Chapter 29 - THE VAULT BENEATH THE MOUNTAIN
At 6:30 AM, a low mist clung to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains like a wet burial shroud. Sarah met me at a designated rendezvous behind a disused electrical substation off Route 50, driving an old, carbureted 1986 Ford Bronco completely stripped of modern electronics, GPS units, or computerized fuel-injection chips.
She took one look at my bruised face and handed me a field trauma kit and a thermo-flask of black coffee.
"You look like hell, Commander," she said, her hands steady on the gearshift as we climbed into the misty ridge line.
"I’ve looked worse," I muttered, wrapping fresh gauze around my forearm. "What’s the situation at the Mount Weather relay?"
"Sterling moved his core server racks into Sub-Level 4 under the guise of an infrastructure upgrade," Sarah said, tapping a set of architectural blueprints spread across the dashboard. "The automated security grid has locked down the entire perimeter. No civilian personnel are permitted within two miles. If we trip an optical sensor, the facility’s defense turret system will turn this truck into swiss cheese before we hit the gate."
"Then we don't go through the gate," I said, pointing at a faint line on the map. "In '98, the Army Corps of Engineers built an emergency overflow aqueduct connected to the Shenandoah watershed. It runs directly underneath the cooling towers of Sub-Level 4."
Sarah looked at me, a tight smile forming on her lips. "You really spent too much time studying classified civil defense blueprints."
"A paranoid soldier lives longer," I said, checking the magazine of my sidearm.
May you like
Twenty minutes later, we abandoned the truck in a thicket of white pine and crawled through the rusted grating of the drainage culvert. The stench of stagnant sulfur and damp concrete filled our nostrils as we waded through knee-deep runoff.
Above us, the rhythmic thrum of massive industrial cooling fans reverberated through the stone foundations. We were directly beneath the belly of the beast.
