Chapter 9 - The Line of Fire
Thomas didn't flinch at the barrel of my gun. He just looked at me with tired, bloodshot eyes that carried the weight of a dozen buried secrets.
"I'm on the side of the men who didn't come back from the Gulf, Sarah," Thomas said, his voice completely steady. "And I'm on the side of that boy of yours. You think I didn't try to stop the Admiral twelve years ago? You think I didn't watch him rewrite the logs and threaten my own brother with a dishonorable discharge if we didn't keep our mouths shut?"
"Then why help them now?" I demanded, the safety clicking off with a sharp, metallic snap that echoed down the concrete corridor. "Why let them use Matty?"
"I didn't let them," Thomas said fiercely, taking a half-step forward despite the gun. "I leaked the Sandbridge coordinates to you this morning, Sarah. I was the one who made sure that dummy mine had your name on it. I knew if I left it through official channels, it would get buried in the bureaucratic machine. I had to force your hand. I had to drag you back into the fight because you were the only one stubborn enough, and crazy enough, to finish it."
I stared at him, my finger trembling slightly on the trigger as the pieces of the puzzle violently rearranged themselves. Every move Thomas had made—the warning at the middle school, the envelope at the diner, the text message about the house—wasn't a betrayal. It was a breadcrumb trail.
"Matty isn't at the dry docks," Thomas continued, lowering his voice to a harsh whisper. "They've got him secured in the administration tower above Pier 2. Admiral Vance is there right now. He's waiting for you to bring the hardware so he can trade your son's life for the only piece of physical evidence left in existence."
Before I could answer, heavy boots echoed from the top of the maintenance stairs behind us. Flashlights swept the walls as two armed base security details rounded the corner, their rifles raised.
"Drop your weapon, Commander!" a voice bellowed down the corridor.
Thomas didn't hesitate. He lunged forward, grabbing my gun arm and shoving me violently through the narrow maintenance access panel beside the vault door.
"Go!" Thomas roared, slamming the heavy steel latch shut from the outside just as the first rifle fired.
The bullet sparked off the metal door with a deafening crack. I tumbled into the dark auxiliary sub-vault, rolling to my feet as the internal alarm klaxons began to wail overhead, flooding the corridor in a harsh, pulsing red light.
I was locked inside the armory, separated from Thomas, surrounded by the enemy, and running out of time. But as my hand brushed against the cold metal storage locker containing the original Vanguard prototype decoder, I knew there was only one way this ended.
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I popped the locker lock with a thermal charge, grabbed the heavy black-box recorder, and sprinted toward the vertical egress ladder leading straight up into the administration tower at Pier 2.
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