Chapter 13 - The Siege at Zero Point
The live feed on the master console flickered as Agent Vance stepped directly up to the exterior security camera, his expression completely devoid of the smooth corporate composure he had worn earlier. Half of his tailored suit was torn from the scuffle in the sawmill, and a dark bruise was forming along his jawline, giving him the desperate, unhinged look of a cornered animal. Behind him, two Blackwood operatives were already locking the heavy thermal thermite cutter into position against the center of the reinforced steel blast doors. A piercing, high-pitched whine began to emit from the device as the chemical mixture ignited, heating up to white-hot temperatures designed to melt straight through six inches of solid titanium alloy.
"Mark! Can you hear me in there?" Vance’s amplified voice echoed through the bunker's interior intercom speakers, harsh and metallic. "You're sitting in a concrete tomb! You can't out-upload a thermal torch. Open that door right now, hand over the child and the notebook, and I promise you a clean extraction. Resist, and you'll be welded into this mountain forever." Mark didn't answer. He stepped up to the control console beside Torres, watching the progress bar on the upload screen crawl agonizingly toward the one-hundred-percent mark. 91 percent... 92 percent... 93 percent... The air in the bunker was growing noticeably warmer as the thermite torch outside began to eat through the outer layer of the steel door.
Torres slammed his fist against the console in frustration. "The connection speed is throttling! Their signal jammers are starting to interfere with the local relay tower!" he shouted over the rising roar of the thermite torch, which was now casting a blinding orange glow through the hairline cracks beginning to spiderweb across the center of the blast door. Mark looked over at Lily, who was sitting quietly on the cot, wrapped in her thermal blanket. She wasn't crying anymore; she looked up at her father with a strange, profound calm that cut straight through Mark’s terror, reminding him of the exact moment she had pointed at her open book in the classroom.
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"Ray, how much data is left to transfer?" Mark asked, his voice deathly calm as he unholstered his sidearm and checked the magazine. "About four gigabytes—the financial ledgers and the offshore transfer receipts. If the upload drops below ninety-five percent when the door breaches, the whole file gets corrupted and locked out permanently," Torres replied, his fingers flying across the keyboard in a desperate blur. 96 percent... 97 percent... A loud pop echoed from the blast door as a jet of white-hot flame shot through a fist-sized hole right in the center of the metal plate, showering the concrete floor of the bunker with a cas
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