Chapter 17 - The Hunt on the Ice
The intercom speaker on the vault control panel buzzed with static, followed by Christian’s smooth, amplified voice.
"You really should have stayed in the city, Margaret," Christian’s voice mocked from the outside speakers. "The Adirondacks are notoriously hazardous in December. Propane leaks, structural collapses... tragic accidents happen so easily when an elderly matriarch refuses to surrender gracefully."
Daniel lunged for the vault’s emergency release handle, but the electronic lock was completely dead. The external feed showed one of Christian’s mercenaries attaching a block of military-grade C4 to the hydraulic hinges of the reinforced stone door.
"He's going to bury us alive," Daniel snarled, checking his Glock. He had seventeen rounds. Against a dozen heavily armed contractors, it was nothing.
"Look at the blueprints on the desk, Daniel," Margaret said, her voice impossibly calm, not a trace of panic in her eyes. "Charles was a paranoid sociopath. Do you truly believe he would build a bunker with only one way out?"
Daniel tore through the architectural schematics on the desk. His eyes caught a subterranean ventilation shaft leading directly from the sub-floor drainage trench into the boathouse beneath the frozen lake.
"Down here," Daniel said, ripping open a rusted iron grate in the floor.
He didn't wait. He hoisted his seventy-year-old mother over his shoulder, ignoring her protests, and dropped into the freezing, waist-deep drainage sluice. The water was near freezing, numbing his legs instantly, but adrenaline burned like wildfire through his veins.
*BOOM.*
Above them, the bunker door was obliterated. The concussive shockwave ripped through the concrete ceiling, raining stone and dust down into the trench. Daniel pushed forward through the dark, murky tunnel, holding his mother above the freezing water, his teeth gritted against the sheer, agonizing cold.
Fifty yards ahead, a sliver of pale moonlight broke through a rusted drainage grate. Daniel slammed his shoulder against it once, twice, three times, until the rusted bolts sheared away.
He scrambled out onto the rotten wooden planks of the boathouse. Outside, the frozen expanse of Sterling Lake stretched for miles under the midnight moon.
Through the boathouse slats, Daniel saw two armed men patrolling the shoreline, their assault rifles raised, night-vision goggles glowing green.
Daniel set Margaret down behind an overturned wooden skiff. "Stay down, Ma. Don't move."
"Take their weapons, Daniel," Margaret whispered, her eyes burning with an ancient, unforgiving fury. "Leave no one to carry messages back."
Daniel slipped into the shadows like a panther. He came up behind the first mercenary, clamping a hand over his mouth and driving his combat blade through the seam of his tactical vest. The man went limp without a sound. Daniel caught the dropped suppressed Sig Sauer carbine before it hit the snow.
Before the second guard could turn, Daniel fired two suppressed rounds through his chest. The guard collapsed onto the snow, staining the pristine white powder crimson.
Daniel stripped the second man’s satellite radio and tactical vest, tossing the extra magazines to the ground. He turned back to the boathouse to retrieve his mother, but the radio on the mercenary’s chest crackled to life.
"Team lead, report. We have secured the vault interior. The target is not inside. I repeat, the target escaped through the sub-floor."
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Then came Christian’s voice, cold and triumphant over the radio: "It doesn't matter. Arthur Vance just signed over the Sterling voting trust from Manhattan. The company is officially ours. Burn the house to the ground and leave them to freeze on the ice."
***
