Chapter 5 - The Trojan Horse
Six hours later, the tactical situation above ground had stabilized just enough for Peter Holt’s private extraction team to slip through the perimeter woods in armored vans.
Instead of retreating deeper into the underground network, Jamal, Margaret, and Peter sat inside the darkened cabin of a secure communications van parked inside a hidden logging clearing three miles from the redoubt.
The glow of three laptop screens illuminated their faces.
“You want to go back to downtown Detroit?” Peter demanded, staring incredulously at Jamal. “To the corporate headquarters? Croft has armed security stationed at every lobby entrance. We’d be arrested or executed before we reached the elevator.”
“We aren't going through the lobby,” Jamal said, tapping the screen of his laptop. “We’re going through the digital front door. Julian Croft has called an emergency executive board meeting for eight o'clock tonight to vote on a hostile restructuring of the voting trust—citing your disappearance during the ‘security incident’ as proof that you are unfit to manage the corporation.”
Margaret leaned over the console, her eyes bright with tactical calculation. “He’s staging a coup from inside the boardroom.”
“Exactly,” Jamal agreed. “And while he’s standing at the podium projecting his emergency resolution, he’s going to plug his master tablet into the central boardroom AV console to display the proxy transfer documents.”
He pulled up a custom-coded script on his screen—a sleek, lethal piece of software that looked like a digital skeleton key.
“This is a kinetic payload,” Jamal explained. “It’s designed to piggyback on any USB-C connection established within the boardroom network. The moment Croft plugs in his tablet, our script doesn't just block his transfer—it routes a live audio and video feed of his confession, complete with the encrypted digital signatures we pulled from the redoubt servers, straight onto every public display screen in the building, every media outlet in the city, and every federal regulatory desk in Washington.”
Peter Holt stared at the young mechanic from Detroit, absolute astonishment written across his weathered features.
“You wrote this code in a van?” Peter asked.
“I told you,” Jamal said, his fingers dancing across the keys as he executed the final compilation command. “Engines speak to me. Networks do too. They all have rhythm. You just have to know where the loose belt is.”
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Margaret looked at Jamal, her heart hammering against her ribs not from fear, but from a terrifying, exhilarating rush of adrenaline and respect.
“Let’s go crash a board meeting,” she said.
