Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
“Maintenance room seven, clear. Moving to air intake three.”
Dakota’s voice might sound steady, but underneath the calm, his heart was counting seconds like a detonator.
Twenty minutes until the president arrived. Five modified cleaning robots loaded with neurotoxin hidden somewhere in the building.
And a woman he loved—and yeah, he might as well stop denying it—out there, trying to track down an assassin.
Focus! Aw, who was he kidding?
“Copy.” Ham’s voice crackled through the comms, fragmentary and broken. “—has the north section. Skeet is—” Static swallowed the rest.
Dakota moved through the service corridor, checking each maintenance alcove as he passed. The hidden arteries of the Opera House were a maze—narrow concrete passages, exposed pipes, industrial lighting that cast everything in harsh shadows. The air smelled of concrete dust and cleaning chemicals.
Somewhere above him, security teams swept the public areas. Uniformed officers at every entrance. Plainclothes agents. Bomb-sniffing dogs. Metal detectors. The visible machinery of protection.
Down here, in the corridors tourists never saw, Dakota hunted for the real threat.
“Contact.” West’s voice cut through the static, clearer than Ham’s had been. “Found one. Service corridor B, near the loading dock. Disarming now.”
“Status?”
“It’s rigged exactly like we thought. Obsidite canister, toxin reservoir, dispersal mechanism.” A pause. The sound of careful work. “Give me two minutes.”
Dakota kept moving. The schematics on his tablet showed six marks—six locations where the modified Roombas could be positioned. According to maintenance records, the Opera House had five cleaning robots, all recently sent out for “routine maintenance.”
Five robots. Six marks.
Something didn’t add up.
“Second unit located.” West again, his voice professional despite the pressure. “Maintenance room twelve. Nimue, you’re sure about this sequence?”
“Positive.” Nimue’s voice was calm, precise—the Black Swan tech specialist walking them through the disarming protocol from somewhere far away. “Power source first, then the radio receiver. Don’t touch the pressure sensor until both are disconnected.”
“Copy.”
Dakota checked another docking station. Empty—the robot had already been found and was being disarmed somewhere in the north section. He pulled up the schematics again, studying the sixth mark.
It wasn’t near a docking station.
It was near a ventilation intake.
“Ham.” He keyed his mic. “The sixth location on the blueprints—it’s not a docking station. It’s near air intake seven, upper level.”
Static. Then Ham’s voice, broken: “—backup unit. Different configuration. Be—” The rest dissolved into noise.
Dakota was already moving. But the deeper he went into the building’s infrastructure, the worse the communications became.
Fragments reached him—West reporting a third unit disarmed, Skeet finding the fourth, Ham coordinating from somewhere that kept cutting in and out. The Opera House’s concrete and steel were interfering with the signal, turning updates into puzzle pieces Dakota had to assemble blind.
He climbed through access passages, worked his way toward the upper levels, where the ventilation systems fed air into the concert halls. The sixth mark on his tablet pulsed like a warning.
“—fifth unit secured.” Skeet’s voice, barely audible. “That’s all the docking stations accounted for.”
Five robots. Five stations. All neutralized before they could leave their ports and head toward their deployments.
But there were six marks on the blueprints.
Dakota emerged onto an upper terrace—one of the outdoor areas that tourists loved for photographs, with its sweeping view of the harbor. It spread out below him. Sydney going about its beautiful day.
He stopped.
Not because of the view.
Because of what he heard through his earpiece.
Breathing. Hard, labored. The sounds of impact—something hitting metal. And then Jayden’s voice, strained and desperate:
“—locked in—can’t get—”
His heart seized.
“Jayden.” He keyed his mic, voice sharper than he intended. “Where are you?”
Static. More sounds of struggle. Then, fragmentary but clear enough:
“—the boat—the harbor—”
Dakota was at the terrace railing before he realized he’d moved. His eyes swept the waterfront below—the crowds, the ferries, the tour boats bobbing at their moorings.
And one boat in particular. He put his binoculars to his eyes.
And spotted Vic. The nervous IT consultant who’d been hiding in plain sight for a week.
And Jayden—where was she? Maybe locked in a cargo hold or closet, fighting to get free.
The sixth mark pulsed on his tablet. The ventilation access was behind him, twenty meters away. The device was somewhere in there, waiting, counting down.
The boat was below him, a hundred meters away. Too far. Too much distance.
He couldn’t do both.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. The device or Jayden. The mission or the woman. Hundreds of lives or the one life that had somehow become more important than all of them.
He couldn’t do both. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? At the core, he couldn’t do both.
