Chapter 74 - The Override Protocol
Jared didn't lower the gun. "You sent a man with a crowbar into my shop. You threatened Noah and Ellie. You had your foreign contractors execute your own men outside Spur 09."
"They... they weren't my men," Graves choked out, coughing blood onto the floor. "I thought I was buying a development contract. I thought I was using your sister to leverage an eminent domain claim on prime highway frontage. But the people who funded my shell companies... they've been looking for Project Aethelgard since the Berlin Wall fell. They used me, Jared! Just like I used Melissa!"
Graves looked toward the titanium case on the pedestal, his eyes filled with a terrifying mixture of awe and regret.
"Inside that case... it isn't gold. It isn't bonds. It's the master registry. Every deep-underground facility built along the Eastern Seaboard during the Cold War. The emergency gold reserves of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, relocated in 1961... hundreds of metric tons of sovereign bullion, buried beneath five mountain spurs."
Jared's breath caught in his throat.
The modest repair shop. The greasy lifts. The endless struggle to pay property taxes and keep the heat running in winter while Melissa demanded thousands of dollars for her lavish vacations and sports cars.
His grandfather had lived and died in a pair of stained denim overalls, turning wrenches until his knuckles were scarred and arthritic, guarding the wealth of a nation beneath an ordinary three-bay garage so his children and grandchildren would never become targets of global power brokers.
"And now... they know it's here," Graves whispered, his voice fading. "The signal... that green flare... it didn't just illuminate the sky. It broadcasted the transponder frequency to three foreign embassies. They're coming, Jared. They're already on the highway."
Graves' head lolled backward against the lathe, his eyes rolling up into his skull as consciousness fled him.
May you like
Jared stood alone in the ruins of the bay. The cold winter wind poured through the blown-out roof, swirling snow around the ancient containment bell.
He looked at the key around his neck. Then he looked toward the timberline ridge, where Noah and Ellie were huddled in the dark, waiting for their father to climb back up the hill.
