Chapter 108 - The Ghost Rig
Seeing him there—standing tall, wearing a cashmere overcoat over tactical thermal gear, completely untouched by the misery and destruction he had inflicted—shattered whatever lingering biological sympathy remained in my chest.
He was alive. He had never been a frail, bankrupt old man desperate to save his home. He was the architect. The entire story of the failing family estate, the tears over the dinner table, the plea for my $110,000 military savings—it was all a front, an elaborate domestic mask designed to keep my sister compliant and me distracted while he used my naval security clearance to shield his illicit operations.
Beside him, strapped to an interrogation chair near the pod, was Clara.
Her face was swollen, her designer clothes stained with salt water and hydraulic oil. She wasn't an untouchable princess anymore; she was weeping, trembling in terror as two armed mercenaries worked to strip the encrypted hard drives from the pod's outer casing.
"Shut up, Clara!" Arthur snarled, pacing before her and gesturing violently with a gold-plated semi-automatic pistol. "You were supposed to secure the deed and the backup drive from Whispering Pines! Instead, Marcus brought the entire Pacific Fleet down on our heads!"
"He's your son!" Clara sobbed, her voice breaking through the chamber. "You told me Marcus agreed to the transfer! You said he signed the papers before he deployed! You lied to me!"
"Marcus is a dog of the state!" Arthur spat, his face twisting into an ugly sneer of pure contempt. "He spent ten years swimming in mud and taking orders for pocket change while I built an empire beneath the surface! That $110,000 he gave us didn't even cover the satellite uplink cost for this facility! He was a tool, Clara! And so are you if you can't unlock this partition!"
"I don't know the master cipher!" she cried. "Julian set it! Julian had the final biometric key!"
"Then you are of no further use to the firm," Arthur said calmly, leveling the pistol straight at Clara's forehead.
May you like
From seventy feet above the deck, suspended on the maintenance cable, I didn't hesitate.
I unhitched my carbine, braced my boot against the structural cable, and fired through the steel mesh flooring straight through the forearm of the mercenary standing beside my father.
