Chapter 5 - The Three-Headed Crane-5
"The data upload is initializing automatically, David!" Detective Miller’s voice bellowed through my wireless earpiece, the sound frantic, sharp, and cut through with a violent layer of shortwave static. "The master satellite node inside that console is attempting a decentralized blockchain broadcast to the federal financial crimes division in Washington! But the Vanguard security teams have just breached the surface loading dock of Sector Four! They have linear breaching charges, David! They’re blowing the stairwell corridor doors right now!"
A loud, concussive BOOM vibrated through the concrete foundations of the storage facility, the force of the distant explosion rattling the heavy steel racks and showering the room in a rain of white plaster dust and old soot.
"Maya, Chloe, Lily—get behind the server mainframe console!" I roared, my voice dropping into that cold, military authority that stripped away any trace of the single father. I grabbed the heavy iron fire poker hanging from the wall block, my eyes locking onto the dark corridor entry through the shattered rollers of the doorway.
The ambient lights of the storage tunnel suddenly flickered twice and died, plunging our sub-level into a pitch-black, suffocating twilight illuminated only by the pulsing blue LEDs of the database core and the frantic crimson security indicators flashing across my mobile terminal screen.
UPLOAD PROGRESS: 14%... 17%... 19%...
"The transaction is too slow, Dad!" Chloe yelled through the dust, her fingers flying across the laptop keyboard as she tried to force a secondary encryption bypass through our proxy hot-spot. "The corporate servers downtown are executing a high-frequency denial-of-service cascade against the satellite array to trigger an administrative timeout! It’s going to take at least seven minutes to clear the file partitions!"
Through the dark corridor haze, three sharp, narrow beams of high-intensity white tactical flashlights suddenly cut through the gloom. The silhouettes of three men wearing tailored corporate suits over heavy waterproof tactical vests stepped onto the wet concrete floorboards, their automatic carbines raised and rock-steady as they cleared the aisle.
Leading the file was a man whose face I recognized from the front pages of the financial journals—Marcus Croft, the chief financial officer of Vanguard Global, and the man who had signed the construction invoices for the riverfront money laundering pipelines fourteen years ago.
"David Vance," Marcus Croft said, his voice amplified by the low hum of his tactical throat microphone, his tone carrying an untouchable, aristocratic confidence that turned the freezing air into pure venom. "You spent fourteen years playing the heroic single father, working your pathetic double shifts at the foundry, thinking you were hiding from the world. You should have stayed at your kitchen sink, David. You should have let the girls enjoy their birthday cake."
May you like
He raised the short-barreled carbine, his finger tightening violently around the trigger guard as his red laser sight painted a bright neon dot directly on the center of my chest.
"Hand over the master leather notebook and the satellite tokens, David," Croft whispered, a cold, ruthless smile touching his lips beneath his graying hair. "Or I will execute the clean-up script manually, and your daughters won't survive long enough to see the sunrise."
