Chapter 37 - THE GHOST PROTOCOL
"Now," Hayes hissed in my ear.
We hit the grating together. The rusted bolts sheared off with an ear-splitting crack, and Hayes dropped through the opening, landing hard on the concrete floor with his service weapon raised.
"Julian Vance! Step away from the console!"
Julian didn't flinch. In a movement so fast it looked rehearsed, he dropped behind the heavy steel desk, reaching under the rim.
*Crack! Crack!*
Two rounds from a suppressed automatic pistol slammed into the floor tiles at Hayes’s feet. Hayes scrambled behind a server rack, returning fire. The deafening report of unsuppressed nine-millimeter rounds echoed through the cavernous bunker, shattering the glass casing of the terminal monitors.
I dropped from the ceiling vent, landing silently behind the third row of servers.
The brass key was burning in my hand.
I looked across the aisle. The breaker box was mounted on the far wall, twenty feet away, illuminated by a pulsing red emergency beacon. Between me and the breaker box stood Julian, his gun trained on Hayes’s position behind the server tower.
"Detective!" Julian shouted over the ringing gunfire. "You're firing blind! If a ricochet hits the hydrogen cooling cell behind you, this entire mountain collapses!"
"Let the girl go, Vance!" Hayes shouted back, blood dripping from his reopened shoulder wound.
"The girl is the transaction!" Julian roared, lunging toward Mia. He grabbed the scanner arm, forcing the violet emitter toward her face.
*"Calibration ninety-nine percent,"* the computer chimed. *"Stand by for high-intensity pulse."*
"Clara!" Mia screamed, her voice cracking.
I didn't think. I sprinted across the concrete floor, clearing the open aisle in three desperate strides. Julian saw me out of the corner of his eye, swinging the pistol toward my chest.
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I threw myself forward in a sliding tackle, driving my shoulder directly into the tripod base of the scanner. The steel rig toppled violently, the violet beam searing across the ceiling tiles instead of Mia’s eyes, igniting the dry acoustic foam in a burst of black smoke.
***
