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 southern ventilation shaft was buried beneath forty years of dead pine needles and an iron grate secured by heavy padlocks. I didn't need bolt cutters. The lock housing was held together by an old military-grade brass pin—the exact diameter of the cleaning rod stored in the stock of my father’s Remington.

I punched the pin through, lifted the heavy iron grate, and stared down into the pitch-black vertical shaft. A rusted maintenance ladder vanished into the darkness.

"Rex," I whispered.

The dog didn't hesitate. He knew confined spaces; his bloodline had been bred to clear Viet Cong tunnels in the Iron Triangle. He braced his paws against my shoulders as I lowered him down to the first landing ten feet below, then scrambled down after him.

The air inside the bunker smelled of wet limestone, moldering concrete, and ozone.

We moved like ghosts through the ventilation tunnels, following the low hum of industrial generators. Rex moved in front, navigating the pitch-black concrete maze by scent alone, his claws barely making a sound on the damp floor.

After twenty minutes of crawling through dust and spiderwebs, we reached an iron vent overlooking the main command bunker.

Below us was a brightly lit operating theater, converted into a high-security interrogation room.

Harold was strapped to his wheelchair in the center of the room, an IV line running into his arm. His face was bruised, blood dripping from his split lip onto his clean veteran’s blazer, but his jaw remained clamped shut in absolute defiance.

Standing over him was Donald Campbell, holding an electronic scanner in his manicured hand.

"You're an idiot, Harold," Campbell said, his voice smooth, cultured, and devoid of humanity. "Thomas told you he drowned the litter. He made you take the fall for the kennel fire so he could walk away with the cipher."

Harold spat a mouthful of blood onto Campbell’s polished Italian leather shoes. "Thomas was twice the soldier you’ll ever be, Donald. He didn't steal that cipher for money. He stole it so bastards like you wouldn't use it to start another private war."

Campbell sighed, pulling a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and carefully wiping his shoe. "The cipher is irrelevant now. The digital files Vance kept were destroyed twenty minutes ago. All I need is the biological key. The RFID serial code embedded in the dog’s marrow."

Campbell turned to the contractor standing beside the wall. "Bring the tracking team back. Double the sweep. The son couldn't have gotten past the river. When you find the dog, bring me the carcass."