Chapter 6 - THE TRAP IS SPRUNGMy father immediately shoved me behind a row of metal crates, pulling his sidearm and scanning the high rafters of the underground vault.
“Chen!” my father barked into his radio. “We’re locked in the vault! Status!”
Static screamed through the earpiece. “Colonel... signal jammed... we’re under attack upstairs... heavy gunfire—” The transmission cut off completely.
The voice over the loudspeaker laughed—a cold, robotic sound. “Agent Chen’s perimeter team is currently occupied. You see, Colonel, Julian was a fool, but he was a useful fool. He left a fail-safe in the event of his arrest. If the vault was breached without the master key, a thermite charge sequence triggers.”
A digital timer on the wall lit up in bright red LED numbers:
09:59... 09:58... 09:57...
“Ten minutes until this entire facility—and everything above it—is reduced to molten slag,” the voice announced. “Including you, your precious daughter, and her unborn child.”
Panic surged through me, but my father’s hand was warm and steady on my shoulder.
“Vivienne, look at me,” Dad commanded, his eyes locked onto mine with absolute focus. “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. We are getting out of here.”
“Dad, the door is solid steel!” I cried. “We can’t shoot our way through that!”
“We don't need to shoot through the door,” Dad said, examining the room’s layout with military precision. “Every underground munitions depot built according to Department of Defense specs requires a secondary ventilation shaft leading to the surface in case of chemical leaks.”
He pointed to a massive air duct near the ceiling, ten feet above our heads.
“Can you climb?” he asked.
I looked at my swollen stomach, my fractured ribs, and my sprained wrist. Every movement burned like fire. But then I touched my stomach, feeling the tiny, gentle kick of my baby girl inside me.
“I can climb,” I said, my voice hardening into steel.
Dad pulled two heavy equipment crates together to form a makeshift ladder. He climbed up first, using his tactical knife to pry open the heavy iron grate of the ventilation shaft. He reached down, grabbing my uninjured hand, pulling me up with raw, fatherly strength.
05:20... 05:19... 05:18...
The air inside the vault was getting hotter. The thermite charges were already priming, filling the room with the toxic scent of burning chemical compounds.
We crawled through the narrow, dusty metal shaft, the metal burning against our skin. I gritted my teeth through the excruciating pain in my ribs, pushing forward inch by inch, led only by the sound of my father’s breath ahead of me and the determination to keep my baby alive.
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Ahead, a faint light shone through the end of the tunnel.
We burst out into the fresh cool air of the woods behind the estate just as a massive, gut-wrenching explosion shook the earth beneath our feet.
