Chapter 8 - Into the Deep
The small silver drive struck the dark surface of the harbor water with barely a whisper, sinking instantly into the black murk below before anyone could react.
"No!" I yelled, sprinting toward the edge of the wooden planks.
Behind me, federal agents swarmed the pier, tackling Julian Vance to the ground and slapping heavy steel cuffs around his wrists as he laughed hysterically into the wet gravel.
"You're too late, Captain!" Julian screamed as they dragged him toward the armored van. "The drive is at the bottom of the bay, and the transmission sequence to the Goliath is already automated! You'll never stop it in time!"
I didn't waste a breath answering him. I dropped my service belt, kicked off my heavy combat boots, and ripped my jacket off my shoulders.
"Evelyn, what the hell are you doing?!" Admiral Reed shouted, rushing to the edge of the pier as I balanced on the wooden railing. "The tide is pulling outward at four knots! You’ll never find that drive in this visibility!"
"If that automated sequence isn't aborted, two hundred sailors die in three hours, Thomas!" I called back over the roar of the wind. "Cover my perimeter!"
Without waiting for another word, I dove headfirst into the freezing black water.
The shock of the cold hit my chest like a physical blow, stealing my breath for a terrifying second. I forced my lungs to stabilize, streamlined my body, and kicked downward into the pitch-black abyss of the harbor. The visibility was zero; the murky salt water stung my eyes and clogged my nose as I swept my hands back and forth through the thick silt at the seabed.
My scar tissue burned from the sudden drop in temperature, pulling taut across my back, but I ignored the pain. I swept the sandy bottom, my fingers brushing against rusted cans, discarded netting, and broken glass, searching desperately for the metallic edge of the cryptographic drive.
Think like an intelligence officer, I told myself, feeling my oxygen supply dwindle as my chest began to ache. Currents move south-southwest against the pier pilings.
I kicked sideways, swimming parallel to the massive wooden support beams of Pier 14. Ten feet away, a faint, blinking blue micro-LED light caught my eye half-buried in the silt.
I dove deeper, grabbing the small titanium drive just as my lungs screamed for air.
Kicking violently upward, I broke the surface of the water near the far pylons, gasping in massive lungfuls of cold night air as I hauled myself onto a floating maintenance dock. I held the drive up to the dim glow of a harbor light—the casing was intact, its blinking blue light indicating the data core was still readable.
"Captain! Do you copy?" Admiral Reed’s voice crackled frantically through the waterproof comms unit in my ear.
"I have the drive," I sputtered, coughing up saltwater as I wiped my face. "And it's not damaged. Patch me directly into the naval communications grid. We need to override the Goliath’s command link before that automated sequence hits the firing threshold."
"Negative on patching in from an open line," the Admiral replied sharply. "Vance’s server room had a dead-man switch. The moment we cuffed him, an encrypted firewall locked down every secure terminal from here to the Pentagon. We're completely locked out of the fleet network."
My blood ran cold. "Locked out? Then how do we reach the ship?"
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"There’s only one terminal with physical override clearance that isn't routed through the Pentagon firewall," the Admiral said grimly. "And it’s located inside the private underground bunker beneath your father’s estate."
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