Chapter 5 - The River Line
The battle for the subterranean timber mill was swift, silent, and brutal.
Ramon and Matteo didn't fight from behind cover like defenders; they moved through the smoke like ghosts who knew every pipe, every corner, and every shadow of the concrete facility.
When the first three tactical operators dropped through the breached vault ceiling, Matteo caught them in a crossfire from the upper catwalks, his suppressed rifle barking in tight, three-round bursts. The operators fell before their boots even hit the lower concrete floor.
Ramon moved through the central corridor, his sidearm operating with terrifying accuracy. Flashbangs detonated in the dark, blinding white light bouncing off the concrete, but Ramon moved by memory and sound alone. Two more operators coming through the medical bay were neutralized before they could even raise their weapons to target the empty beds.
"Main servers set for thermite burn!" Victor’s voice called out over the radio. "Ten seconds!"
"Fall back to the river shaft!" Ramon commanded into his ear.
Ramon fired two remaining rounds into a tactical relay panel on the wall, sparking a massive electrical short that plunged the entire lower level into pitch blackness.
A second later, white-hot chemical fire erupted in the server room as the thermite charges melted the digital hard drives into slag, filling the corridors with dense, suffocating white smoke.
Ramon and Matteo hit the reinforced iron door leading to the emergency escape shaft, slamming it shut and spinning the manual locking wheel just as three tactical grenades exploded on the other side.
The escape shaft was a steep, narrow stone tunnel cut directly into the mountain bedrock forty years ago by the timber company. It slanted downward at a steep thirty-degree angle, slick with groundwater and smelling of moss.
Ramon, Matteo, and Victor sprinted down the dark incline, their tactical flashlights cutting through the moisture.
Two hundred yards down, the tunnel opened into a hidden cove along the roaring, rain-swollen waters of the Blackwood River.
Lilly, Elena, and Diego were waiting under the shelter of an overhang of jagged rock. Diego was holding a heavy night-vision optic, watching the opposite bank of the river.
"River is clear, Boss!" Diego reported, shouting over the deafening roar of the churning water. "The storm has pushed the water level up six feet! The currents are brutal!"
Tied to a heavy steel ring embedded in the rock wall was a military-grade, twin-engine rigid inflatable boat—a black-hulled vessel designed to navigate high-risk white water.
"Get in!" Ramon commanded, waving Elena and Lilly toward the center seat of the boat.
Elena climbed in, pulling Lilly tightly between her knees. Victor jumped into the captain’s seat, slamming his hands onto the dual throttle controls. The twin three-hundred-horsepower outboard engines roared to life with a deep, mechanical hum that vibrated through the hull.
"Boss! Above us!" Matteo yelled, pointing up at the rocky cliff rising seventy feet above the river cove.
Through the rain and fog, two dark tactical helicopters were dropping low over the tree line, their high-powered searchlights cutting through the storm, sweeping the raging river surface with blinding white beams.
"They brought air support!" Victor yelled. "If we hit the open river, those searchlights will paint us like sitting ducks for their door gunners!"
Ramon stepped into the boat, his boots locking into the deck cleats. He grabbed a heavy launcher from the storage locker beneath the console—a shoulder-fired, wire-guided smoke countermeasure system.
He aimed the launcher straight up into the rain toward the approaching helicopters.
"Victor," Ramon said, his voice completely steady against the gale-force wind. "Hit the water."
Ramon pulled the trigger.
Three thick canisters shot into the air, exploding forty feet above the river in a dense, blooming cloud of infrared-blocking titanium smoke. The searchlights instantly washed out into a blind, milky glare.
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Victor slammed both throttles forward.
The boat shot out of the hidden cove like a missile, plunging straight into the churning, roaring black waters of the swollen river, leaving the exploding timber mill and the blinded helicopters behind in the screaming storm.
