Before the marshals could close the BearCat doors, Marcus Cooper's encrypted satellite radio shrieked with an urgent, high-gain acoustic alarm from his vest:
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
Cooper flipped the receiver, his voice snapping into immediate tactical alert:
“Admiral Mercer! Chancellor Mercer! Flash priority intercept from the subterranean intake at Valve Station Ten beneath the Cedar Falls limestone bluffs!”
Cooper turned the terminal screen toward where we stood:
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The live thermal reconnaissance feed showed three heavy commercial crane trucks and two specialized tracked core-drilling rigs bearing the corporate insignia of Apex Strategic Demolition // Vaduz, Liechtenstein parked eighty feet beneath our county pumping station!
Standing beside the drilling controls, holding an industrial radio detonator wired directly to the high-pressure cryogenic liquid-nitrogen cooling lines of Conduit Ten...
Was eighty-year-old Former Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance!
Arthur Vance leveled his finger straight toward the open concrete aperture on the screen, his cultured baritone booming over the drilling motors through the tactical audio intercept:
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