The larger of the two men lunged forward, his heavy hands reaching for my jacket collar. I didn't dodge. I drove my left shoulder hard into his sternum, using the momentum of his own forward rush to knock him backward into the stack of steel angle-iron. The metal crashed to the concrete with a deafening, clattering roar.
The second contractor hesitated, his eyes darting between Vance and the fallen worker.
I turned straight toward Captain Ellis. "You have thirty seconds to make a choice that survives Thursday, Captain," I said, my chest heaving against the cold air. "Vance is moving this scrap to a rail furnace in Pennsylvania. Once that chassis melts, you are the sole signature on an undocumented military property transit log. You think he's going to let an eyewitness keep a pension?"
Ellis looked down at the unlit flare in his hands, then up at Colonel Vance’s back. The Colonel was raising the crowbar, his jaw locked in a grim, violent line, his eyes fixed on my throat.
"Marcus," Ellis whispered.
Vance took one aggressive step toward me, his boots leaving muddy tread marks on the smooth concrete. "Give me the drive, Miller."
Ellis struck the flare.
A blinding, brilliant red magnesium flame erupted with a violent hiss, bathing the entire warehouse in searing, blood-colored light and thick white smoke. The sudden intensity of the phosphor bloom washed out Vance’s lantern beam, blinding the Colonel and forcing him to throw an arm across his eyes with a startled curse.
"Get out of here, Miller!" Ellis yelled, coughing through the rising cloud of chemical smoke as he hurled the burning flare directly into the grease-slick hopper of the hydraulic shear. "Take the west siding! The yard gate is unlocked!"
CHAPTER 3: The Evidence That Broke Command
The magnesium smoke rolled in thick, blinding billows through the rafters of Warehouse Seven, choking the air with the stench of scorched sulfur and burning grease. Colonel Vance let out a raw, furious curse, stumbling backward against the industrial hoist with one arm clamped across his watering eyes. I didn't wait for him to clear his sight. I lunged through the west pedestrian egress, hit the crash bar with both forearms, and burst into the driving deluge outside.
Cold rain slammed into my face like a fist, washing the chemical soot from my eyes and shocking my lungs. The cinders of the rail siding had dissolved into deep, sucking mire beneath my boots. Behind me, inside the metal shell of the building, the burning flare continued to hiss violently against the hydraulic shear's oil reservoir, setting off an ear-splitting building fire siren that wailed into the storm.
I didn't head for the open yard road. I scrambled along the ballast beside the west spur, keeping low beneath the rusted flanks of five coupled hopper cars. Footsteps splashed heavily through the gravel behind me—one of the contractors had found the side door, shouting into a handheld radio. But the shadow of the train shielded my silhouette. At the far switchyard switch, the security chain on the maintenance gate hung severed, swinging in the wind just as Captain Ellis had promised.
I slipped through the gap into the scrub pine line, crossed the waterlogged ditch, and reached the cab of my truck. My clothes were soaked through to the skin, shivering cold, but my right hand remained locked over the canvas pocket of my field trousers. The thumb-sized steel casing of the jump drive pressed flat against my hip bone, hard and intact.
When I cranked the ignition, the engine caught with a violent shudder. I pulled the truck onto the shoulder of County Route 9 without switching on the headlights, running on the amber parking markers until the silhouette of the rail yard vanished into the sheets of rain behind me.
On the passenger seat, the civilian scanner clipped to my visor crackled with the local emergency dispatch frequency. Base security was already moving.
"All units, South Gate sector," a dispatcher's voice cut through the static, tight and rapid. "Be on the lookout for a blue 2014 pickup, license Victor-Seven-Two. Suspect is discharged enlisted technician Daniel Miller, wanted for industrial trespass, destruction of depot property, and physical assault at the Northline freight siding. Suspect is considered non-compliant. Approach with standard vehicle interdiction protocol."
Vance was moving faster than I had anticipated. He wasn't waiting until morning to bury me; he was using the county line to box me into an arrest report before I could get within fifty miles of a federal courthouse. If the county deputies pulled me over on the state route, the jump drive would be logged as personal effects, sealed in an evidence bag, and surrendered directly to base security under the inter-agency jurisdiction compact. Once Vance’s contractors took custody of that envelope, the drive would disappear into an incinerator before breakfast.