Chapter 66 - Fire in the Foundation
The cellar’s secondary fire-suppression system wasn't modern. It wasn't clean gas or halon. It was four thousand gallons of stale, iron-heavy mountain spring water stored in a gravity cistern directly above the vault ceiling, designed in the 1950s to smother any mining fire that dared breach the domestic quarters.
I pointed to the manual release wheel corroded with green patina four feet to my left along the iron ledge.
Thomas nodded. He understood.
I drew my 9mm, thumbed the safety off, and signaled three fingers.
Three. Two. One.
Thomas threw his entire weight against the iron wheel. The rusted gears screamed with the sound of grinding iron.
The men below looked up, startled, but before they could raise their weapons, I fired three rounds in rapid succession into the fuel regulators of the thermal lance.
The pressurized acetylene line ruptured with a concussive *WHUMP*. A jet of yellow-white flame shot across the vault face, engulfing the operator holding the torch. He screamed, dropping the rig and tumbling across the wet floor, trying to beat out the flames on his sleeves.
"Ambush!" the second operator roared, bringing his submachine gun up toward our catwalk.
Rounds chewed into the iron grating beneath my boots, sending white-hot lead fragments ricocheting off the limestone walls. I dropped flat, the concrete dust biting into my nostrils. Above me, Miller’s suppressed rifle spoke through the ventilation shaft—three rhythmic, hollow thumps: *pht, pht, pht*.
The second operator collapsed like an unstrung puppet, his weapon clattering into the drainage sump.
"Sterling!" I screamed, rolling to the edge and leveling my barrel down into the smoke. "Drop it!"
Julian Sterling didn't drop the gun. In a flash of panicked adrenaline, he fired two wild rounds toward the catwalk, one grazing Thomas’s shoulder, tearing through the fabric of his jacket and leaving a crimson streak against his collarbone.
"You Holloway bitches," Sterling shrieked, his polished veneer completely gone, his teeth bared in an animalistic snarl. "You were supposed to rot in that hospital room! You were supposed to sign the release and let Claire take the fall!"
Then the iron wheel gave way under the strain of the broken cable.
May you like
With a deafening groan that shook the very foundations of the Black Oak manor, the release gates opened. Four thousand gallons of icy mountain water poured through the ceiling grates like a subterranean waterfall. The wall of water struck the flaming lance manifold, generating an instant, blinding cloud of superheated steam that filled the entire chamber with a roaring white fog.
***
