Chapter 59 - Convergence at High Ridge
We smashed through the rusted perimeter gates of the salt mill at twenty miles per hour, sending sheets of corrugated metal flying into the mist.
The yard shunter was a thirty-ton battering ram. As we picked up speed along the overgrown industrial spur, the trees and abandoned warehouses blurred past the rain-streaked windows. Mia and Lily were huddling beneath the steel console, clutching each other's hands, their color finally returning in the warmth of the roaring engine block.
Clara stood beside me, reloading every magazine we had salvaged. "Where does this spur end, Julian?"
"The High Ridge naval relay station," I said, keeping my hands locked on the throttle. "It’s a decommissioned NATO listening post on the bluffs overlooking the river mouth. The military abandoned it during the drawdown in '98, but the deep-underground fiber lines are still linked to the European sovereign emergency network."
"You're going to transmit the data," she realized, her eyes widening.
"It's our only play," I said, staring ahead as the tracks began to climb steeply into the wooded hills. "As long as this ledger remains a secret, Cynthia Vance and the Obsidian Arch will hunt us to the ends of the earth to keep it buried. If I broadcast the entire cryptographic structure to the international tribunals, the trust dissolves automatically under the Treaty of Rome. The money disappears. The power vacuum implodes. The girls cease to be leverage."
"And Arthur?" she asked quietly. "Does the dossier prove who killed him?"
"Arthur was executed because he discovered who the Arch's mole inside my inner circle was," I said, my voice hardening. "It wasn't Vivienne. It wasn't you."
"Then who was it?"
Before I could answer, the shunter hit a steep curve, and the trees fell away. Ahead of us, crowning the rocky summit of High Ridge, stood the concrete bunker complex of the old relay station.
May you like
Its massive, rusted parabolic dish still pointed toward the sky, but as we rounded the final bend, my heart stopped.
The heavy steel blast doors of the relay station were already wide open. Fresh tire tracks cut through the mud outside the bunker. And parked directly on the helicopter landing pad was a customized matte-gray executive transport bearing the De La Tour family crest.
