Chapter 14 - Unearthing the Safehouse
Outside the mansion, sirens began howling across the valley as Thorne's perimeter security rallied.
Marcus and Detective Miller pulled up to the rear terrace in their SUV, tires screeching across the manicured lawn. Caleb dragged the handcuffed Deputy Chief Sterling out the shattered French doors, throwing him into the back seat.
"Did you get the server data?" Sarah Vance shouted from the passenger seat, laptop open and ready.
"Every single byte," Caleb replied, tossing the flash drive into her lap. "Names, accounts, bank wire transfers, and audio recordings of Sterling confessing to my father's murder."
Sarah plugged the drive into her DOJ secure satellite uplink. Her eyes widened as thousands of encrypted files decoded in real time.
"My God..." Sarah breathed, horrified. "It's all here. Thorne has scheduled *The Northern Star* to offload forty shipping containers of heavy weapons at Pier 14 in exactly forty-five minutes. He has eighty armed men securing the dock perimeter. Any civilian or police officer who enters the harbor zone has been marked for immediate execution."
"What about Commissioner Vance?" Miller asked, accelerating down the mountain road at ninety miles per hour.
"My father is currently at City Hall trying to destroy the internal dispatch logs," Sarah said, her voice trembling with heartbreak and resolve. "I just transmitted the federal indictment directly to the United States Attorney General and FBI Special Operations in Chicago. Federal gunboats are converging on Westbridge Harbor right now."
"Federal gunboats won't arrive for an hour," Caleb stated, checking his watch. "The cargo will already be offloaded and dispersed into the city by then. Thousands of weapons will flood our streets."
"Then what do we do?" Marcus asked, cocking his shotgun.
Caleb looked at the three of them—a disgraced former criminal seeking redemption, a veteran cop fighting for his lost honor, and a brave prosecutor risking everything for truth.
"We go to Pier 14," Caleb said. "We shut the cranes down manually and hold the dock until the federal cavalry arrives."
"Four people against eighty armed cartel mercenaries?" Miller asked, a fierce grin breaking across his weathered face.
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"My father held off thirty men with one revolver to protect an innocent family," Caleb said, his eyes burning with unbreakable fire. "Four of us is more than enough."
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