Chapter 34 - The Submerged Wire
"Thirty seconds, Eleanor," Julian sneered, stepping closer to me, his fist clenched. "Any last words for the husband you betrayed?"
"Just one," I said, staring directly into his manic eyes. "Look down."
Before Julian could react, a deafening mechanical hiss erupted from beneath the stern of the yacht.
Out of the black water, a high-pressure maritime grappling hook shot upward, embedding itself deep into the yacht's starboard railing with a violent metallic clang. In the exact same second, the massive halogen floodlights illuminating the dock flickered once, twice, and died, plunging the vessel into pitch darkness save for the crimson glare of the ticking detonator.
"What is that?! What did you do?!" Arthur roared, his composure instantly shattering. He gripped the remote tightly, his thumb slamming down on the red activation button. "Die, damn you!"
He pressed it once. Twice. Three times.
Nothing happened.
The crimson clock struck 00:00.
The cliffside remained standing, silent and unbroken against the night sky. The great hearth of my family didn't fall. The mansion on the bluffs didn't collapse into the sea.
"The detonator uses a 433-megahertz radio relay anchored to the harbor’s old repeater tower," a voice rang out from the shadows near the stern. "I bypassed that tower seven minutes ago, Arthur."
Gordon Caldwell vaulted over the yacht's stern railing like a phantom rising from the deep, dripping wet in tactical diving gear, his assault rifle raised and locked onto Arthur Vance’s chest. Behind him, three armed harbor tactical officers emerged from the darkness of the pier, their laser sights painting brilliant green dots on Vance’s bodyguards.
"Drop your weapons! Federal maritime interdiction! Drop them now!" the harbor officers shouted.
Vance’s guards hesitated for a fraction of a second, but faced with trained federal operators and red laser dots dancing across their foreheads, they threw their assault rifles onto the teak deck and dropped to their knees with their hands behind their heads.
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"Julian! Shoot him!" Arthur screamed, throwing the useless plastic detonator violently onto the deck, where it shattered into fragments.
Julian looked wild-eyed between Arthur, Gordon, and the laser sights. Panicked beyond sanity, he pulled a silver snub-nosed revolver from the inner breast pocket of his white tuxedo jacket and aimed it straight at my heart.
