Chapter 93 - Fire on the Ridge
The glide sled’s deceleration thrusters fired three hundred feet above the snow-choked pine canopy, snapping our bodies against our harnesses with brutal force before the skids ripped through the branches and slammed into the frozen shale of the northern ridge.
Metal shrieked. Snow exploded across the panoramic windshield. The pod carved a fifty-yard trench through rock and ice before grinding to a halt against a reinforced concrete retaining wall.
"Go! Go! Clear the hatch!" I roared, kicking the emergency release lever.
The side hatch blew outward with explosive bolts. I rolled out into the sub-zero wind, weapon raised, the thermal optic of my MCX instantly painting three human heat signatures sprinting along the catwalk fifty yards above our landing site.
*Thwip-thwip-thwip.*
The suppressed fire from my rifle took the lead sentry through the chest plate before he could bring his PKM machine gun to bear. Vance and his lead scout came out behind me, their weapons barking in synchronized rhythm. The two remaining guards plummeted from the catwalk, crashing into the snowdrifts below with hollow thuds.
"Abigail, status!" I yelled, dropping to one knee to scan the tree line.
Abigail emerged from the pod, a compact submachine gun slung across her chest, clutching the ruggedized decryption terminal in her left hand. "The Silo Seven blast apron is two hundred yards east, through the ventilation intake tunnel. But the outer perimeter guards just triggered a hard lockdown. Look!"
Across the ridge, towering exhaust stacks suddenly vented plumes of superheated steam. Heavy blast doors—two-foot-thick steel slabs coated in radar-absorbent paint—were grinding shut across the primary bunker entrances. Floodlights bathed the snow in blinding white light, and the rhythmic, terrifying clatter of a .50 caliber remote weapons station began tearing through the pine trees to our left.
"Suppress that turret!" Vance yelled, signaling his team. Two Delta operators broke cover, firing high-explosive 40mm grenades from their underslung launchers. The turret exploded in a violent shower of sparks and shredded steel, but the alarm was already echoing off the mountain peaks.
"Twelve minutes to launch!" Abigail shouted, glancing at her tactical display. "The telemetry signals show fuel pressurization in Silos One through Six! They're cycling the pumps!"
"Vance, take three men and secure the ventilation shafts," I commanded, pulling two fragmentation grenades from my chest rig. "Blow the backup intake louvers and draw their heavy security force toward the perimeter. Abigail and I are taking the maintenance conduit directly into Silo Seven."
"General, you'll be entering a kill zone without a reserve!" Vance warned, his face smeared with grease and snow.
"I didn't need a reserve when I dragged my daughter out of Julian Sterling’s dungeon, and I don't need one now," I snarled. "Blow the shafts, Captain. That is an order."
"Yes, ma'am! Move out!"
Vance and his men sprinted toward the main bunker complex, their rifles cracking into the darkness as they engaged the advancing waves of private military contractors. Abigail and I turned toward the shadow of the cooling tower.
A heavy reinforced security hatch barred our path, marked with the ominous emblem of *Project Leviathan*—a serpent coiled around an ICBM.
"Abigail, blow the hinges," I said.
May you like
Abigail stepped forward with a strip of linear shaped charge, pasting it along the reinforced locking bolts with cold, surgical precision. "Step back, Mom."
She triggered the detonator. The blast blew the door inward with a concussive shockwave. We plunged into the dark, descending into the mechanical belly of the mountain where the true architects of this nightmare waited.
