Chapter 63
The drive to Seattle was a grueling, tense twelve-hour marathon. Cole drove the stolen, heavily modified tactical truck through the blinding snowstorms of the Cascades, operating purely on adrenaline and lethal focus.
Ava and Nora had been secured in a secondary, subterranean bunker miles from the ranch, guarded by a sophisticated array of automated defenses and lethal booby traps Cole had designed for a worst-case scenario.
In the passenger seat, Donovan meticulously loaded armor-piercing rounds into heavy magazines. Sarah sat in the back, monitoring the encrypted feeds on her ruggedized laptop.
"The signal is originating from a decommissioned, heavy-industrial shipping yard in the Port of Seattle," Sarah reported, the blue light of the screen illuminating her pale face. "Thermal imaging shows massive heat signatures. They aren't just staging a strike team, Cole. They have a dry-docked submarine inside the primary warehouse."
"A submarine in a warehouse?" Donovan scoffed, shaking her head. "That’s impossible to hide."
"Not if you own the port authorities and the local maritime inspectors," Cole replied coldly. "The Leviathan operates with absolute impunity. They brought their fortress to our doorstep."
"How do we breach a warehouse that houses a nuclear submarine?" Sarah asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Cole, they will have hundreds of heavily armed operatives. We are two shooters and a hacker."
"We don't breach it kinetically," Cole stated, his tactical mind spinning a brilliant, suicidal web. "If we go in guns blazing, we die in the crossfire. We have to paralyze them."
He turned his head slightly to look at his sister. "Sarah, can you interface with the submarine’s localized network if I get you within a hundred yards of the hull?"
"If it’s a Soviet-era sub retrofitted with modern tech, I can bypass their external firewalls," Sarah confirmed, her fingers flying across her keyboard to prep the necessary malware. "But what do you want me to do? Scuttle the ship?"
"No," Cole smiled grimly. "I want you to initiate the reactor's emergency venting sequence."
Donovan stared at him, horrified. "Boss, if you vent a nuclear reactor in a civilian port, you’ll irradiate the entire city!"
"I don't want to actually vent it, Rachel," Cole corrected smoothly. "I just want their automated systems to think it’s venting. The internal alarms will trigger a catastrophic meltdown warning. The Leviathan operatives will be forced to evacuate the sub and the warehouse in a blind panic to avoid radiation exposure."
"And when they run out into the open," Donovan grinned, the terrifying logic of the plan settling over her, "we light them up."
"Exactly," Cole nodded. "We flush the rats out of the ship."
They arrived at the Port of Seattle under the cover of a dense, freezing, coastal fog. The industrial sector was a sprawling labyrinth of towering cranes, rusted shipping containers, and dark, oily water.
Cole parked the tactical truck a quarter-mile from the target warehouse, hidden beneath a crumbling overpass.
"We proceed on foot," Cole commanded, checking the action on his suppressed MP7. "Donovan, you take the high ground on the adjacent gantry crane. Set up the heavy machine gun and wait for the exodus. Sarah, you stay right behind me. We move to the warehouse wall."
They moved like phantoms through the fog, bypassing the minimal external patrols relying on the assumption that their operation was completely covert.
Cole and Sarah reached the thick, corrugated steel wall of the massive warehouse. The low, heavy thrum of the submarine’s generators vibrated through the metal.
"I'm plugging in," Sarah whispered, attaching a localized decryption spike directly to an exposed exterior data port.
She opened her laptop, the screen glowing faintly in the mist.
"They have heavy ICE protocols," Sarah gritted her teeth, her fingers flying. "I have to spoof the commander's biometric signature."
May you like
"You have two minutes, Sarah," Cole warned, his eyes scanning the fog for hostiles. "Before the patrol cycles back."
"I'm in!" Sarah gasped, hitting the enter key. "Initiating reactor overload simulation... now."
