Chapter 97 - The Silo Beneath the Navy Yard
The bunker smelled of industrial ammonia, salt water, and sixty years of maritime decay.
Marcus cut the engine fifty yards from the heavy blast doors of Building 4. The sleet hammered against the corrugated metal roof like thousands of tiny needles. Across the yard, two dark sedans were parked near the loading dock, their exhaust pipes puffing faint white plumes into the freezing air.
"Evelyn's Boston crew wasn't the only cleanup team," Marcus whispered, checking the remaining rounds in his magazine. "The board had a contingency protocol. If the Boston trust collapsed, the caretakers here were ordered to purge the facility."
"Purge?" My stomach dropped. "You mean execute the subjects?"
"They don't execute," Marcus said grimly. "They flood the refrigeration tanks with liquid nitrogen and burn the hard drives. Clean, sterile, no bodies left for the feds."
He unlatched the glove box, pulling out a tactical flashlight and handing it to me. "Stay on my heels. If we get separated, find containment bay three. Use the code."
We moved through the shadows of the rusted loading dock, keeping low beneath the rusted crane chassis. The side entrance had been forced—the lock blown out with a high-caliber round, fresh brass casings glinting in the mud.
Marcus slipped through the door first, his gun raised, moving with a predator's quiet grace despite the agonizing wound leaking through his dark coat.
The interior was cavernous, descending immediately into a subterranean ramp lit only by flickering emergency red beacons. The air here was bitter cold, cold enough to turn our breath into thick clouds. A deep, mechanical thrum vibrated through the concrete walls—the sound of massive industrial chillers laboring against failing power.
Along the corridor, security monitors were smashed, cables torn out of the conduit.
"They're already purging," Marcus muttered, picking up his pace, his boots silent on the ribbed metal gangway.
At the end of the corridor, double steel doors opened into an observation gallery overlooking a subterranean silo twenty feet deep. In the center of the pit sat four cylindrical glass-and-steel containment chambers, frost coating the curved glass, thick umbilical cables running from the ceiling into their pressurized bases.
Standing on the catwalk above the chambers were three men in tactical sweaters and body armor, pouring accelerant over a row of server racks.
In the middle of the catwalk stood a man in a gray wool suit, holding a heavy military tablet. He was checking off a digital checklist, his voice carrying over the drone of the chillers.
"Tank one is clear. Tank two purged. Bring tank three's temperature to absolute zero, then light the thermite," the man ordered.
"Julian Vance," Marcus whispered beside me, his voice trembling with a fury so absolute it terrified me.
"Your cousin?" I gasped quietly.
"Evelyn's nephew," Marcus hissed. "The one who told me Elena’s boat sank off Montauk."
Before I could reach for his arm, Marcus stepped out onto the metal catwalk into the red emergency light.
"Julian," Marcus called out, his voice echoing through the steel silo like a death sentence.
The three mercenaries spun around, raising their weapons. Julian Vance froze, his tablet slipping from his fingers and clattering twenty feet down onto the concrete floor below.
"Marcus?" Julian's face turned the color of chalk. "That's impossible. Evelyn said you were cornered in Boston."
May you like
"Evelyn is in federal custody," Marcus said, advancing along the metal grating, his pistol locked onto Julian's chest. "And you have five seconds to step away from that console before I feed you to the harbor."
***
