Chapter 28 - The Ghost Protocol
The backblast scorched the wooden dock, sending a cone of superheated flame into the snow behind me.
The 84mm high-explosive round cut through the freezing mist like a streak of pure thunder. A fraction of a second later, the warhead detonated against the stealth cutter’s engine block.
A colossal fireball blossomed across Lake Lucerne. The cutter’s stern lifted violently out of the water, engulfed in black smoke and churning flames. Secondary explosions ripped through the hull, tearing the vessel in half.
The shockwave rolled across the water, rocking Arthur’s Zodiac violently, but the old man threw his body over Lily, shielding her from the flying debris.
Up on the cliffside, Marcus opened up with continuous automatic fire, raking the hovering helicopter’s rotor assembly. Smoke began to pour from the bird’s engine cowling; the pilot lost yaw control, spinning erratically over the tree line before banking hard toward the north, fleeing into the Bavarian border.
Silence fell over the lake, broken only by the crackle of burning wreckage hissing against the black water.
I dove into the freezing lake, swimming with brutal, rhythmic strokes through the icy chop until my hands caught the rubber gunwale of the Zodiac. Arthur reached down, pulling me aboard with a strength that defied his years.
Lily scrambled out from beneath his woolen coat, throwing her arms around my neck. Her little body was shivering violently, her tears soaking into my frozen tactical jacket.
"Daddy! Daddy, you came!" she wept, burying her face into my chest.
"I’ve got you, bug," I panted, holding her so tightly I could feel the rapid, frantic beat of her heart against mine. "I’ve got you. Nobody is ever taking you away."
Arthur reached down, pulling a rugged tactical comm-link from the pocket of a dead mercenary who had floated near the surface. He tapped the frequency, bypassing the dead operator's biometric encryption with a pocket scrambler.
A transmission crackled through the speaker. A synthesized voice, calm, aristocratic, and utterly devoid of humanity, echoed into the freezing air:
*“Strike team failed at Lake Lucerne. Initiate Ghost Protocol at the Bavarian Black Site. Liquidate the primary asset before Mercer breaches the perimeter. She has served her purpose.”*
My father froze. His hand began to shake violently, almost dropping the radio into the lake.
"Arthur?" I demanded, wiping the freezing lake water from my eyes. "What is the Bavarian Black Site? Who is the primary asset?"
Arthur looked at me, his weathered face completely ashen, stripped of all color. His jaw worked silently for several agonizing seconds before the words finally escaped his throat.
"Daniel... Claire's body was never released to the morgue in Maine," Arthur whispered, the words hitting me like an avalanche of lead. "Julian signed the cremation papers, but the ashes we buried... they were medical waste."
The world went violently silent. The sound of the wind, the burning boat, the water slapping against the rubber hull—all vanished beneath a deafening roar in my ears.
"What did you say?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm.
"Claire was the lead architect of their neurological regeneration project," Arthur said, tears freezing on his cheeks. "They didn't kill her, Daniel. They kept her alive. She’s being held in the Zugspitze facility in Bavaria."
Lily looked up from my chest, her green eyes wide, innocent, and piercingly clear.
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"Mommy is sleeping in the castle in the snow," Lily whispered, repeating the nursery rhyme Claire used to sing to her. "She’s waiting for Daddy to wake her up."
***
