Chapter 138 - The Sovereign Ultimatum
Through the arrow-slit windows of the crib, the searchlights of the three corvettes crossed, blindingly bright, pinning the old stone tower in a cage of white light. Loudspeakers mounted on the lead ship's bridge boomed across the frozen expanse of the lake, rattling the iron panes of the upper cupola.
*"Vincent Moretti! Emma Ward!"* Julian’s voice echoed over the water, distorted by the amplification. *"You have five minutes to bring Vorontsov’s decryption keys and the Sterling family ledgers to the dock. If you refuse, my ships will level that brick tower into rubble, and you will drown in the very lake you tried to protect."*
Marco crouched beneath the window ledge, reloading his rifle with his final magazine. "Boss, that brick won't withstand thirty-millimeter high-explosive shells for more than ninety seconds. We have no heavy weapons here, no radio contact with the mainland, and our tunnel is cut off if the crib collapses."
Vincent leaned against the inner wall, wrapping a strip of duct tape tightly over Emma’s bandage to stem the bleeding. His eyes were scanning the ceiling beams of the tower, tracing the ancient copper telegraph conduits that ran upward toward the antique lighthouse lantern.
"Julian made one critical mistake," Vincent said, his voice dropping into a steady, calculating tone.
"What mistake?" Emma asked, looking around the barren stone chamber. "He has three warships and we have sidearms."
"He assumes this crib is just a water intake," Vincent replied. "He forgot why my great-grandfather financed the construction of the cribs during the World Wars. Chicago was the industrial forge of the nation. The lakes were vulnerable to sabotage. The city didn't just build water stations out here. They built listening posts and shoreline telemetry relays."
Vincent walked over to a rusted iron cabinet recessed into the brick wall, sealed with a brass padlock. He didn't bother looking for a key; he aimed his pistol and blew the lock apart with a single shot.
He pulled the heavy door open. Inside lay an old rotary relay system, but beside it, freshly maintained and glowing with quiet standby LEDs, sat a modern military-grade satellite uplink terminal bearing the insignia of the United States Northern Command.
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"You have military authority?" Emma asked in disbelief.
"No," Vincent said, typing a rapid sequence of thirty-two alphanumeric characters into the terminal's keyboard. "I don't have military authority. But Moretti Industries holds the maintenance contract for the automated acoustic defense grid of Lake Michigan. And I just tripped the sovereign defense alarm."
