Chapter 34 - Echoes in the Comm Net
We emerged three hundred yards away, through an auxiliary storm drainage culvert that emptied into the darkened perimeter between the Pentagon’s south parking lot and the Potomac River basin.
The rain had returned, a steady, freezing Virginia drizzle that slickened the tall grass and masked our silhouettes against the distant orange glow of Interstate 395. Across the tarmac, emergency lights painted the gray stone walls of the Pentagon in swirling strokes of scarlet and cobalt. Sirens wailed in the distance—not the standard city emergency vehicles, but the low, guttural wails of federal response convoys setting up roadblocks along Route 27.
Hayes pulled an unmarked burner phone from a waterproof pouch, tapping a nine-digit numerical code into the pad. He held it to his ear for three seconds, never letting it ring, then hung up.
Thirty seconds later, the low hum of a marine diesel engine cut through the patter of rain. A civilian utility boat—the kind used by maintenance crews servicing the river retaining walls—drifted silently along the seawall, its running lights completely blacked out.
A silhouette leaned over the gunwale, extending a gloved hand.
"Captain Miller," I breathed as the face under the hooded foul-weather jacket caught the dim light of the river.
"Get in, Lieutenant," Miller said, his voice flat, tactical, and stripped of all the bureaucratic caution he had worn during my initial debriefing. "You two just turned the National Capital Region into an active hunting reserve. Every CID detachment east of the Mississippi has been placed on administrative stand-down, and DPS has issued an armed-and-dangerous warrant for both your names."
We scrambled over the wet gunwale, tumbling onto the deck beneath a heavy canvas tarp that reeked of diesel and river brine. Miller shoved the throttle forward, the low-wake propeller pushing us smoothly into the dark, churning current of the Potomac.
"Where are we going?" I asked, clutching my ribs as the vibration of the engine rattled through my chest.
"Nowhere near an airfield," Miller said, eyes locked on the misty riverbanks. "Your stepmother Denise just made a full proffer from the federal detention center in Alexandria. She didn't want to go down for espionage, so she gave up Thomas's primary off-grid server. But when the FBI went to breach the farm in Fauquier County, they didn't find computer drives."
I leaned forward. "What did they find?"
May you like
"A military-grade cryo-vault," Miller said, turning his head slightly toward me. "And your mother's empty casket."
***
