Chapter 5 - The Pentagon Blast and the Missing Evidence
The world exploded in a blinding wall of orange fire and deafening concussive force.
The concrete floor beneath Maya’s boots buckled violently, throwing her off balance and slamming her hard against the reinforced steel wall of the cell block.
Alarms wailed in a chaotic, overlapping symphony as thick, toxic black smoke began billowing down the corridor, choking the air and reducing visibility to mere inches.
"Evelyn! Jason!" Maya yelled over the roar of the secondary explosions, coughing violently as the acrid smoke filled her lungs.
Stumbling through the haze, Maya grabbed Evelyn by the arm, hauling the dazed and weeping colonel up from the floor.
"We have to move! Now!" Maya commanded, dragging Evelyn toward the emergency stairwell, while a pair of armed military police officers rushed past them to secure hold cell four.
As they burst out into the courtyard of the Pentagon annex, the chaos was absolute.
Flames leaped toward the gray Washington sky from the smoking wreckage of the data lab wing, where the server racks containing Jason’s digital confession and the offshore bank records had just been vaporized.
Maya shoved Evelyn into the back of an idling military transport vehicle, jumping into the front passenger seat and slamming her hand against the dashboard.
"Get us out of here! Head to the safehouse in Arlington!" Maya ordered the driver, a young corporal whose face was pale with shock.
As the vehicle tore away from the burning wreckage, weaving frantically through the flashing lights of arriving fire trucks and police cruisers, Maya turned her head to look in the back seat.
Evelyn sat huddled in the corner, staring blankly at her bloodied hands, completely shattered by the destruction of her family and her life.
"They destroyed the evidence," Evelyn whispered, her voice a hollow, defeated echo.
"Viktor Vance’s people... they blew up the data lab to erase every trace of the transaction."
Maya turned back around, her jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched in her cheek, her dark eyes reflecting the flickering flames of the burning Pentagon wing in the distance.
"They didn't erase everything, Colonel," Maya said, her voice dropping into a cold, lethal murmur.
"Jason may have uploaded the files to the local server, but before I came to the auditorium this morning, I mirrored every single transaction log onto a secure, offline physical drive."
May you like
Maya reached inside her tactical vest, tapping the hard plastic outline of the micro-drive securely zipped into her inner pocket.
"Viktor Vance just blew up a wing of the Pentagon for nothing," Maya vowed, staring out the armored window into the dark D.C. night.
Related Stories
