Chapter 154 - The Ghost on the Water
The screen abruptly went black.
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the crackle of the birch logs in our hearth and the frantic tapping of Noah’s thumbs against his tablet.
"He didn't just give a speech, Mom," Noah said, his voice dropping into that rapid, analytical cadence he used whenever a puzzle presented itself. "The titanium drive he held up... it had an active blue diode flashing on the side."
"What does the diode mean, Noah?" I asked, pulling him closer to my side.
"It’s an optical frequency transmitter," Noah explained, pulling up a raw satellite stream on his screen. "Dad was broadcasting an encrypted data burst through the television cameras. It’s an extraction map. He didn't stay in Geneva after the speech. He’s already in transit."
"Where is he going?" Marcus demanded, stepping away from the terrace doors.
"The Mediterranean," Noah answered, tracing a red flight vector across southern France. "He took an Air Force helicopter from Geneva to the naval air station at Hyères. He’s heading for the yacht."
My breath caught.
The yacht.
The Sovereign Star—a two-hundred-foot reinforced ice-class research vessel that my father, Arthur Vance, had secretly commissioned five years before his death, anchored in deep water off the coast of Monaco.
Before Marcus could speak, the perimeter console beside our fireplace shrieked with a high-pitched, warbling alarm.
WARNING: WATER SURFACE SENSOR 2 BREACHED. HIGH-SPEED WATERCRAFT CLOSING AT FORTY-FIVE KNOTS.
Marcus spun toward the lake.
Through the sheer curtains, two black tactical rigid-inflatable boats (RIBs) were cutting through the dark water, their twin outboards muffled, their hulls throwing up twin plumes of white foam in the moonlight.
"They didn't listen to Ethan's warning," Marcus snarled, chambering a round into his carbine with a sharp metallic clatter. "Sterling’s strike team was already deployed on the water before the broadcast aired. They're hitting the private dock!"
"Noah, Sophie, bedroom. Now!" I ordered, rising from the sofa, the soft mother vanishing as the daughter of Arthur Vance stepped into the fire.
I sprinted to the gun cabinet hidden behind the library bookcase, punching in my seven-digit biometric code.
The heavy steel door swung open, revealing two tactical submachine guns, spare magazines, and four ceramic body armor vests.
Sophie didn't hesitate. She helped Noah slip into his vest, pulling the heavy Velcro straps tight across his shoulders, her small face pale but completely composed.
"I have the drone controls, Mom," Noah said, strapping his tablet to his chest rig. "The miniature seaplane is still charging on the roof terrace. I can use the high-frequency spotlight to blind their helmsman."
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"Do it, Noah," I said, racking the slide on a customized MPX carbine. "Marcus, take the dock landing. I’ll take the terrace."
The night outside exploded in automatic gunfire.
