Chapter 39 - The Black Submersible
We didn't take the road. We plunged down the jagged rock face toward the northeastern shore of Emerald Bay, sliding through the snowbanks as the scream of high-altitude turbine engines began to hum through the clouds above.
Behind us, a deafening crack of thunder shook the mountain.
A pillar of orange and black fire erupted half a mile back. The hunting cabin had been vaporized into kindling, sending a shockwave that rattled the pine trees and threw us both into the drifts. Vance wasn't bluffing. He had initiated scorched-earth protocols.
"Run!" I shouted, dragging Chloe by her collar toward the water.
At the shoreline, the lake was terrifyingly still, a sheet of obsidian black mirror reflecting the snow-draped cliffs. The temperature of the water was thirty-eight degrees. Two minutes in that water would induce hypothermia; five minutes meant cardiac arrest.
"Evie, we can't swim that!" Chloe screamed through chattering teeth. "We'll die!"
"Look," I pointed.
Ten yards off the rocky point, the black surface of the lake began to froth and boil. A massive, streamlined hull—completely non-reflective, painted in deep radar-absorbent charcoal—broke through the surface with a mechanical hiss. It wasn't a civilian vessel. It was an advanced autonomous mini-sub, the type used by Navy SEAL delivery teams for clandestine coastal insertion.
The top hatch popped open with a burst of pneumatic pressure.
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A man climbed onto the narrow decking, his face illuminated by the dim cockpit red light. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a weathered tactical sweater, with a jagged shrapnel scar running from his left temple down to his jawline.
Marcus.