“I’m sorry.”
The words came out before he could stop them. Into the comms, not knowing if she could hear, not knowing if the signal would carry.
Static. Then her voice, strained but clear for one impossible moment:
“For what?”
Dakota closed his eyes, and for a moment, it was last night on the patio. The bridge lights. Her story about Ian, the man she’d loved and lost. Her smile when she’d walked away—the smile that had been a spear to his heart.
Promise you won’t die tomorrow.
“For not telling you I’m in love with you.”
Silence. Static. Nothing.
He didn’t wait for a response. Couldn’t.
Because, well, focus.
One word from her and he might find himself in the water, swimming hard. So Dakota turned away from the water, away from her, and ran for the ventilation access.
The shaft was cramped. Barely room to move.
He wedged himself through the access panel, flashlight clamped between his teeth, tablet abandoned somewhere behind him. The ductwork pressed in from all sides—corrugated metal, decades of accumulated dust, the hum of air handlers that would carry death to every corner of the building if he failed.
And there it was.
Wedged against a junction in the ductwork, its timer display glowing red in the darkness. Different from the others—smaller, more sophisticated. No radio receiver. No remote trigger.
Just a timer, counting down.
03:47
03:46
03:45
Dakota’s EOD training kicked in, years of muscle memory taking over.
He assessed the device—power source, trigger mechanism, fail-safes.
The obsidite canister was smaller than the others but just as deadly.
The toxin reservoir was pressurized. The dispersal mechanism was integrated into the ductwork itself.
This wasn’t a primary weapon. This was the backup. Designed to activate if everything else failed. Designed to be impossible to stop.
“Ham.” He keyed his mic. “I’ve found the sixth device. Ventilation shaft, upper level. It’s timer-based, no radio receiver. Nimue’s protocol won’t work.”
Static.
“Ham, do you copy?”
Nothing. The concrete and steel had swallowed the signal completely.
He was alone.
02:58
02:57
02:56
Dakota pulled his multitool from his belt and started mapping the system. Power lines here. Trigger mechanism there. The wiring pattern was unfamiliar—not standard military, not standard demolition. Something custom. Something designed to fool anyone who tried to disarm it.
Two wires led from the timer to the detonator. Red and blue, the flag colors.
Standard protocol said cut the red wire. Every manual, every instructor, every training scenario he’d ever run—cut the red wire to disconnect the timer from the trigger.
But the configuration was wrong.
01:34
01:33
01:32
Dakota traced the circuits again. The red wire fed into the timer housing, yes, but the path it took . . . the junctions it passed through . . .
It was a trap. Cut the red wire and the device would interpret the power loss as tampering. It would detonate immediately.
But the blue wire—training said that was the trigger. Cut the blue wire and you set it off.
Except the blue wire’s path didn’t match either. It bypassed the pressure sensor entirely, feeding directly into . . .
00:47
00:46
00:45
Dakota’s hands were steady. His mind was not.
He couldn’t be sure. The analysis wasn’t complete. He needed more time to trace the circuits, to understand the logic, to know he was making the right choice.
00:31
00:30
00:29
There wasn’t more time.
Ham’s words echoed in his head.
The reason faith is so hard is that you think you know the best way. And you’re not sure God agrees.
00:22
00:21
00:20
Dakota closed his eyes.
Lord, help me see what I’m missing.
00:15
00:14
00:13
And then—
Not a voice. Not a vision. Just . . . knowing. A certainty that settled into his bones, quiet and absolute, from somewhere he couldn’t name.
Cut the blue wire.
00:08
00:07
00:06
You’re never wrong if you’re trusting in God for the outcome.
00:04
00:03
Dakota cut the blue wire.
00:02
00:01
He braced for the flash, the heat, the end of everything.
00:00
Nothing.
The timer went dark. The device fell silent. The toxin stayed contained.
Dakota let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. His hands shook now, the adrenaline crash hitting him all at once.
Thank You, God.
Dakota scrambled out of the ventilation shaft, tearing skin on metal edges, not caring.
And then the comms crackled back to life.
“Anyone have eyes on the sniper? Lynx is out of comms range.”
No, no, she isn’t.
“Devices disarmed. Skeet—West—the sniper is on the boat—”
Static. He thundered down the steps and ran for the terrace, for the view of the harbor.
A Secret Service officer yelled at him to stop, and when he didn’t, the man pulled his gun.
Dakota backed up, hands up—then, “I’m with Jones, Inc. There’s a shooter on that yacht—” He pointed out into the harbor.
“Stay here,” said the man, and spoke into his comms.