Chapter 19 - The Ghost Depot
The wind roared like an angry beast, battering my body as I tumbled through the freezing cloud layer. The sensation of weightlessness was terrifying, but the surge of pure defiance burned hotter than the freezing air.
Marcus pulled his ripcord fifty feet to my left, his matte-black steerable canopy deploying with a sharp *crack*. A second later, I pulled mine. The sudden deceleration slammed me upward, the harness biting fiercely into my shoulders, before I drifted silently into the snow-covered pine valley.
We crashed through the dense spruce canopy, branches snapping against our heavy gear before we dropped into a deep drift of powdery alpine snow.
I cut the risers with my tactical knife, scrambling to my feet, half-buried in white. Marcus was already beside me, his weapon drawn, scanning the silent, freezing tree line.
Above us, in the distant sky, a muffled explosion echoed across the peaks. The empty King Air had smashed into an uninhabited ridge five miles south, drawing the French interceptors away from our real location.
"The rail depot is five hundred meters through this gulley," Marcus whispered, checking his compass. "Keep your head down. If Victoria has men in Geneva, the freight entrance will be guarded."
We moved swiftly through the deep snow until the looming concrete structure of the abandoned rail terminal emerged from the blizzard. Built directly into the granite face of the mountain, it looked like an ancient fortress swallowed by winter.
A single heavy steel blast door stood sealed at the end of the maintenance track, covered in warning placards and rusted chains.
I stepped forward, wiping the frost from the access panel beside the door. It wasn't an electronic keypad. It was a heavy, mechanical brass tumbler housing, identical in size and shape to the key resting against my chest.
"Let’s see if Victoria’s right about you, Dad," I whispered.
May you like
I slid the brass key into the lock.
***
