He turned to Meier and said, “How fast can you turn that highway overpass into a shaped charge?”
“Down? The sub-basement is a dead end.” Hidden Strike
“Then don’t breathe,” Korr said, and he meant it as both an instruction and a promise. He turned to Meier and said, “How fast
“We’re not going out the way we came. We’re going down.” We’re going down
They found the engineers in a sub-basement control room, huddled behind a blast door. The four of them—two women, two men, all in oil-stained coveralls—looked less like valuable assets and more like terrified rabbits. Their leader, a sharp-faced woman named Dr. Amira Halabi, didn’t thank him. She just said, “About time. The backdoor isn’t in our heads. It’s in a chip we hid in the refinery’s main server.”
Korr’s blood went cold. Hidden strike. Not an ambush—a deception. Rashidi didn’t want to capture the engineers here. He wanted to force Korr to lead him to the chip. The general had let them infiltrate. He had let them find the civilians. Because the chip was the real prize, and only the Americans knew where it was hidden.
“American. I know you are here. I know you want the civilians. But you do not know what I have prepared for you. This refinery is not a battlefield. It is a trap. Every exit is mined. Every corridor is watched. You are not conducting a rescue. You are walking into my hidden strike.”