A woman kicked my 80-year-old mother’s wheelchair at checkout—until Mom opened a leather case and revealed the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Director Vance and his agents returned fire, their semi-automatic rifles booming through the heavy rain.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"They've got heavy body armor!" Director Vance yelled, ducking behind his SUV as a burst of automatic fire tore through his windshield. "Two shooter elements inside the workshop! They're using thermal lances to cut through the concrete floor!"

"They're trying to reach the sub-floor safe!" Mom called out from the van.

She turned to me. "David, listen to me carefully. The workshop has an old tractor oil line connected to an emergency backup generator behind the rear wall. Do you remember where the manual pressure valve is?"

My mind flashed back to when I was fifteen, helping my dad maintain the farm equipment.

"The copper lever beside the grain silo?" I asked.

"Yes!" Mom said. "If you open that valve, it floods the workshop’s floor channels with five hundred gallons of diesel fuel. If they try to use a thermal torch while that floor is flooded..."

"The whole workshop goes up," I realized, my eyes wide.

"No," Mom corrected with a cold smile. "The fumes will ignite instantly, creating a fuel-air flash fire that will destroy their equipment and disable their weapons without destroying the reinforced titanium safe beneath the concrete."

"Director Vance!" I shouted across the hood of the van. "Cover me! I'm going to the silo!"

"Negative, civilian! It's too dangerous!" Vance shouted back.

"He knows the farm!" Mom barked at the director. "Cover my son!"

Director Vance didn't argue with Colonel Vance. He signaled his three agents. "Suppressing fire! Target the front windows! GO!"

The agents rose and poured a steady hail of bullets into the workshop's wooden frame.

I took a deep breath, kicked open the van door, and sprinted into the pouring rain.

Gravel flew beneath my boots as I bolted toward the tall, rusty metal grain silo thirty yards away. Bullets snapped through the air above my head, punching holes in the wooden barn walls behind me.

CRACK! SPARK!

A bullet ricocheted off the silo's metal ladder, inches from my face. I threw myself onto the muddy ground, scrambling behind the heavy steel frame of the old copper valve.

It was rusted shut.

"Come on!" I screamed, grabbing the heavy lever with both hands. I hauled backward with all my weight.

My boots slipped in the mud. The lever didn't move.

Inside the workshop, I could hear the high-pitched, terrifying screech of a thermal lance cutting through concrete.

SCREECH!

They were seconds away from breaking into the safe.

"DAMN IT!" I yelled. I pulled my heavy leather belt off, wrapped it around the rusted handle, braced both feet against the metal silo base, and yanked with everything I had in my body.

CLANG!

The rust snapped. The heavy copper valve turned ninety degrees.

Underneath the workshop, heavy hydraulic pumps roared to life. Through the open workshop doors, I saw black diesel fuel burst out of the floor grates, covering the concrete floor in a two-inch layer of highly flammable liquid.

Inside the building, a man screamed in a foreign language.

"LIQUID! IT'S DIESEL! TURN OFF THE TORCH! TURN IT OFF—"

It was too late.

The white-hot spark of the thermal lance touched the diesel fumes.

WHOOSH!

A blinding orange wall of fire erupted inside the workshop. The heat was so intense it knocked me backward into the mud.

Two men in black tactical gear stumbled out of the burning building, their weapons dropped, their hands held high as they collapsed onto the rain-soaked grass, coughing violently from the thick black smoke.

Director Vance’s agents rushed forward, tackling the two mercenaries to the ground and securing them in plastic zip-ties.

"Clear!" Director Vance shouted. "The workshop is clear!"

I dragged myself up from the mud, panting heavily, and ran back toward the van.

Mom was sitting in her wheelchair, her Sig Sauer held casually across her lap, watching the flames with a calm, satisfied expression.

"Good job, David," she said warmly. "Your father would have been proud of that lever turn."

"Is it over?" I gasped, wiping rain and mud from my eyes.

Before Mom could answer, Director Vance walked back from the burning workshop, holding a heavy, soot-covered steel box that had been retrieved from the floor safe.

He looked at my mother, his face pale under his tactical helmet.

"Colonel," Director Vance said quietly. "We got the drive."

He paused, looking back toward the road.

"But Victoria Sterling wasn't inside the workshop."

My heart dropped into my stomach.

"What do you mean she wasn't inside?!" I yelled.

Director Vance pointed to a second set of tire tracks leading around the back of the farmhouse toward the orchard.

"She used her men as a distraction," Director Vance said grimly. "She knew about the bunker, Eleanor. She’s at the wine cellar door right now."

He pulled out his radio. "Team Two, move to the rear of the main house immediately!"

Mom’s eyes went cold as ice.