"Isaiah, you stay behind the tactical stack!" Marcus shouted at me, his eyes dead serious behind his clear ballistic visor. "If that floor compromises, the sub-basement will become an incinerator in three minutes!"
"She's in there because of my family's case, Marcus," I shouted back, the freezing rotor wash lashing across my face. "I'm going through that door!"
The helicopter descended with stomach-dropping speed, flaring out twenty feet above the muddy rail spur beside the brick annex. The fast-ropes dropped through the rain, slapping hard against the flooded cinders.
"Go! Go! Go!"
The federal operators slid down the ropes like dark phantoms, their boots hitting the ground in rapid succession, carbines instantly snapping up into firing positions. Marcus went next. I followed right behind him, the friction of the rope burning through my tactical gloves before my dress boots slammed into the ankle-deep muck.
The moment our boots touched the earth, the night erupted in gunfire.
TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Automatic rounds tore through the sheet metal of an abandoned freight car ten feet to our left, showering us with sparks and rusted iron flakes. The private contractors stationed around the pickup trucks had spotted the federal bird and were laying down a heavy base of fire to cover their retreat toward the highway.
"FEDERAL AGENTS! RETURN FIRE!" Marcus roared.
The federal operators answered with devastating precision. The sharp, rhythmic cracks of their suppressed short-barreled rifles cut through the roar of the blaze. Two mercenaries attempting to hoist another fifty-gallon drum of accelerant onto the loading dock dropped instantly, their weapons clattering across the wet steel decking.
"Covering fire on the vehicles! Two and Three, move to flank!" Marcus commanded. "Lennox, on me! Lower blast door!"
We sprinted through the blinding crossfire, splashing through pools of oil-slicked rainwater, diving beneath the reinforced concrete overhang of the loading dock just as a burst of 7.62 rounds pulverized the wooden pallet stack behind us.
At the end of the dock stood a massive, rusted steel blast door—the emergency maintenance entrance to the foundry's lower utility vaults.
A heavy, hardened steel logging chain had been wrapped three times through the recessed handles, secured with an industrial padlock. Heat radiated through the iron plate with such ferocity that the wet paint was bubbling and peeling in real time.
"Breaching charge!" Marcus yelled.
A tactical breacher slapped a strip of flexible linear-shaped cutting charge along the links of the chain, inserted an electronic detonator, and yelled, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"
We took cover behind the concrete retaining wall.
CRACK!
A sharp, concussive flash severed the hardened links. Marcus stepped out of the smoke, drove the heel of his boot into the door's center seam, and wrenched the heavy steel barrier open.
A wall of suffocating, superheated black smoke and chemical fumes billowed out of the opening, nearly knocking us off our feet.
"Masks on!" Marcus ordered, snapping his respirator into place.
I pulled the silicone oxygen mask over my face, the cool hiss of pressurized air flooding my lungs as the rubber sealed against my jaw. I flicked on my high-intensity weapon light and followed Marcus down the steep concrete staircase into the subterranean dark.
The heat was staggering. Even beneath the ground, the ceiling beams were groaning as the massive structural timber of the foundry above consumed itself in the inferno. Flaming embers and molten asphalt dripped through expansion joints in the concrete ceiling, splashing onto the flooded walkway below.
The air was filled with a terrifying, rhythmic roar—the sound of an industrial fire feeding on decades of accumulated coal dust and motor oil.
"Ava!" I screamed into the mask, my voice muffled by the diaphragm. "Ava Reed!"
Nothing answered except the hiss of burning grease and the distant crackle of crumbling brick.
We reached the bottom landing. The sub-basement was an interconnected labyrinth of old steam-pipe tunnels and concrete utility vaults built directly beneath the main smelting furnaces. Water from the storm was pouring down the walls, mixing with soot to create an ankle-deep sludge of black, acidic mud.
Marcus pointed his weapon light down the northern corridor. Fifty yards away, illuminated by the flicker of advancing flames, was a reinforced steel vault door bearing an ancient brass plate: PROPERTY & ARCHIVES - DIVISION THREE.
The door was locked from the outside by a heavy steel turn-wheel mechanism.
Beside the wheel, standing in the shadows with an empty five-gallon plastic fuel jug in his hand, stood Police Chief Randall Pierce.
He had stripped off his dress uniform jacket. He wore a sweat-stained white undershirt, his four-star service belt slung low over his protruding gut, and a heavy .357 magnum revolver gripped in his right fist. His face was blackened with soot, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and grime, his eyes wild and bloodshot with the frenzy of a cornered animal.
He was pouring the last of an accelerant trail along the base of the vault door, preparing to drop a lit flare onto the pool.
"PIERCE! DROP THE WEAPON!" Marcus barked, leveling his rifle.
Pierce snapped his head around. When the tactical flashlight pinned him against the concrete wall, he didn't surrender. He raised the massive revolver directly toward Marcus’s face.
"Stay back, you federal bastards!" Pierce roared, his voice cracking through the roar of the fire. "This whole place is rigged! You take one step closer and I drop this flare! We all go up together!"
"Chief Pierce, stand down!" I stepped into the light beside Marcus, lowering my mask just enough to project my voice clearly. "Knox Sullivan is dead! Harrison Vance is in federal custody! The game is over, Randall!"
Pierce stared at me through the thick smoke, a manic, wheezing laugh tearing from his throat. "Sullivan is dead? Good! Knox was always a weak, sentimental thug just like his old man! But Vance? You think Vance can save you? You don't know who owns the dirt you're standing on, Lennox!"
"I know Walter Sterling owns the shell trusts," I said, taking a slow, calculated step forward through the black water. "I know the nineteen-eighty-four deeds are inside that vault. And I know you were the patrol sergeant who held the back door shut while David Cole burned alive."