Chapter 6 - Turning the Tables
Back inside the auto shop, the smoke was slowly clearing.
Two Vanguard operatives lay unconscious on the concrete floor, their weapons scattered. The remaining four had formed a defensive semicircle around the inner office door, breathing heavily through their gas masks.
“Hale!” the team leader shouted over the ringing in his ears, his rifle aimed squarely at the shadows behind the counter. “You’re outgunned! Give us the girl and the data drive, and Director Vance promises you walk away from this clean!”
Vincent stepped out from behind a rusted engine block, his coat lightly singed by powder burns, his right hand holding his sidearm with absolute, rock-solid steadiness.
“Tell Marcus Vance that I never liked federal bureaucrats,” Vincent said coldly, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. “And tell him his delivery is already on its way to every newsroom in Washington.”
The team leader’s eyes widened behind his tactical visor. “You didn't keep the drive—!”
Before he could finish the sentence, Vincent’s phone buzzed in his pocket with a pre-programmed automated confirmation alert: Data payload broadcasted successfully across all encrypted international channels.
Jax had executed the kill-switch upload from a remote offshore server. At that exact second, every classified document, financial ledger, and audio recording implicating Director Marcus Vance in treason and murder popped up simultaneously on every major news network, independent blog, and federal oversight portal in the country.
The game was over. Vance’s empire had just imploded in real time.
The team leader stared at his wrist-mounted tactical display as urgent, frantic messages began flooding his secure comms channel from Washington headquarters. The hunters had suddenly become the hunted.
“Fall back! Fall back now!” the leader screamed, dropping his aggressive posture and scrambling backward toward the broken front entrance.
Vincent didn't chase them. He lowered his weapon slowly, watching as the panicked operatives piled into their remaining SUV and peeled out into the street, desperate to save their own skins before the federal net closed in on them.
Vincent keyed his secure comms unit. “Reyes, status.”
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“We’re at the extraction point, Boss,” Reyes’s voice came back over the static, breathless but steady. “Lily is safe, dry, and eating a chocolate chip muffin I found in the glove box.”
“Good,” Vincent said, looking out through the shattered glass front of the shop as the morning sun finally broke fully through the smog. “Meet me at the marina. We’re taking a trip to the East Coast.”
