After spending $110,000 supporting my family, I returned from a 21-day Navy mission to find my father giving my $4 million Lake Tahoe villa to my sister—but one message from my attorney was about to turn their champagne celebration into a nightmare.

The gunfire was disciplined and relentless. Ricochets whined through the claustrophobic titanium corridor, puncturing hydraulic lines that sprayed amber fluid across the walls.

"Covering fire!" I barked, leaning around the steel bulkhead and firing three controlled bursts toward the forward hatchway.

Two men in gray maritime assault gear scrambled behind the bridge console, returning fire with suppressed submachine guns. They weren't ragtag militia; they moved with the precision of former state-sponsored naval commandos.

"Commander Vance!" a voice shouted from inside the bridge, speaking English with a clipped, precise Eastern European accent. "Hold your fire! You are wasting precious minutes!"

"Drop your weapons and step away from the terminal!" I replied, signaling Reynolds to flank left through the auxiliary radio room.

"We cannot do that, Commander," the voice answered calmly over the gunfire. "Your sister Clara’s broker sold us the retrieval rights to this platform's telemetry. We spent twelve million dollars locating this tomb. We did not come here to drown in the Mendocino Trench because an ancient computer has lost its mind!"

"Then you shouldn't have hired my family of amateurs!" I fired two rounds into the door frame, keeping him pinned. "The system is locked to my grandfather's lineage. You can't stop the launch from that terminal!"

"We don't want to stop the launch, Commander!" the voice yelled back, chilling me to the bone. "We want to redirect it! The guidance systems on these missiles use inertial navigation. A single burst from our uplink antenna will re-target warhead number one to the naval drydocks in San Diego. The chaos on the markets alone will net our syndicate billions!"

Clara hadn't just brokered salvage. Her greed had handed the keys of a Cold War weapon to terrorists looking to profit from catastrophic market manipulation.

"Reynolds, now!" I roared.

Reynolds breached the auxiliary hatch, firing a high-intensity flashbang into the command center. A deafening crack and a blinding white flash engulfed the bridge.