Chapter 171 - The Lake Como Infiltration
The waters of Lake Como at midnight were cold, deep, and darker than fresh ink.
We did not cross the Italian border through the highway tunnels of Mount Blanc. We traveled aboard a low-profile, carbon-composite stealth interceptor boat provided by the French Special Operations Command, gliding across the water at forty knots with its hybrid electric drive completely silent.
Ethan stood at the bow, dressed in matte-black maritime tactical gear, a diving rebreather slung across his chest, his gray eyes scanning the rocky shoreline of the Lenno peninsula through thermal optics.
Beside him, I stood wearing identical tactical gear, my dark hair braided tightly against my skull beneath a neoprene hood.
In the cabin below, Noah and Sophie were sitting on the padded bunks under the protective watch of Sister Beatrice and Captain Dupont.
Noah was wearing his communications headset, his fingers dancing across the flight controls of an underwater autonomous surveillance drone he had launched from our boat’s moon pool fifteen minutes earlier.
"Sonar telemetry is clear, Dad," Noah’s young voice crackled through Ethan’s earpiece. "The villa’s underwater security grid consists of three hydrophone cables running along the twenty-meter depth contour. But there is a three-meter blind spot near the ancient Roman retaining wall where the freshwater spring enters the lake."
"Good eyes, Noah," Ethan replied into his throat mic. "Hold the drone at fifty meters. Monitor the surface patrol boats."
"Understood, Commander," Noah said. "Mom... be careful with the wet limestone. The moss is slick on the lower steps."
"I love you, my brave boy," I whispered into my comms.
Ethan and I slipped over the low gunwale into the freezing water without a splash.
The cold hit my face like needles, but the heated seals of our thermal dive skins kept our cores warm. We swam with steady, rhythmic fin kicks through the black water, following the green directional arrow glowing on our wrist-mounted dive computers.
Ten minutes later, our heads broke the surface beneath the ancient, moss-covered stone archway of Villa Balbianello’s historic boathouse.
The villa above us was a towering masterpiece of eighteenth-century baroque architecture, surrounded by terraced gardens of cypress trees, stone statues, and grand balustrades. But tonight, the terrace was crawling with armed men in black tactical uniforms bearing the three-headed raven insignia of the Obsidian Crown.
Ethan pulled himself onto the stone landing with effortless, silent strength, turning to haul me up beside him.
He unclipped his suppressed sidearm, checked the chamber, and looked at me through the shadows of the stone vault.
"The server room is in the wine vaults beneath the main salon, Victoria," Ethan whispered, his breath warm against my ear. "We plant the worm, extract the encrypted drive, and we take Victor Sterling alive."
"And if Victor doesn't want to be taken alive, Ethan?" I asked, checking my own weapon.
May you like
Ethan’s gray eyes flashed with a lethal, ancient certainty.
"Then his brother will have company in the dark."
