One mile south, along the granite shoreline bluffs of Hood Canal.
The ancient timber pumphouse—a structure built of twelve-inch hand-hewn cedar logs and reinforced naval concrete that served as the primary surface mask for Valve Station Ten—was surrounded by sixty thousand lumens of blinding halogen industrial work lights!
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Parked across the gravel clearing were three heavy commercial crane trucks and two specialized tracked diamond core-drilling rigs bearing the private corporate crest of Apex Strategic Demolition // Vaduz, Liechtenstein!
Around the open concrete entrance of the pumphouse, eight private paramilitary contractors in sterile dark-charcoal Nomex drysuits, Level IV boron-carbide plate carriers, stood guard, their suppressed short-barreled carbines held at low-ready!
From the depths of the rock shaft, the deafening, bone-shattering scream of industrial diamond-tipped core drills chewed through four feet of reinforced granite:
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SKRRRRR-ROAR-GRIND.
Thick plumes of gray pulverized slurry and freezing liquid-nitrogen vapor swirled across the wet asphalt in blinding white clouds!
