Chapter 9 - Retaliation
Within forty seconds, Croft was zip-tied, gagged, and hauled away by counter-intelligence specialists. The room was in pure chaos.
Sienna was hyperventilating on the floor, clutching her knees and rocking back and forth as the horrifying gravity of treason began to pierce her self-absorbed vanity. Evelyn sat frozen, staring at the floor with wide, hollow eyes. The arrogant, self-righteous matriarch who had slapped me in public thirty minutes ago was now staring down the barrel of federal aiding-and-abetting charges.
"I didn't know," Evelyn whimpered, her hands shaking violently. "Olivia... baby... please... I didn't know what Sienna was giving them. I just wanted her to be successful. I wanted our family to be respected like we were when your father was alive..."
"You sold my father's blood twice, Mother," I said, looking down at her with neither anger nor pity—only an insurmountable emptiness. "First, you tried to steal his pension. Then, you let your favorite child sell his legacy to the highest bidder. If Dad were here tonight, he wouldn't roll in his grave. He would be the one handing you over to the provost marshal."
Hayes rushed back into the room, holding the secured tablet. "Major! The digital transceiver we took off Croft was transmitting a localized telemetry ping. We decoded the destination node."
"Where is it going?" I asked sharply.
"It wasn't broadcasting to an offshore server," Hayes said, his expression grim. "It was pinging a tactical tracking device planted on your personal vehicle in the gala parking lot. Major, they didn't just want the hard drive from your father's study. That drive was double-encrypted with a hardware security key that Thomas Vance kept on his person."
Mason’s eyes snapped to mine. "The heirloom."
My hand instinctively moved to my neck. Beneath my dress uniform, hidden behind my medals and formal collar, hung a small, polished titanium dog tag. It had been recovered from my father’s crash site eight years ago. To anyone else, it looked like a charred piece of combat memorabilia. But embedded within the titanium core was a microscopic, physical cryptographic chip—the master decryption key for Dad's research.
"They used Sienna to get the encrypted drive," Mason growled, pulling his sidearm from its tactical holster and racking the slide with a clean, lethal click. "And they followed Croft here tonight to extract Olivia and take the key."
Right on cue, the high-pitched shriek of base perimeter sirens shattered the night air.
The overhead lights flickered violently twice, then died completely, plunging Corridor C into darkness before the deep crimson glow of emergency auxiliary lights bathed the hallway in blood-red hues.
A blast rattled the outer security gate of the banquet facility, followed by the rapid, rhythmic chatter of suppressed automatic gunfire outside.
"Ambush at Gate Four!" the base comms network crackled over Hayes’s radio. "Hostile fire teams engaging civilian perimeter! They’re cutting through the electrical grid!"
"Sienna! Oh God, Sienna!" Evelyn screamed, diving onto the floor and covering her head. Sienna let out a high-pitched wail of pure terror, curling under the metal bench.
Mason stepped in front of me, his weapon raised, his eyes scanning the corridor through the reinforced glass window of the holding room.
"They’re desperate," Mason said calmly, the battlefield commander taking full control. "They know once Croft was compromised, the entire network would be rolled up by morning. They’re making a smash-and-grab run for you and that key right now."
"They picked the wrong target," I replied, pulling my service sidearm from the lockbox beneath the guard station and checking the chamber.
For eight years, I had hidden my grief behind paperwork, debriefings, and silence. I had let my mother abuse my loyalty and let my sister drain my resources because I thought protecting them was what Dad wanted. But the illusion was shattered. The people I needed to protect were standing right beside me in uniform.
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"Hayes, guard this holding room," I ordered. "Keep these two secured. Mason, we move to the staging lobby and intercept before they breach the civilian hall."
"On your six, Major," Mason said, a razor-thin, feral smirk appearing on his lips. "Let’s finish this."
