He looked down at the flag in his lap, then up at the dog, and his mouth moved like he was saying something I couldn't hear.

The bunker went pitch black, illuminated only by the pulsing emergency strobes near the blast door. The concrete floor shuddered as explosive charges detonated at ground level, blasting the sawmill above us into kindling.

"Out the back tunnel," Vance ordered, shoving an old canvas rucksack into my chest. "It exits two hundred yards downstream in a drainage ditch. Takes you right to the river."

"I'm not leaving you here, Vance," I argued, grabbing his arm.

The old man jerked away, his eyes fierce in the red light. "I’ve had emphysema for ten years and I'm eighty-two years old, kid! My war ended fifty years ago; I just forgot to die. You take that drive to the federal prosecutor in Richmond. You make sure your father’s name stays clean!"

Another blast shook the chamber. Dust and concrete chips rained down from the ceiling. Rex barked, grabbing the sleeve of my jacket in his teeth, pulling me toward the steel hatch behind the server racks. Even in the chaos, the dog knew the difference between a tactical retreat and suicide.

"Go!" Vance screamed, slamming his hand onto the control box.

I dove through the hatch with Rex at my heels. Behind us, the heavy steel door slammed shut and sealed with a final, mechanical clunk. Through the thick steel, I heard the rapid chatter of automatic weapons fire inside the bunker, followed by the deafening, catastrophic roar of Vance’s subterranean scuttle charges detonating.

The shockwave threw me forward through the muddy escape tunnel. The heat scorched the air from my lungs. Rex whined, pushing his head under my arm, hauling me to my feet with pure canine determination.

"I'm up, boy," I coughed, wiping mud and soot from my eyes. "I'm up."

We scrambled through the claustrophobic concrete pipe until the smell of burning timber gave way to the freezing mist of the Shenandoah River. We burst out through a tangle of rusted rebar and blackberry briars, landing hard on the rocky riverbank.

Across the water, through the heavy fog, two fast-attack patrol boats cut through the black current, their high-powered spotlights sweeping the shoreline.

We were boxed in. Behind us was a flaming ruin; ahead of us, a wall of water crawling with mercenaries.

Rex suddenly lowered his body into the mud, crawling forward toward an abandoned, half-submerged duck blind fifty yards downstream. He looked back at me over his shoulder, his eyes clear and calculating.