Chapter 48 - The Bridge of the Damned
The chase across Griggs Reservoir felt like tearing through a ghost world. The morning fog hung three feet above the water, swirling into white tornados behind the wake of our twin outboards.
Up ahead, Van Der Bilt’s zodiac was cutting violently across the current, zigzagging to evade the federal spotlight sweeping across the water from our bow.
"He's heading for the eastern drainage culvert!" Dad shouted over the deafening roar of the engines, holding a pair of maritime binoculars to his eyes despite the stinging river spray. "Under the Fishinger bridge! There's an old maintenance access tunnel that leads straight into the municipal stormwater system!"
"He won't make it," Miller said calmly, reaching down beside the console and flipping open a toggle switch labeled *EMP-DISRUPT / SPOT*.
From the roof rack of our boat, a heavy, directional spotlight flared with blinding intensity, locking onto the back of Van Der Bilt’s boat. Beside it, a tactical agent raised a compressed-gas launcher loaded with a carbon-fiber snag-net.
"Fire!" Miller barked.
A sharp *thump* echoed over the water. The canister deployed twenty feet behind the zodiac, blooming into a wide, weighted net made of high-tensile Kevlar filaments. The net dropped over the outboard motor of Van Der Bilt’s raft.
In less than three seconds, the spinning propeller sucked the Kevlar cords into its drive shaft. The engine screeched, shuddered violently, and stalled out with a cloud of black exhaust smoke.
The zodiac lost all forward momentum, spinning sideways in the current before slamming hard into the concrete pylon of the bridge.
Van Der Bilt was thrown against the rubberized bow, but he recovered instantly. Clutching the leather cipher notebook in his left hand, he scrambled up the rusted iron rungs of the maintenance ladder bolted to the bridge pylon, climbing toward the street above.
Miller cut our engines, drifting our hull against the base of the pylon with a dull thud.
"Federal agent! Van Der Bilt, freeze!" Miller shouted, raising his weapon toward the climbing figure.
Van Der Bilt reached the top maintenance catwalk, twenty feet above the water. He didn't climb onto the road. He turned, leaning over the rusted railing, looking down at us like a cornered animal whose kingdom had finally collapsed around him.
Blood ran down his silver hair from a gash on his forehead, staining his pristine cashmere collar.
"You think this is over, Bennett?" Van Der Bilt spat down at us, his voice echoing under the massive concrete arches of the bridge. "You think arresting me saves your family? The Swiss trust holds seventy-five thousand shares of municipal debt across this entire county! If this ledger becomes public, every bank in central Ohio collapses! The schools, the hospitals, the pensions—they are all underwritten by the Sovereign Horizon escrow!"
Dad stepped out onto the open bow of our boat, looking up into the face of the man who had controlled his life from the shadows for four decades.
"Then let them collapse, Hendrik," Dad said, his voice ringing with pure, unwavering clarity. "Because anything built on stolen gold, poisoned soil, and the blood of innocent families deserves to fall."
May you like
Van Der Bilt sneered, raising Charles Sterling’s cipher ledger above his head, positioning it directly over the dark, rushing current of the river below. "Then neither of us will have it."
He let go.
