Chapter 6 - A Race Against Time
In the 911 center, Ethan was staring at a map of red-alert dispatch signals. Half the county had lost power. The secondary back-up generators at the emergency center had kicked in with a deep, vibrating thrum, illuminating the room in dull emergency red lighting. Calls were flooding the lines—downed trees, live wires, car crashes—but Ethan ignored them all, focusing every ounce of his concentration on Channel 1.
"Rayden! Report! Rayden!" Ethan shouted into his headset.
Silence. Only the heavy rushing noise of an open mic filled with static.
"Cordero! How far out are you?!" Ethan demanded.
"I’m turning onto the safe house access road now!" Cordero’s voice boomed over the speaker, competing with the roar of rain hammering against his windshield. "Visibility is zero! Trees down on the roadway—I’m having to ram through debris!"
"Rayden’s comms went down!" Ethan yelled. "Vance’s team made entry! They’ve breached the safe house!"
"I’m fifteen seconds out!" Cordero replied. "I’m not waiting for backup!"
Through Cordero’s dashcam and body mic stream, Ethan watched as the patrol car tore down the long, gravel driveway leading to the safe house. The vehicle’s high beams cut through the torrential downpour, revealing the shattered rear patio doors of the ranch home.
Cordero threw the patrol car into a skidding halt, leapt out into the storm with his sidearm drawn, and sprinted into the house.
"Police! Drop your weapons!" Cordero shouted, throwing his shoulder into the front door frame and coming in low.
The scene inside was pure chaos.
Officer Rayden was on the floor, groggy and bleeding from a head wound, but still fighting to reach her dropped firearm. David Jenkins lay unconscious near the hallway, blood dripping from a gash on his forehead. At the end of the hallway, near the cellar door, Brody was crouched over a glowing, sparks-spewing chemical charge attached to the heavy steel hinges.
"Freeze!" Cordero screamed.
Brody spun around, raising a handgun.
*BANG! BANG!*
Cordero fired twice without hesitation. The heavy 9mm rounds struck Brody in the chest. Brody let out a choking gasp and collapsed onto the floor, his handgun sliding across the slick hardwood.
Kane, hearing the shots from the adjacent kitchen, fired a burst through the drywall. Drywall dust exploded into the air as Cordero dove behind a stone archway.
"Cordero!" Ethan yelled through his headset. "The thermite charge on the door is active! If it burns through, the locking pins will fail!"
Cordero ducked under another burst of fire from Kane, pulled a chemical fire extinguisher off the kitchen wall mount, pulled the pin, and rolled into the hallway. He sprayed the thick, white smothering foam directly onto the thermite charge on the cellar hinges, suppressing the extreme heat before it could melt through the steel frame.
Kane cursed loudly, realizing his breach had failed and his partner was down. He turned, smashed through the side window of the kitchen, and vanished into the pitch-black, rain-soaked woods surrounding the house.
"Kane is in the woods! Heading east!" Cordero yelled into his mic, panting heavily as he knelt beside Rayden. "Rayden’s alive! David Jenkins is breathing! I need medics here now!"
"Medics dispatched," Ethan said, his hands moving with blind speed across his keyboard. "Cordero... where is Marcus Vance? He wasn't in the house!"
Cordero froze. He looked around the torn-up interior. Brody was dead on the floor. Kane had fled into the woods.
Marcus Vance had never stepped foot inside the safe house.
"It was a distraction," Ethan whispered, the terrible realization dawning on him like an anvil crushing his chest. "Vance knew we’d protect the safe house. He sent Kane and Brody to draw you in and tie up all tactical units."
"Then where the hell is Vance?!" Cordero demanded.
Ethan pulled up the county transit and facility monitoring grid. He looked at the active alarms that had popped up across the city during the blackout.
One alarm—a minor, low-priority perimeter fault—had tripped three minutes ago at the Lake County Emergency Communications and 911 Center.
May you like
Ethan slowly turned his head toward the heavy, reinforced security doors at the back of the dispatch room.
The lights inside the dispatch center flickered once, twice... and died.
