Chapter 14 - Siege of Blackwood Ridge
"We have less than eighteen hours," Evelyn said, her voice shaking as she wiped cold sweat from her forehead. "The countdown for Morningstar's automated launch sequence is hardwired into the Shenandoah subterranean complex. It’s located beneath Mount Weather—an abandoned Cold War secondary bunker known as Blackwood Ridge."
"I know Blackwood Ridge," Arthur wheezed, struggling to his feet. He took a heavy combat knife and cut the sleeves off his tactical shirt to fashion a tighter compression wrap over his wound. "It was built in 1962 as a contingency redoubt for strategic command. It has five-foot-thick blast walls, independent geothermal power, and automated perimeter defenses. Maya, we can’t breach that facility with four people. It's suicide."
"We don't need an army to breach it, Dad," I replied, chambering a round into my rifle with a sharp *clack*. "We need an insider. And Eleanor's biggest mistake was assuming you forgot your own architecture."
Arthur paused, his gaze meeting mine. A flicker of his old, terrifying battlefield brilliance ignited behind his eyes. "The secondary ventilation exhaust in Sector Four. During the 1998 retrofits, I ordered an unmapped emergency drainage culvert installed beneath the reactor cooling pools in case of a chemical leak. It bypasses the primary perimeter biometric scanners."
"That's our way in," Danny said, checking the magazines on his plate carrier. "Evelyn, can you cut their external surveillance from the van?"
"For about ninety seconds," Evelyn warned. "Once I trip their network firewall, their automated sentry turrets will go into active fail-safe mode. Anything that moves in the perimeter yard without an Aegis transponder gets shredded by twin .50-caliber Gatling guns."
"Then we make sure we're inside the drainage culvert before the clock runs out," I said, turning to look at the three people standing beside me.
My father, wounded, bleeding, but standing tall with the weight of his redemption burning in his chest. Danny Hayes, loyal to the bone, a soldier who had walked through hell just to clear my name. And Evelyn, Robert Vance’s daughter, risking everything to atone for her father’s sins.
"Listen to me," I said, my voice low and steady. "Eleanor wants us to hide. She wants us to run like scared animals while she burns this country to the ground and crowns herself queen of the ashes. But we don't hide. We take the fight to her front door. We finish this tonight."
Two hours later, under the cover of a torrential midnight thunderstorm, our van slipped through the dense pine forests surrounding Blackwood Ridge. The mountain loomed like a black monolith against the lightning-streaked sky, surrounded by concentric rings of razor wire and motion-sensor floodlights.
"Thirty seconds until camera loop," Evelyn warned over the radio from her concealed spot two miles back in the forest. "Maya... be careful. My father was terrified of Eleanor. She’s not human. She doesn't feel fear."
"Neither do I," I replied, clicking the radio off.
"Loop active... NOW!" Danny hissed.
We dashed across the open gravel clearing. My father moved with a grim, teeth-gritting determination, ignoring the blood soaking through his bandage as we reached the heavy steel grate of the drainage culvert buried in the hillside.
Danny applied a hydraulic spreader to the rusted iron bars. With a deafening shriek of tearing metal, the grate popped open.
"Go! Go!" Arthur urged.
We slipped into the pitch-black, rushing water of the drainage tunnel just as the ninety-second timer expired. Behind us, the mountain perimeter erupted into blinding halogen light as automated sirens began to wail their mournful, mechanical song.
May you like
We were inside the beast.
***