The Sliced Brake Line At The Rally And The Daughter’s Warning
CHAPTER 4: THE ORE MILL BREACH
“They’re moving him to the furnace!” Carly cried out into Jax’s helmet intercom, her fingers digging through his leather vest in sheer panic.
“Hold your fire and maintain discipline,” Jax whispered back, his voice as calm as deep water. “Red, take the flume access gate with the hydraulic cutters. Tank, set the diversion charges on the transformer bank. We breach in three minutes.”
The five riders dismounted in the shadow of a massive granite outcrop eighty yards below the western drainage flume. The wind had shifted, blowing cold mountain air down the slopes, carrying the scent of impending rain and sulfur from the ancient tailings piles.
Red and Preacher moved through the dark scrub with the practiced stealth of combat scouts. Red jammed a hardened steel bolt cutter into the rusted chain-link securing the water flume grate, snapping the links with a muffled CRUNCH.
Jax, with Carly close behind, crawled through the narrow, concrete-lined water flume into the subterranean foundations of the refinery. The tunnel was damp and freezing, water trickling over their boots, but it bypassed every infrared motion detector and perimeter camera on the surface.
They emerged into the vast, cavernous darkness of the underground leaching vault. Towering four stories above them were massive steel flotation tanks, rusted ore conveyors, and the deafening hum of heavy ventilation fans.
Twenty yards ahead, illuminated by a single swinging halogen work light, was the heavy reinforced steel door of Sub-Vault Four.
Standing outside the door were four private security contractors wearing black tactical vests and carrying suppressed submachine guns. Through the open hatch, two guards were dragging Tommy Evans across the concrete floor.
Tommy was horribly thin, his face hollow and covered in gray stubble, his wrists bound with heavy steel cuffs, but his eyes were blazing with furious resistance as he spat blood onto the floorboards.
“You’re wasting your time, Vance,” Tommy’s raspy voice echoed through the cavern. “The third encryption key is locked in my head. You’ll never get that guidance firmware to boot without me.”
Standing in front of him, impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal wool coat over a crisp dress shirt, was Victor Vance. The sixty-year-old billionaire held an encrypted satellite tablet in one leather-gloved hand and a heavy nickel-plated revolver in the other.
“I don’t need the third key anymore, Tommy,” Vance purred with venomous amusement. “My overseas buyers have agreed to purchase the guidance modules as raw cryptographic hardware for sixty million dollars. Your usefulness expired forty minutes ago. Chuck him in the crusher hopper.”
“Dad!” Carly’s voice broke the shadows before Jax could clamp a hand over her mouth.
Vance spun around, his revolver instantly coming up. “Intruders! Kill them!”
The four contractors raised their submachine guns, but before they could squeeze off a single burst, the darkness outside the vault exploded into deafening chaos.
On the upper catwalk, Tank detonated two military-grade flashbang canisters directly into the refinery’s main electrical transformer. A blinding explosion of white magnesium fire and a thunderous concussion wave tore through the cavern, instantly blinding the contractors and showering the concrete deck in showers of violent electrical sparks!
Jax erupted from the flume entrance like a charging grizzly.
He closed the twenty-foot gap in three blinding strides, slamming his heavy buffalo-hide shoulder directly into the lead contractor’s chest. The impact shattered the man’s ribs with an audible crack, sending him flying backward into a stack of empty steel drums.
Jax drew his twelve-gauge tactical shotgun from his back scabbard, racking the slide with a terrifying CLACK-CLACK. He fired a heavy kinetic beanbag round that caught the second contractor square in the sternum, dropping him unconscious to the floor.
Preacher and Red swept down the catwalk stairs, disarming the remaining two guards with brutal, efficient hand-to-hand strikes.
Victor Vance panicked. Seeing his armed detail neutralized in ten seconds, the billionaire fired two wild revolver shots that ricocheted off the iron ore crusher, then scrambled through a rear steel fire exit, slamming the heavy blast door behind him.
Jax sprinted into the vault, dropped to his knees beside the emaciated prisoner, and sliced Tommy’s zip-ties with his combat knife.
Tommy looked up through swollen, blackened eyes. When his gaze locked onto Jax Stone’s face, the breath left his lungs in a ragged, disbelieving sob.
“Jax…” Tommy choked out, his trembling, scarred hands reaching out to grab Jax’s leather vest. “You… you came. You didn’t believe the lies.”
“Brothers in iron, Tommy,” Jax said, his voice cracking with twenty years of unshed tears as he hauled his brother into a fierce, bone-cracking embrace. “Never left a man behind in the desert, and I’m not leaving you here.”
Carly threw herself into the vault, dropping to her knees and burying her face in her father’s chest, weeping uncontrollably. “Dad! Oh God, Dad!”
Tommy wept, kissing his daughter’s forehead with trembling lips. “Carly… my sweet girl… you found him.”
“We have to move now!” Red shouted from the doorway, checking the surveillance monitors. “Vance hit the facility lockdown switch! The primary freight elevator is powering on! Vance’s heavy mercenary tactical convoy is rolling out of the Spearfish depot with three armored gun trucks, heading straight for the canyon railhead to load those guidance modules!”
Tommy grabbed Jax’s arm, his eyes wide with desperate urgency. “Jax, listen to me! The guidance modules are already loaded onto a flatbed railcar at the Spearfish Canyon crossing! Vance is staging an armed ambush on the mountain highway to eliminate all witnesses before the train crosses the Wyoming state line! We have twelve minutes to intercept that train!
