Chapter 9 - The Last Command
seasonal drops of blood flickered on the white tiles as Ranger charged across the server vault floor.
The two technicians dropped their tools and scrambled backward in terror. Vance turned, his eyes widening in genuine shock as he drew his sidearm from his shoulder holster. "Get that creature down!" he screamed into his radio.
Vance fired two shots toward the floor. The bullets ricocheted off the concrete, one grazing Ranger's left shoulder, but the old dog didn't even flinch. He was locked into a tactical assault trajectory he had rehearsed a thousand times in his youth.
Ranger didn't attack Vance's throat. He remembered his training. He leaped onto the main control console, using his entire body weight to crash into Vance's chest, throwing the Colonel backward onto the hard tile floor. Vance's pistol clattered across the room, sliding beneath a rack of servers.
With Vance pinned, Ranger turned his head, lunged upward toward the wall panel, and slammed his heavy paws directly into the large red EMERGENCY MANUAL OVERRIDE lever.
A deafening siren began to blare throughout the facility. Red emergency strobes flashed in every room, and the heavy pneumatic lock on the reinforced glass door separating the control room from the vault released with a massive burst of pressurized air.
"Ben! Get the signal up!" I yelled, throwing the vault door open and sprinting into the room.
I reached Vance just as he was scrambling toward his dropped pistol. I drove my boot down onto his wrist, forcing him to yell in pain as I kicked the weapon far out of reach. I grabbed Vance by his collar, dragged him up against the server rack, and slammed him against the steel frame.
"It's over, Colonel," I said, my voice ice cold.
Behind us, Ben ran into the vault, plugged the micro-SD card directly into the physical mainframe port, and tapped his tablet. With the facility's emergency system activated, the automated backup network bypassed Vance's local jammer, establishing a direct, high-bandwidth connection to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service network.
On Ben's tablet, the progress bar shot upward: 30%... 60%... 90%... UPLOAD COMPLETE.
DATA TRANSMITTED TO DEPT OF JUSTICE SECURE VAULT.
At that exact moment, the heavy steel door of the control room behind us was finally blown open by the contractors' thermite charge. Four armed men burst into the upper room, weapons raised.
"Drop your weapons!" a loud voice echoed through the upper hallway, followed by the heavy, rhythmic thrumming of multiple military helicopters hovering directly over the facility roof.
Searchlights cut through the darkness of the high windows above. Federal tactical teams, alerted by the automated trigger of the Inspector General's network broadcast, were fast-roping onto the facility grounds.
"Stand down!" a voice boomed over a megaphone outside. "Federal agents! Drop your weapons and surrender immediately!"
The contractors in the upper room looked at each other, saw the blacked-out federal vans pulling into the courtyard through the security monitors, and dropped their weapons to the floor, raising their hands.
Vance looked at the monitor, then up at me, his face pale, his empire crumbling around him in a matter of seconds.
"You ruined everything, Mason," Vance hissed, his voice raspy under my grip. "That dog was property of the United States government."
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I looked down at Ranger, who was standing beside my leg, leaning his weight against my calf, panting heavily, his eyes looking up at me with calm, unwavering devotion.
"He's not property, Vance," I said softly, letting go of his collar as two federal marshals rushed into the vault to hand-cuff the Colonel. "He's my partner."
