Chapter 12 - The Siege of Bunker B-4
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The heavy steel security door groaned under repeated concussive blows from the outside. Chunks of aged concrete and gray dust rained down from the overhead frame, settling over the high-tech server racks like winter snow.
"Upload at seventy-eight percent!" I called out, my eyes locked on the glowing green progress bar as the seconds ticked away like hours.
"Hold the line!" Miller barked, keeping his weapon leveled at the narrow gap of the doorway.
Without warning, a blinding flash of white-hot light erupted along the top edge of the steel door as a thermite breaching charge melted through the reinforced locking bolt. The metal screamed in protest, glowing cherry-red before the upper half of the heavy door was blown inward with a deafening roar.
Smoke and acrid white fumes billowed into the command center.
"Breaching! Breach the room!" a muffled voice shouted through a tactical respirator from the hallway.
The first contractor stepped through the smoke, his rifle raised and sweeping the room. He didn't even get his sights aligned before Miller’s Sig barked twice. The contractor dropped instantly, spinning hard against the concrete wall and collapsing in a heap near the server racks.
"Contact left!" Miller yelled, firing another controlled pair through the smoking breach.
Two more black-clad operators attempted to push through the opening, dropping suppression fire that chewed through the edge of a plastic desk and sent shards of wood flying across the room.
"Ghost! Engage!" Ethan commanded sharply, pointing toward the breach.
The Belgian Malinois didn't hesitate. He launched himself forward like a furry thunderbolt, clearing the console and diving directly through the smoking doorway. A startled yell echoed from the hallway, followed immediately by the heavy thud of a grown man hitting the concrete floor and a sharp, agonized cry as Ghost neutralized the threat with surgical precision.
"Upload at ninety-one percent!" I shouted over the sound of gunfire and shouting from the corridor.
"Hurry, Madison! The hallway is flooded with them!" Ethan yelled, firing a compact submachine gun he had pulled from a hidden rack beneath the console, sending a wall of lead down the corridor to keep the remaining contractors pinned behind the blast shield.
The progress bar crawled forward. 94%... 97%... 99%...
"Come on, come on..." I muttered under my breath, my finger hovering over the final confirmation key.
100%. UPLOAD COMPLETE. BROADCAST TRANSMITTED TO GLOBAL OVERSIGHT NODES.
A bright, triumphant green checkmark flashed across every monitor in the command center.
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"It's out," I yelled over the din of battle. "The file is live across every secure military and civilian oversight network on earth! They can't scrub it now!"
Ethan slammed his hand onto a large, red master-purge button on the central console. "Then we don't need this bunker anymore."
