Chapter 14
Sarah didn't hand the folder over. With a sudden, fluid motion born of years of tactical training, she whipped her arm back and hurled the heavy brown leather folder directly upward, launching it toward the rusted metal rafters high above their heads.
"Shoot the latch!" Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs.
From the skylight in the ceiling, a deafening crack echoed through the warehouse. The federal sniper's high-rifle bullet struck the brass clasp of the airborne folder dead center, shattering the lock into a thousand metallic shards.
The folder burst open mid-air, showering the warehouse floor with hundreds of loose documents, encrypted flash drives, and micro-SD cards that fluttered down through the harsh fluorescent light like a storm of white snow.
The man in the grey suit shrieked in absolute rage, his thumb instantly slamming down hard onto the red button of the detonator.
"No!" Hayes roared.
A dull, concussive roar echoed beneath their feet. The floor shuddered violently, throwing Marcus and Sarah off balance as dust and chunks of concrete rained down from the ceiling. A massive spark erupted from the nearest support pillar as the first linear charge blew, tearing through the load-bearing steel with a terrifying shriek of twisted metal.
"Move, move, move!" Hayes bellowed, lunging forward and tackling Officer Davis out of the path of a falling timber beam.
Marcus scrambled across the shifting concrete, diving toward Miller’s chair. He whipped out his combat knife, sliced through the thick nylon ropes binding her wrists and ankles in two swift strokes, and hauled her to her feet by the collar of her tactical uniform.
"The exit!" Miller yelled, coughing against the thickening clouds of grey dust and smoke. "The eastern bay door is jammed!"
Above them, the sniper in the rafters fired three rapid suppressing shots down toward the man in the grey suit, forcing the syndicate operative to dive behind a heavy steel crate for cover, his detonator slipping from his fingers and sliding away across the trembling concrete floor.
Sarah didn't hesitate. She scrambled across the floor, dodging falling debris and scooping up the crucial flash drive that had landed near her boots, sliding it securely into her tactical vest.
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"We're running out of floor!" Marcus shouted over the deafening roar of collapsing infrastructure. The entire western wall of the warehouse was beginning to lean inward at a sickening forty-five-degree angle, threatening to bury them all in a mountain of corrugated steel and pulverized brick.
As they sprinted toward the narrow gap of the main entrance, a blinding flash of white light exploded from the electrical grid overhead, plunging the collapsing warehouse into total, terrifying darkness.
