Chapter 19 - The Long Road Home
Admiral Vance writhed on the cold concrete floor, sputtering desperate threats and promising to hunt us to the ends of the earth.
I stared down at him with utter contempt, realizing that the man I had once idolized as a paragon of military virtue was nothing more than a pathetic, greedy traitor.
Lewis finished the data extraction, pulling the encrypted drive from the console and securing it inside his armored vest.
He triggered the facility's localized fire suppression system, flooding the server racks with corrosive chemical foam to ensure Vance's remaining syndicate members could never recover the network.
We tied the bleeding Admiral's hands securely behind his back with heavy zip-ties and dragged him forcefully toward the emergency extraction elevator.
The facility was crumbling around us, secondary explosions rocking the foundation as the backup generators began to critically overload.
We rode the shaking elevator to the surface, emerging back into the brutal, howling Siberian blizzard.
The freezing air stung my lungs, but it felt incredibly clean compared to the corruption below.
We marched Vance through the deep snow for three grueling miles, forcing him to walk at gunpoint until we reached the hidden extraction coordinates Lewis had pre-arranged with a loyal, off-the-books extraction pilot.
A heavily modified, unmarked stealth helicopter descended through the storm clouds, its rotors kicking up massive clouds of white powder.
We threw the disgraced Admiral into the back of the chopper and climbed aboard just as a convoy of armed syndicate snowcats broke through the tree line, firing wildly into the sky.
The pilot banked hard, accelerating rapidly into the storm and leaving the burning remnants of the black site far behind us.
The flight back to European airspace was entirely silent.
Vance sat in the corner, shivering and defeated, his empire of lies completely dismantled.
Lewis looked at me across the cramped cabin, a genuine, relieved smile finally breaking through his hardened features.
He reached out and tightly grasped my hand, the unspoken bond of our brotherhood completely restored.
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We had massive amounts of undeniable evidence, a high-value prisoner, and a direct line to the few remaining loyalists at the Pentagon.
The war in the shadows was finally over, and it was time to bring the absolute truth out into the blinding light.
