Chapter 55 - Flight into the Storm
The private Gulfstream jet cut through the turbulent upper atmosphere at Mach 0.85, banking hard to the west over the Atlantic as the cabin lights glowed in a dim, tactical red.
Elena sat in the leather passenger seat opposite me, a medical kit open on her lap as she disinfected a deep graze along her forearm. Ethan was slumped over the cockpit jump seat, interfacing directly with the aircraft’s satellite communication array, trying desperately to punch through the jamming blanket covering the Western United States.
"Still jammed?" I asked, walking down the narrow aisle with two cups of black coffee.
"It's not just civilian towers anymore," Ethan muttered, his eyes bloodshot from staring at glowing terminals for eighteen hours straight. "Whoever is commanding the strike team at Lake Tahoe has military-grade satellite uplink capability. They've effectively isolated the entire Sierra Nevada region from external communications."
I handed him a cup of coffee, my expression hard. "Marcus Vance won't wait forever. If he doesn't hear our daily check-in by dawn, federal assets will move in regardless of protocol."
"By dawn, the safehouse will be a smoking crater," Elena said quietly, looking up from her bandages. "Krovos doesn't leave loose ends. If the backup chip is there, he'll tear the mountain apart brick by brick until he finds it."
I stared out the small cabin window into the infinite, starless expanse of the night sky. My father was at our family home in Maple Grove, thousands of miles away, safe for the moment—but the Tahoe safehouse held the key to the entire operation. It was the sanctuary we had built to leave the war behind, and now it was becoming our final battlefield.
"How many men do you estimate Krovos deployed?" I asked Elena.
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"A full platoon," she replied without hesitation. "At least thirty tier-one mercenaries, backed by local sleeper assets. They've been planning this since the moment David leaked the original files."
"Then we won't give them a fair fight," I said, my voice cold and level. "We drop in fast, hit their flanks before they realize we're airborne, and secure the perimeter."
