Chapter 13 - The Fire in the Terminal
Roman Moretti did not wait for the countdown to expire.
He moved to the threshold of the vault door, using the six-inch manganese steel frame as structural cover.
He poked his shotgun barrel past the jamb and fired two rounds into the blinding glare of the corridor flashlights.
The heavy pellets tore through the lead light shields, plunging the hallway back into fractured shadows.
"Get to the mainframe!" Roman roared to Sarah and Grace.
"Walsh, cover the left conduit trench!"
Julian Vance stepped beside Roman, his eyes burning with a desperate, fatalistic intensity.
"I owe this family a life," Julian growled.
"Julian, don't be a fool!" Walsh shouted, firing his carbine down the corridor in short, disciplined bursts.
Julian ignored him.
He pulled two tactical fragmentation grenades from the vest of the fallen guard they had killed in the hallway.
"Sarah!" Julian called out without looking back.
Sarah looked up from the mainframe terminal, her fingers already flying across the keyboard.
"Tell David I finished the assignment," Julian said.
Julian pulled the pins from both grenades with his teeth.
He lunged out of the vault entrance, charging straight into the hail of automatic rifle fire coming down the service shaft.
Rounds tore through his tactical coat, spinning him sideways, but his momentum carried him ten yards down the corridor.
Julian hurled the grenades directly into the secondary generator station where Sterling’s tactical breachers were staging their equipment.
"Grenade!" an operative screamed.
A blinding double explosion ripped through the corridor.
The shockwave shook the limestone foundation of the courthouse, showering the vault with pulverized concrete dust.
The fuel lines on the generator cart ruptured, igniting in a roaring wall of fire that cut off the main hallway.
Through the flames, Julian collapsed against the charred wall, his chest motionless, his face turned toward the ceiling.
Julian Vance had paid his debt in full.
Inside the vault, the explosion had severed the emergency timer wiring.
The red LED readout on the thermite rings died instantly, neutralizing the immediate threat of structural demolition.
"The charges won't blow!" Roman yelled over the crackle of the fire.
"Sterling has to come through the flames if he wants these drives!"
Sarah plugged the titanium keycard into the mainframe’s primary data bus.
The computer screen woke up, displaying the Eleventh Precinct’s complete central directory.
Thousands of files began populating the desktop:
Audio transcripts of municipal court judges accepting cash deliveries.
Video surveillance recordings of police vans transporting seized narcotics directly to private warehouses.
Wire transfers totaling over one hundred and eighty million dollars routed through offshore shell corporations in Zurich and Panama.
And at the top of the command chain was the signature of Deputy Commissioner Thomas Sterling.
"I have the files," Sarah shouted.
"Now we need the transmission link!"
Grace looked at the overhead schematics displayed on the secondary wall monitor.
The microwave uplink antenna was located on the roof of the decommissioned grain elevator, three hundred feet above the switching house.
A high-capacity coaxial cable ran from the vault’s terminal up through an old ventilation shaft directly to the transmitter.
"The uplink switch is locked at the rooftop booster box," Sarah said, scanning the network logs.
"Someone has to physically engage the manual breaker on the roof to route the signal through the Moretti microwave dish."
"I'll go," Roman said immediately.
"No," Grace interrupted, stepping in front of him.
"You're bleeding from your shoulder, Roman."
"You can barely lift that shotgun above your chest."
"I can climb the utility ladder in that shaft in three minutes."
Roman stared down at her, his dark eyes fierce with protective fury.
"You don't know what's waiting up there, Grace."
"Sterling’s snipers might already be on the surrounding roofs."
"I know how to climb a ladder, Roman," Grace said, her voice completely devoid of fear.
"My father made me practice emergency escapes on our fire escapes every Saturday morning."
"He prepared me for this."
Sarah looked at her daughter, her eyes shining with tears, but she did not object.
Instead, Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out an encrypted data transponder.
She pressed it into Grace’s palm.
"Once you reach the top of the grain elevator, plug this transponder into the gray distribution box marked Circuit Nine."
"The moment you throw the main breaker, press the red button on this unit."
"The mainframe down here will automatically stream forty terabytes of encrypted evidence across every satellite network in the region."
"Go, baby," Sarah said softly.
"Finish what your father started."
Roman handed Grace a spare nine-millimeter magazine.
"If anyone touches that ladder who isn't Walsh or me, you empty the gun into their chest."
Grace nodded.
May you like
She turned toward the ventilation hatch at the back of the vault.
She kicked the iron grating open and pulled herself up into the vertical darkness of the utility shaft.
