Chapter 33 - The Transmission
The hum of the mainframe cooling fans filled the silent concrete vault as the progress bar on the transmission monitor ticked slowly upward. Ten percent. Thirty percent. Fifty percent.
Every megabyte of data extracted from the syndicate’s master ledger, combined with Director Hayes’s signed operational authorizations and the encrypted Project Ironclad communication logs, was streaming across a heavily encrypted military-grade tunnel directly into the Department of Justice's special oversight server.
Hayes sat rigidly in his chair, his eyes fixed on the glowing screen as if watching his entire life’s work evaporate into digital ether. “You realize what happens the moment this hits their inbox? Every black-ops asset, every offshore intelligence cell, and every diplomatic backchannel we’ve established over the past decade will go dark.”
“Good,” I said simply. “Maybe now people can sleep without wondering if their own government is trading their security for corporate stock options.”
Suddenly, the secondary warning klaxon on the bunker’s perimeter console let out a shrill, rhythmic screech.
Ethan whirled around, his fingers flying across the sensor dashboard. “Commander, we’ve got incoming! Three heavy transport helicopters—unmarked, military-spec MH-60 Blackhawks—just dropped off radar altitude five miles out and are vectoring straight toward our coordinates using passive thermal imaging.”
“They tracked Hayes’s emergency beacon,” I said without hesitation. “They must have had a sub-dermal GPS tracker embedded in his belt buckle.”
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“ETA to perimeter breach: three minutes,” Ethan warned, drawing his rifle and checking the magazine. “And our secure transmission is only at eighty-two percent. If we cut the feed now to bug out, the files will corrupt and the DOJ will only receive a partial data dump.”
“We hold the line,” I commanded, walking over to the heavy steel blast door of the bunker control room and engaging the manual hydraulic locks. “We stay right here until that progress bar hits one hundred percent.”
