty-round magazines of tungsten-cored armor-piercing ammunition and distributed them to the operators. "NORAD ground radar confirms the outlier facility north of Colorado Springs has completely severed its fiber links to the main Cheyenne complex. They've established a private perimeter. Two hundred armed contractors wearing unmarked black multicam. Heavy mortar emplacements, mobile anti-air batteries, and point-defense Gatling systems covering the access roads."
"Mercenaries bought and paid for with the Sterling trust funds," Abigail said, her fingers flying across the holographic projection of the silo blue-prints. Her eyes were sharp, scanning layers of architectural deception. "Look here. This isn't standard military design. Harrison Sterling’s shell company, Avernus Infrastructure, renovated Silos One through Twelve in 2018 under the guise of deep-bore geothermal cooling. They installed high-speed mag-rail elevators connecting the silo blast aprons directly to an abandoned mine shaft five hundred feet below."
"Which means," I said, tracing the subterranean line with my combat knife, "they don't intend to stay inside the mountain after launch. They intend to burn the plains, fry the military satellites with the electromagnetic pulse from the upper-atmosphere detonations, and evacuate through the southern rail corridor toward the Mexican border while the nation collapses into pure anarchy."
"The ultimate fire sale," Vance spat. "Wiping the board clean."
"They're going to learn that fire burns both ways," I said.
I hit the cabin intercom button. "Pilot, what’s our drop angle?"
"We’re two minutes out from the drop zone, General! High-altitude, low-opening profile. Radar shows their surface-to-air tracking radars are active on the ridgeline. If we drop below thirty thousand feet in this transport, we take a Patriot missile to the cockpit!"
"Then we don't drop the transport," I said. "We drop the sled."
In the rear of the aircraft sat a rapid-insertion low-observable pod—an unpowered glide sled designed for black-ops insertions into hot anti-air envelopes. It had no transponder, no radar signature, and no margin for error.
"Lock in," I barked at the team.
Abigail didn't hesitate. She threw her pack into the sled's forward equipment bay and strapped herself into the auxiliary terminal seat. There was no terror in her demeanor, only the lethal focus of a survivor who understood that passivity meant death.
"Uplink locked to STRATCOM's emergency transponder," Abigail called out over the rush of depressurizing air. "I’ve bypassed the perimeter firewalls, but the launch sequencer is counting down on an internal quartz clock. Even if I fry their network from above, the firing pins will hit the solid-fuel boosters in sixteen minutes unless we sever the master umbilical cable in Silo Seven."
"Then Silo Seven is where we bleed them," I said.
The cargo ramp dropped open into the sub-zero void. Below us, the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains looked like rows of shattered bone under the twilight sky. Flashes of muzzle fire and searchlights flickered from the summit of the ridge—the rogue garrison was already scanning the sky.
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"Depressurize! Drop in three... two... one!"
The sled decoupled from the transport’s belly. We plunged into freefall, hurtling into the pitch-black abyss at four hundred miles per hour, heading straight into the heart of the conspiracy.
