Chapter 16 - Breach at Devil’s Reef
A quarter-mile offshore, the interceptor’s radar whistled a low-frequency alert. Rebecca cut the main turbines, sliding into the shadow of razor-sharp volcanic sea stacks known as the Devil’s Teeth. Osprey Rock loomed out of the storm like a medieval fortress, crowned with searchlights and automated radar domes.
Through her night-vision monocular, Rebecca mapped the defenses: two patrol gunboats guarding the deep-water dock, infrared motion-trip lines along the lower pebble beach, and four snipers stationed in the upper stone battlements of the manor house.
Amateurs rely on firepower; professionals exploit geography.
Rebecca stripped to her black tactical wetsuit, slinging an amphibious HK416 carbine across her chest and securing two mag-pouches and an acoustic breaching charge to her thighs. She plunged over the side into the freezing, churning current.
The undertow slammed her against the barnacle-crusted granite, but she used the surge to wedge her boots into a submerged tidal crevice. She pulled herself up onto the jagged rocks beneath the western cliff—a blind spot where the cliffs were deemed too sheer to scale.
From her harness, she deployed a pneumatic grapnel gun. The titanium grapple whistled through the roar of the gale, locking into the iron railing of a maintenance terrace eighty feet above.
Rebecca hoisted herself hand over hand, muscles burning against gravity and the howling crosswinds. As her boots found the terrace stone, a guard rounded the corner, flashlight beam cutting through the rain.
Before the guard could raise his rifle, Rebecca lunged from the shadows. Her gloved hand crushed his larynx while her hip spun into his center of gravity, driving him face-first into the flagstones. She caught his falling rifle with her left hand before it made a sound, sliding his unconscious body behind a bank of backup diesel generators.
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She tapped her wrist display. She had bypassed the outer perimeter. But the fortress’s primary vault lay three levels down—in the deep salt cellars.
***
