Chapter 16 - The Data Breach
The deafening roar of automatic gunfire violently shattered the silence of the hidden server room. David instantly tackled me to the cold floor, dragging me aggressively behind a row of massive, heavy steel server racks as bullets sparked and ricocheted off the digital hardware.
The glowing monitors above us exploded into showers of glass and sparks. I clutched my laptop tightly to my chest, desperately watching the download progress bar slowly tick from eighty-five to ninety percent.
"Keep your head completely down!" David roared over the chaotic gunfire, smoothly leaning around the server rack and firing two precise, calculated shots.
One of the advancing cartel enforcers collapsed heavily to the ground, dropping his weapon with a loud clatter. The head of security screamed orders in Spanish, completely abandoning stealth and calling for massive reinforcements via his shoulder radio.
I knew with absolute certainty that if we stayed pinned down on this floor, Vargas's entire private army would swarm the building within minutes, and we would be brutally executed.
"Ninety-eight percent!" I shouted frantically, my heart hammering wildly as a heavy bullet violently pierced the metal server rack mere inches from my face.
The progress bar finally hit one hundred percent, and the screen flashed a brilliant, confirming green. I aggressively yanked the decryption drive from the mainframe and shoved it deep into my tactical vest. We had the evidence, but we were completely trapped hundreds of feet in the air.
David threw a heavy flashbang grenade across the room. The device detonated with a blinding, terrifying flash of pure white light and a deafening boom, entirely disorienting the remaining attackers.
David grabbed my arm and violently pulled me toward a heavy, reinforced steel door marked as a secondary emergency maintenance shaft.
We burst through the door just as the enforcers blindly returned fire. We found ourselves standing on a narrow, grated metal catwalk suspended inside a massive, pitch-black elevator shaft that plummeted forty stories down into absolute darkness.
There was no actual elevator car in this shaft yet; it was just exposed concrete and heavy, hanging industrial cables used by the construction cranes.
The heavy metal door behind us violently shuddered as the enforcers aggressively tried to kick it open.
David looked at me with fierce, desperate determination. He pulled two heavy carabiners and a thick coil of repelling rope from his tactical bag. He quickly secured the rope around a massive steel support beam and clipped the carabiner directly to my specialized tactical harness.
"We are going to drop, and we are going to drop fast," David commanded, his eyes completely locked onto mine.
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The steel door behind us violently burst open.
Without a single second of hesitation, David and I stepped completely off the narrow catwalk, plunging backward into the terrifying, pitch-black abyss just as the enforcers opened fire into the empty shaft.
