Chapter 77 - The Breach at Dawn
The warning Klaxon sounded twelve minutes later—a piercing, mechanical wail that echoed down the concrete corridors of Project Deepfrost like a dying siren.
“Incoming!” Ethan shouted, dropping into a defensive crouch behind a massive steel server rack near the entrance of the inner sanctum, his carbine raised toward the main bunker door. “They didn't wait for a tactical negotiation. They just dropped a breaching charge on the exterior entrance!”
The heavy reinforced concrete walls of the underground chamber shuddered violently as a muffled explosion echoed through the mountain, showering dust and pulverized stone down from the ceiling. Amber emergency lights flickered and died, plunging the vast subterranean bunker into sudden, strobing red emergency illumination.
“Voss! Get the mainframe backup offline!” Michael ordered, his voice losing its aged weariness and snapping back into the razor-sharp command cadence of an active-duty director. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a heavy, matte-black Sig Sauer matching Avery’s own sidearm. “If they get physical control of this terminal, the whole mountain goes dark!”
“Already on it!” Voss shouted back, his fingers flying across the master keyboard with astonishing speed as data streams cascaded down the monitors in sheets of brilliant amber code.
Avery moved smoothly into position beside Ethan, her back pressed against the cold granite wall of the inner sanctum doorway. Her senses were razor-sharp, every drop of adrenaline burning cleanly through her veins. The quiet lake at Tahoe, the morning coffee, the peaceful mountain air—they all felt like a distant, beautiful dream from another lifetime. This was her reality. This was where she belonged.
Boom.
A second, much larger explosion blew the outer steel blast doors off their hydraulic hinges, sending twisted sheets of metal clattering across the concrete floor. Through the swirling cloud of gray smoke and white dust, the silhouettes of half a dozen operators in advanced multi-cam tactical gear poured into the bunker, their weapons raised, moving with the terrifying, mechanical precision of elite federal strike teams.
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“Contact! Left flank!” Ethan barked, squeezing the trigger of his carbine in a controlled three-round burst.
The lead operator dropped instantly behind a concrete barrier as the air filled with the sharp, deafening crack of suppressed gunfire, the smell of cordite and burning propellant instantly overwhelming the sterile air of the bunker.
