The Sheriff Ordered My Vehicle Stopped Six Times Before His Officer Pulled Me Over / Chapter 56 / 63

Chapter 56 - THE OFFSHORE HORIZON

The Chesapeake Bay was a graveyard of cold fog as *The Iron Maiden* cleared the mouth of the bay and carved into the rolling swells of the open Atlantic.

Below deck, Sarah had stripped down an analog radio direction-finder, pairing it with a hard-wired hydrophone Kowalski had salvaged from an old naval surplus yard. While the rest of the eastern seaboard was being blinded by false satellite feeds, our analog sweep cut straight through the digital fog.

"I’ve got them," Sarah said, pushing her headphones against her ear. "Seventy-six miles out, bearing one-four-zero. They aren't hiding their carrier frequencies. They don't think there’s anyone out here capable of challenging them."

I leaned over the brass chart table. The paper map was marked with pencil lines and grease stains. "How heavily defended is the *Aegis Vanguard*?"

"Standard cargo vessel exterior, but according to Vance’s archived schematics, the deck containers are gutted. They’ve installed automated radar-guided 30mm CIWS mounts on the bow and stern, plus autonomous patrol skiffs circling the perimeter. If an armed cutter approaches within five miles, their defensive arrays engage without human authorization."

"Which means they're programmed to look for military radar signatures," I said.

"Exactly," Kowalski yelled down from the wheelhouse. "They’re watching for guided-missile cruisers and Coast Guard transponders. But an old steel tub running zero electronics below twenty knots looks like driftwood on their targeting algorithms."

"Until we get alongside," Sarah warned. "The moment we breach their perimeter, their automated sentry turrets will shred this hull in three seconds."

"Then we don't go alongside on the surface," I said, looking toward the stern of the boat where Kowalski kept his commercial diving compressor and a pair of black military rebreathers.

Sarah looked at the gear, then at me. "Grant, the surface water is forty-eight degrees. The current off the continental shelf will pull you straight out to the Gulf Stream."

"Sheriff Vance and his masters spent twenty years relying on screens, algorithms, and automated weapons because they were too cowardly to look their victims in the eye," I said, checking the pressure gauge on the first oxygen tank. "They think human grit is obsolete. Let's prove them wrong."

Suddenly, the wheelhouse deck trembled. Kowalski throttled back the engines.

"Grant! Up here, fast!"

I bounded up the narrow ladder into the wheelhouse. Frank was pointing through the salt-crusted glass toward the southern horizon.

Through the darkness, two sleek, low-profile shapes were cutting through the swells at forty knots, their hulls completely black, throwing twin plumes of white foam. They carried no navigation lights, but their mastheads blinked with identical crimson LED pulses.