Chapter 38 - Interrogation at High Altitude
The cabin of the C-27J Spartan transport was deafening, the drone of the twin turboprops rattling the bare aluminum bulkheads as we climbed over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Arthur Vance sat strapped into a fold-down webbed jump seat, his wrists bound with hardened stainless-steel cuffs anchored to the deck ring.
I sat across from him on an ammunition crate. Between us lay the blue canvas logbook and the encrypted syndicate hard drive.
Arthur wouldn't look at me. His gaze was fixed on the vibrating floor.
"You knew what was down there," I said, my voice cutting through the engine roar with cold precision. "You knew what grandfather built."
Arthur let out a dry, raspy laugh. "Your grandfather was a lunatic. A Cold War dinosaur who spent his life guarding ghost weapons while the rest of the world was getting rich. He had millions of dollars in maritime patents, and he spent every dime burying concrete under a mountain."
"And you thought you were entitled to it."
"I was his son!" Arthur snapped, his eyes flashing with sudden, venomous rage as he strained against the chains. "I worked his businesses! I stayed in Reno! You ran off to the Navy, playing the heroic little soldier boy, and he gave *you* the house? He gave a twenty-five-year-old kid a four-million-dollar estate while I was drowning in bad land deals?"
"You weren't drowning in bad deals, Arthur," I said quietly, leaning forward. "You were selling defense infrastructure to foreign procurement brokers. You drained my accounts of a hundred and ten thousand dollars not to cover Clara's 'debts,' but to purchase the hydraulic drill rigs currently sitting on the bottom of the lake."
Arthur's mouth opened, but no sound came out. The blood drained from his face until his skin looked like parchment.
"Samuel Caldwell didn't just serve you an eviction notice for trespassing," I continued, tapping the blue logbook. "Grandfather anticipated you forty years ago. Whispering Pines is designated as a critical naval security easement under the Defense Production Act of 1950. Every dollar you took from me, every stone you moved on that property, and every file you pulled out of that vault constitutes an act of aggravated federal treason."
"I'm your father, Marcus," he whispered, his bravado finally collapsing into naked, terrified begging. "You can't let them put me in a federal supermax. I'll die in there. Talk to the Admiral. Tell them I was coerced. Tell them Clara was the one who made the deal!"
I looked at the man who had raised me, the man whose approval I had spent years of my youth desperately trying to earn through duty and sacrifice.
May you like
I felt nothing. No anger, no sadness. Just the quiet satisfaction of a perimeter secured.
"You're not a father," I said, standing up as the flight engineer signaled five minutes to landing. "You're just a trespasser on fleet land. And the eviction is permanent."
