Chapter 79 - The Sea Cave Breach
The descent down the icy granite cliff face was brutal.
The Atlantic roared fifty feet below us, smashing tons of icy black water against the razor-sharp rocks in an endless rhythm of destruction. The spray froze almost instantly on our tactical gear, coating our gloves in a brittle glaze of ice as we hand-over-handed down the rusted iron rungs Marcus had bolted into the rock fifty years ago.
At the bottom, half-submerged in the churning tide, was the entrance to the sea cave.
The iron gate that sealed it was rusted, covered in thick barnacles and sea kelp. But the lock wasn't old. It was a heavy, modern brass padlock—recently oiled.
"Someone’s been using this route recently," Harris muttered, pulling out a pair of heavy bolt cutters.
*SNAP.*
The hardened steel shackle parted with a muffled crack. We moved into the dripping darkness of the cavern, our weapon-mounted lights cutting through the damp mist.
The cave sloped upward, leading to an ancient concrete platform where a heavy, commercial-grade hydraulic freight elevator sat dormant. Beside the control panel was a rusted brass keyway.
I reached into my pocket, withdrew the heavy iron key that had hung around Marcus Harrington’s neck on the day he died, and inserted it into the cylinder.
I turned it.
A deep, mechanical clunk echoed through the rock as old hydraulic pumps whined to life deep within the mountain. The steel cage began its slow, grinding ascent up through the vertical shaft.
"Stack up," Harris hissed to his men.
The elevator climbed sixty feet through solid granite before slowing to a halt behind a paneled oak bookcase. Through the tiny seams in the wood, we could hear the sharp, staccato click of high-speed hard drives and the unmistakable sound of an angry, furious voice echoing across a cavernous room.
"I don't care about the FAA clearance!" Amanda was screaming into a satellite phone. "Tell the pilot if that turbine isn't spinning by the time my Suburban hits the runway, I will have his entire family hunted down in Lisbon! Do you understand me?!"
Through the crack in the wood, I saw her.
She was standing in the center of Marcus’s two-story library, surrounded by open steel crates, shattered display cases, and piles of burning papers smoldering in the massive stone fireplace. She was wearing a heavy fur-lined tactical parka, an automatic pistol holstered at her hip, her face pale, manic, and twisted by the desperation of a cornered beast.
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Beside her, two hulking contractors were packing heavy steel hard-drive enclosures into reinforced Pelican cases.
"Three... two... one... hit it!" Harris barked.
