Chapter 32 - The Siege of Lake Lucerne
The concussion wave threw me to the diamond-plate steel flooring. Smoke, bitter with the stench of polymer explosives and pulverized concrete, billowed through the hatch.
Through the haze, twin tactical beams from the interceptor boats sliced through the shattered entry. Silhouetted against the dark waters outside were four figures clad in matte-black maritime assault gear, suppressed carbines leveled at chest height.
"Target secured!" the lead operative shouted in clipped German. "Disable the drive array! Execute the secondary directive!"
They weren’t here to capture me. The Trustee had never intended to let me sit at his table. The moment the transmission reached 94%, I had outlived my utility. They were here to sanitize the site.
I rolled beneath the server rack as the first volley of suppressed fire ripped into the terminal housing. Metal fragments pinged off the steel casing an inch above my ear, and shards of shatterproof glass rained onto my back.
From the shadows near the hydro-turbine exhaust shaft behind the breach, a different weapon spoke.
It wasn't the rhythmic tapping of tactical carbines; it was the thunderous, unsuppressed crack of a heavy-caliber rifle. The lead operative was knocked backward into the churning water of the boat slip as if struck by a battering ram.
"Elena! Down!"
The voice cut through the gunfire like cold iron. It was Marcus Vance.
He materialized from the catwalk flanking the overhead crane, firing with mechanical precision. Beside him was an operative I had never seen before—a tall woman wearing the insignia of the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service.
"The back channel held," Marcus yelled, emptying his magazine into the engine block of the nearest tactical boat, which erupted in a fountain of blue flame and steam. "The moment they attempted the remote override from Villa d'Este, the financial task force authorized kinetic intervention! We have six minutes before their local support arrives!"
I dragged myself up from behind the scorched console, my lungs burning from the chemical smoke. The WATCHMAN drive was still wedged into the smoking chassis of the primary unit. The plastic housing was half-melted, but the micro-storage core—containing the decrypted ledger of thirty years of Whitmore-Syndicate money laundering—remained intact.
I grabbed a pair of insulated wire cutters, sheared the core from its housing, and jammed it into my tactical vest.
"The transmission failed at ninety-four percent," I said, gasping for air as Marcus hauled me to the iron catwalk. "They didn't get the sovereign accounts, but they captured the primary routing keys. The Trustee knows we survived."
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"He knows more than that," Marcus said, his eyes hard as flint as he checked the slide of his sidearm. "He just activated the liquidation protocol on Arthur. The Whitmore estate in New York is burning as we speak."
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