Chapter 10 - The Thunder Below
The mercenary vanguard breached the entrance, their flashlights cutting through the dust. Over her tactical earpiece, Sofia heard Hector’s steady breath.
""They're all inside the primary chamber, Sofia,"" Hector whispered. ""The breach team took the bait. They found the decoy servers.""
""Wait until the tail clear the threshold,"" Sofia whispered back, watching the rear guard through her scope. The last two operators stepped past the wooden support timbers of the portal.
""Blow it,"" Sofia said.
A muffled subterranean roar shook the entire mountain. The ground beneath Sofia vibrated violently as a plume of fire, smoke, and crushed stone erupted from the mine entrance like a cannon blast. The concrete lintels gave way, thousands of tons of mountain rock crashing down in a catastrophic avalanche, instantly sealing the thirty mercenaries in a granite tomb.
Down in the clearing, the three transport helicopters were spooling up their rotors in panic, realizing the ambush had been sprung.
Sofia adjusted her scope, leading the pilot of the lead helicopter by two inches. She exhaled slowly, pausing at the bottom of her breath, and squeezed the trigger.
The heavy bullet punched through the cockpit windshield, shattering the glass and dropping the pilot forward against the cyclic control stick. The helicopter tilted wildly, its rotor blades striking the sheer cliff face. With a deafening explosion of aviation fuel, it detonated against the rock wall, showering the landing zone in flaming debris.
The remaining two choppers didn't wait. They banked hard, throwing their engines into full power, fleeing back toward the coast.
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Sofia stood up slowly on the ridge, the cold wind whipping her hair across her bruised face. She lowered the rifle.
""Hector,"" she keyed her comm. ""Bring the armored truck. It's time to go to Coronado.""
