Chapter 10 - The Last Line of Code
The digital clock on the Pentagon terminal ticked past 10:00 AM.
"Evelyn's flight never departed Dulles," General Vance said, striding into the briefing room with a tablet in hand. He slammed the device onto the table, displaying a live satellite feed of a private hangar at a civilian airfield in northern Virginia. "Her private jet filed a flight plan for Zurich, but the transponder was switched off thirty minutes after takeoff. Our intelligence assets just tracked her corporate credit card to a maritime shipping facility in Baltimore."
I stared at the screen, the pieces clicking together with devastating clarity. Evelyn wasn't running away because she was scared of a divorce or a corporate audit. She was running because she had been Julian’s primary silent partner all along—the one who managed the overseas routing accounts while Julian handled the legal front. And now, she had direct physical access to the primary hardware shipment bound for the South China Sea.
"She has the master cryptographic keys," I said, my voice tight. "If she overrides the navigation matrix before the firmware patch is installed, every drone in the Pacific fleet will default to an unencrypted secondary frequency controlled by an offshore proxy."
Deputy Secretary Thorne stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "I'm scrambling a tactical response team to intercept her at the Baltimore facility. We can—"
"No," I interrupted, picking up my service cap and sliding it onto my head. "If you send an armed tactical squad, she’ll scrub the master servers before they breach the perimeter. This isn't a combat extraction. It's a technical override."
"Colonel, you can't walk into a civilian shipping yard alone," General Vance warned, his eyes dark with concern.
"I'm not going alone," I said, looking toward the heavy doors as they clicked open.
Standing in the doorway, dressed in a heavy trench coat and leaning heavily on a silver-headed cane, was Arthur. His face was pale, lined with exhaustion and the crushing weight of a family secret that had finally come home to roost, but his eyes were steady.
"She used my private corporate authorization codes to access the Baltimore facility," Arthur said, his voice raspy but resolute as he stepped into the room. "And I'm the only one who knows the backdoor password she used to lock the master server console."
I looked at my father—the man who had disowned me twenty-six years ago, the man I had blamed for every professional wound and personal scar I carried. Standing here now, under the fluorescent lights of the Pentagon, the thirty-year chasm between us seemed to vanish into the hum of the tactical terminals.
"Let's go, Arthur," I said, my voice softening just a fraction. "We have a grid to take back."
We walked out of the briefing room together, side-by-side, leaving the generals and analysts behind as we headed toward the motor pool. The air outside was crisp, the storm clouds finally breaking to reveal a sharp, unyielding autumn sunlight.
As the armored sedan sped northward toward the Baltimore docks, I glanced sideways at my father. He was staring out the window at the passing highway, his fingers drumming nervously against the handle of his cane.
May you like
"Kate," Arthur said without turning his head. "When we get there... if things go sideways... make sure my name isn't on the final manifest."
"Your name is already on it, Arthur," I replied, keeping my eyes fixed on the road ahead as the industrial cranes of the Baltimore harbor rose against the horizon. "Under co-author."
