Chapter 10 - The Ambush at Dawn
"Well, well, well," the Aegis operative said, descending the ladder slowly, his boots creaking against the wood. His face was unmasked, revealing sharp, emotionless features and a thin white scar across his left cheek. "Commander Hayes. Or should I call you Rebecca, the ghost who wouldn't stay buried?"
I kept my hands away from my weapon, my muscles tensed and ready to spring. "You're late to the party. Henderson is already gone."
"Henderson was a amateur playing soldier in the dark," the operative replied smoothly, stopping three steps above me on the ladder, keeping his rifle locked firmly on my chest. "The real prize is right inside your tactical vest. Hand over the solid-state drive, Rebecca. Don't make this messy."
"And if I refuse?" I asked, keeping my voice dangerously calm, buying precious seconds.
The operative smiled—a cold, humorless stretching of his lips. "Then we execute you right here in this damp hole, recover the drive from your remains, and hunt down your little civilian friend in Nova Scotia ourselves. Either way, Aegis gets what it came for."
My grip tightened around the hidden flash drive inside my vest pocket. The seconds ticked away like hours. Cole should have heard the noise by now. Where was he?
"You think Aegis can bury the truth forever," I said, stalling deliberately, taking a half-step to the left. "The ledger is already mirrored to an off-site quantum server. The moment my heartbeat stops, an automated cryptographic protocol dumps every single black-budget file onto international public news networks."
The operative’s eyes flickered for a fraction of a second—a tiny, microscopic tell of genuine panic.
That was all the opening I needed.
I didn't reach for my sidearm. Instead, I grabbed a heavy, rusted iron pipe leaning against the stone foundation and hurled it upward with all my might directly at the rungs of the ladder.
The pipe struck the ladder leg with a violent crash, knocking the operative off balance. He stumbled backward, his rifle firing a burst into the dirt floor as he lost his footing and tumbled down the remaining steps, landing hard against the concrete.
I didn't wait for him to recover. I leaped over his body, scrambled up the wooden rungs, and burst out of the cellar door into the cold morning air.
"Hayes!" Cole’s voice rang out from the tree line.
I sprinted across the clearing toward him, bullets chewing up the gravel around my boots as the second Aegis guard opened fire from the porch. Cole returned fire with precise, suppressing bursts, covering my advance until I dove headfirst into the safety of the pine forest.
"Got it?" Cole shouted, grabbing my arm and hauling me to my feet as we ran down the ridge toward the waiting boat.
"I got it!" I yelled over the sound of shouting guards behind us.
We reached the shoreline where Brooks was waiting with the utility boat engine roaring, ready to cast off. We scrambled over the gunwale, and Brooks slammed the throttle forward, rocketing us out into the open water just as the Aegis operatives reached the edge of the shore, firing uselessly into our wake.
As the weather station faded into the gray fog behind us, I pulled the paper envelope Henderson had left in the safe out of my vest and ripped it open.
May you like
Inside was a single photograph of a young woman working in a coastal bookstore in downtown Halifax—and written across the back was a name and an address that changed everything.
Her name was Maya. And she was standing less than fifty miles away from where we were heading right now.
