Chapter 28 - The Midnight Parley
"Drop them!" Sterling ordered his three commandos.
Gunfire erupted inside the sterile white laboratory.
Silas tackled me behind a steel centrifuge unit just as high-caliber rounds shattered the glass displays above our heads, showering us with sparks and liquid nitrogen. Silas leaned out, firing three rapid-fire shots with surgical accuracy. Two of the commandos dropped instantly, their armor pierced through the soft seams at the neck.
The third commando charged with a combat blade, knocking Silas’s rifle from his grip.
They slammed into the central operating table, locked in brutal hand-to-hand combat. The commando was younger, faster, but Silas was a monster bred in the filth of the piers and the blood of the trenches. Silas caught the man’s wrist, twisted it until the bone splintered through the skin, drove his knee into the operative’s sternum, and threw him over the railing into the churning machinery below.
Meanwhile, Sterling grabbed his tactical case and bolted toward the emergency ladder leading to the helipad.
"Elena! The servers!" Silas yelled, pulling a series of high-explosive thermite charges from his vest. "Wipe the primary drives! Don't leave a single byte of Clara’s genetic sequence on those systems!"
"Go get Sterling!" I screamed back, running to the main console.
I didn't know how to hack a military mainframe, but I knew how to destroy one. I raised the heavy iron fire extinguisher from the wall and smashed it repeatedly into the server towers, ripping out cables, exposing the circuit boards, and pouring flammable chemical foam directly into the power transformers until the entire bank erupted into flames and black smoke.
Above us, the helipad roared with the sound of the transport helicopter's engines reaching maximum takeoff power.
Silas scaled the exterior metal ladder into the howling storm outside.
I ran out onto the helipad just in time to see Silas emerge onto the wet flight deck. The helicopter had already lifted three feet off the ground, its landing skids swaying violently in the gale-force winds.
Sterling was inside the open side door, grinning through the rain, holding the case tightly against his chest.
"Goodbye, Major!" Sterling shouted over the roar of the rotors.
Silas didn't shout. He didn't curse.
May you like
He took a three-step sprint across the slick helipad, leaped into the empty air above the churning ocean, and caught the helicopter's left landing skid with both hands.
***
