Chapter 8 - THE TROJAN HORSE AT STERLING & VANCE
The monolithic glass tower of Sterling & Vance loomed against the stormy night sky like a jagged obsidian monolith, its upper floors glowing with faint, sterile security lights. Viktor parked our battered sedan deep in the subterranean visitor bay, using a cloned security badge he had lifted from David Vance's jacket pocket during our brief encounter in the parking garage.
"Stay close behind me and keep your hood pulled down," Viktor whispered, leading the way through the secure service elevator lobby while keeping his posture relaxed and professional. "To the overnight guards, we're just late-night compliance auditors conducting a routine system sweep."
We stepped into the sleek private elevator, the digital floor indicator rapidly climbing past the thirtieth floor toward the executive penthouse suites where Marcus Sterling kept his private office. My heart hammered against my ribs with every rising number, but a cold, burning resolve replaced any lingering fear.
The elevator doors chimed softly and slid open to reveal a sprawling, dimly lit floor of polished marble and dark mahogany wood. The executive suite was entirely deserted, save for the faint hum of high-end computer servers humming quietly in the corner communication room.
"The main mainframe terminal is behind that glass partition," I whispered, pointing toward Marcus's private office as I pulled the silver encrypted hard drive from my pocket. "If I can plug this directly into their master server, I can initiate an automated data dump of every offshore transaction directly to the federal financial crimes database."
"You have about four minutes before the automated night patrol reaches this floor," Viktor said, standing guard by the elevator doors with a compact signal jammer in his hand. "Make it count."
I sprinted across the polished marble floor, sliding open the glass door to Marcus’s private office and dropping down in front of his massive mahogany executive desk. Without hesitation, I popped open the concealed floor port connected directly to the building's core fiber-optic network and plugged in the hard drive.
A sharp, high-pitched alarm suddenly chirped from the console, flashing a bright red warning across the main monitor screen.
“Warning: Unauthorized Intrusion Detected. Terminal Locked by Administrator.”
"Damn it," I cursed under my breath, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard as I bypassed the lockout protocol using Julian’s master administrative credentials that I had extracted earlier from his laptop. "They anticipated a direct terminal breach."
"Elena, we have company," Viktor's voice crackled sharply through the small earpiece communicator he had handed me downstairs. "David Vance and three armed security guards just overrode the elevator lock on level thirty-five. They're heading up right now."
"Hold them off for two more minutes, Viktor!" I urged frantically, the progress bar on the monitor creeping slowly past seventy-five percent as the massive data transfer battled against the firewall.
"I can buy you thirty seconds, not a second more," Viktor replied calmly, the faint sound of suppressed scuffling and heavy footsteps echoing through the earpiece.
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On the screen, the data transfer rate surged suddenly, hitting eighty-nine percent, then ninety-five percent, as the final encrypted folders containing Marcus Sterling's money-laundering empire uploaded into the federal secure drop-box.
The heavy oak doors of Marcus's executive office suddenly burst open with a violent crash, and David Vance stumbled into the room, holding a heavy steel pipe in one hand while wiping blood from his swollen jaw.
