Chapter 5: The Final Toast
Logan pulled his gas mask over his face instantly, flipping down his quad-lens night-vision goggles. The dark world around him turned a bright, eerie emerald green.
He looked up through the open ceiling hatch. Two Vanguard mercenaries were aiming their rifles down into the elevator car.
Logan fired upward straight through the cloud of gas.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
Blood splattered down onto the elevator floor as both guards fell from the top of the shaft, crashing past the car into the dark pit below.
Logan grabbed the edges of the open roof hatch, pulled himself up with explosive upper-body strength, and climbed onto the top of the elevator car. He squeezed through the maintenance doors of Floor -2, stepping directly into the sub-basement server complex.
The server room was massive—rows upon rows of glowing blue server racks humming like a choir of machines. At the far end of the room, behind a wall of bulletproof glass, stood Thomas Halloway.
Halloway had his armored briefcase plugged directly into the central server terminal. A blue progress bar on the massive overhead screen read: PENTAGON OVERRIDE UPLOAD: 84% COMPLETE.
Two remaining elite Vanguard enforcers stood guard outside the glass room, wielding heavy automatic shotguns.
Before they could acquire their target, Logan threw a high-explosive grenade straight down the central aisle.
BOOM!
The shockwave shattered the outer display panels, sending a hail of glass and smoking debris through the air. Logan rushed through the smoke like a demon, closing the distance. He parried the first guard’s shotgun barrel, rammed his combat knife upward under the guard’s tactical helmet, and spun around to drive his sidearm into the second guard’s chest, firing three fast rounds.
Both guards collapsed.
Logan stepped up to the heavy reinforced glass door of the command room. Inside, Halloway panicked. He frantically hit the override keyboard, trying to speed up the transfer.
PENTAGON OVERRIDE UPLOAD: 92% COMPLETE.
“It’s over, Thomas!” Logan’s voice boomed through the intercom, cold and relentless. “Open the door!”
“Never!” Halloway screamed, his eyes wild with desperation. “In two minutes, ten billion dollars hits my account! The Pentagon will own the software! I am untouchable!”
Logan didn’t argue. He pulled a block of C4 plastic explosive from his pack, slammed it onto the reinforced glass door lock, inserted a detonator, and stepped back behind a server rack.
BOOM!
The glass door blew inward, shattering into thousands of tiny crystals.
Logan walked into the room through the cloud of dust.
Halloway pulled a small snub-nosed revolver from his tailored suit jacket, his hand shaking uncontrollably as he aimed it at Logan’s head.
“Stay back!” Halloway shrieked. “I’ll kill you! I swear to God I’ll kill you, Cross!”
Logan didn’t stop walking. He didn’t even raise his rifle. He walked straight up to the barrel of Halloway’s gun until the cold steel rested directly against his own forehead.
“Go ahead, Thomas,” Logan whispered, his voice deadly quiet. “Pull the trigger. Look into the eyes of the man you murdered.”
Halloway’s finger trembled on the trigger. Sweat dripped off his chin. He looked into Logan’s eyes—and saw no fear, no hesitation, only the cold, dark abyss of a man who had already died four years ago in the Kandahar mud.
Halloway’s courage completely collapsed. His hand dropped, and the revolver fell from his limp fingers, clattering onto the floor.
“Please…” Halloway whimpered, sinking into his leather chair, holding his hands up in terror. “Please, Logan… I can make you rich. Half of the ten billion! Five billion dollars! You can live like a king! Nobody has to know!”
Logan looked at the terminal screen.
PENTAGON OVERRIDE UPLOAD: 99% COMPLETE.
Logan reached out and pulled the ruggedized encrypted satellite drive—the same drive he had shown the ballroom—out of his pocket. He jammed it into the server’s primary input port.
“Maya, now,” Logan said into his comms.
“I’ve got full access,” Maya’s voice chimed through the earpiece. “Overwriting Vanguard’s software with the unredacted execution logs, offshore account ledgers, and the Kandahar audio files. Broadcasting live to the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, and every major news network on the planet in 3… 2… 1…”
The screen flashed red.
UPLOAD CANCELLED. DATA CORRUPTED. EVIDENCE BROADCAST SUCCESSFUL.
Halloway stared at the screen in utter horror. “You… you destroyed everything…”
“No,” Logan said gently. “You destroyed yourself four years ago. We’re just here to collect the bill.”
From the distance above, the loud wail of police sirens and military police choppers echoed through the storm. Federal agents, state troopers, and military investigators were swarming Skyport Alpha.
Bear stepped into the shattered room, his rifle lowered, looking down at Halloway with cold disdain.
“Perimeter is secure, Captain,” Bear said. “Feds are coming down the stairs now.”
Logan slowly unpinned something from his black tactical shirt.
He walked up to Halloway’s desk. He reached out and placed a single, tarnished, silver dog tag onto the mahogany surface, right next to Halloway’s trembling hand.
It was Logan’s own tag from Kandahar.
“Four years ago, you made a ten-billion-dollar toast to the dead,” Logan said softly, looking down at the disgraced general. “Consider this our reply.”
Logan turned his back on Halloway and walked out of the server room alongside Bear, leaving the architect of their nightmare sitting alone in the dark, surrounded by the flashing red lights of his own ruin.
As they stepped out into the cool, rain-washed air of the airfield, the morning sun began to break through the heavy storm clouds over Washington D.C., casting a pale golden light across the capital.
Logan looked up at the sky, pulled off his tactical gloves, and took his first real breath of freedom in four long years.
The dead were finally at peace.
Orther Post
