Chapter 5 - The Tunnel Beneath the Range
Warning alarms flashed crimson inside the sealed concrete ammunition bunker as the pressurized halon gas dropped the breathable oxygen level below fourteen percent in less than twenty seconds.
On the floor beside the ammo crates, Agent David Cross clutched his throat and slumped sideways, his weakened body succumbing instantly to the suffocating chemical mist.
Nora pulled the collar of her gray hoodie up over her nose and mouth, her mind racing through the structural blueprints of the desert facility she had memorized before infiltrating the tournament.
The outer steel blast door was six inches thick and locked by an external magnetic solenoid from Victor Blackthorne's luxury box, meaning no amount of force would open it from the inside.
In the corner of the concrete floor, however, sat a recessed cast-iron maintenance hatch secured by a heavy rusted steel padlock that led down into the thousand-yard subterranean wiring conduit.
She did not have time to pick the rusted lock, and firing a live bullet straight down into an iron padlock inside a six-by-ten concrete room would ricochet lethal shrapnel right into their bodies.
Dropping to her knees beside her open rifle case, Nora pulled four heavy three-three-eight magnum cartridges from her belt and used a pair of steel pliers to wrench the copper-jacketed lead bullets out of the brass casings.
Working with blinding speed as black spots danced at the edges of her vision from lack of oxygen, she poured all four charges of high-energy smokeless propellant powder directly into the keyhole and seam of the rusted iron padlock.
She tore a strip of dry cotton cloth from her shirt hem, wedged the última open brass casing with its live percussion primer straight into the mouth of the lock, and struck the primer cap sharply with the pointed steel tip of her tactical knife.
A blinding orange flash and a focused, deafening detonation blew the rusted iron padlock clean in half without sending a single bullet ricocheting through the room.
Wrenching the heavy cast-iron floor hatch open, Nora hooked her arms beneath Agent Cross's shoulders, lowered his unconscious body down the steel ladder into the cool subterranean service tunnel, and pulled the hatch shut above her head to seal out the halon gas.
The narrow concrete maintenance tunnel stretched three thousand feet straight beneath the desert floor, housing the high-voltage fiber-optic cables that connected the firing line to the distant target pits.
After reviving Cross with an ammonia inhalant ampule from her kit, Nora slung her rifle over her shoulder and supported his weight as they hurried down the dimly lit concrete corridor toward the thousand-yard exit hatch.
Halfway down the tunnel, at the five-hundred-yard concrete junction box, the overhead maintenance lights suddenly flickered and died, plunging the straight corridor ahead into deep shadow.
A bright tactical flashlight beam snapped on twenty feet in front of them, and a man stepped out from behind the concrete transformer housing with a custom chrome nine-millimeter pistol aimed squarely at Nora's chest.
It was Garrett Locke, the arrogant three-time national champion from Lane Eleven, his sponsor jersey soaked in sweat and his jaw clenched tight.
Nora raised her left hand slowly to keep Agent Cross behind her back while her eyes automatically read the movements of Garrett's lips in the flashlight glare.
"Do not touch that rifle on your shoulder, Nora, or I put a bullet through your chest right now," Garrett said, his voice echoing down the concrete tube.
"Victor Blackthorne just offered to clear my five-million-dollar gambling debt in Vegas and hand me the Pentagon endorsement contract if I make sure you and the fed never walk out of this tunnel."
Nora did not flinch in the face of the gun; instead, she tilted her head slightly and looked directly at the slight, rhythmic tremor shaking Garrett's right wrist as he held the pistol.
"You are not going to shoot me, Garrett, because your right hand is shaking at four cycles per second from early-onset cerebellar ataxia," Nora said calmly, making the reigning champion freeze in shock.
"When Chief Referee Miller switched on the hidden diagnostic monitor in Chapter Two, I saw the raw electronic stabilization log from Lane Eleven—you have been using Blackthorne's illegal gyro-stabilized smart-scope to correct your hand tremor for the last two years because you are going blind in your shooting eye."
"If you pull that trigger for Victor Blackthorne right now, you are no longer a frightened athlete hiding an illness—you are a traitor helping him murder the Secretary of Defense upstairs in fifteen minutes."
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Garrett stared at her for three agonizing seconds, the rage in his eyes crumbling into raw shame as he slowly lowered the chrome pistol toward the concrete floor.
At that exact instant, the high-voltage steel rail running along the center of the tunnel floor began to hum violently, and a motorized steel target-maintenance cart packed with twenty pounds of military C4 plastic explosive erupted out of the dark four hundred yards away, hurtling straight toward them at fifty miles an hour with its red proximity detonator blinking furiously.
