Chapter 14 - The Siege of the Granite Tower
Elena rushed to the eastern window, throwing aside the heavy canvas curtain.
Through the rain-streaked glass, two massive offshore patrol cutters were cutting through the outer swells of the cove, their blinding searchlights sweeping the rocky cliffs.
On the clifftop access road above the cove, headlights from three black tactical SUVs illuminated the rain in blinding white sheets.
A heavy tactical helicopter hovered low over the headland, its rotor wash flattening the wild beach grass and whipping the surf into white foam.
Through the binoculars mounted by the window, Elena saw the rear doors of the lead SUV swing open.
Two heavily armed tactical officers hauled a tall man out onto the gravel road.
Adrian Russo was battered, his face smeared with blood and grease, his white shirt torn across his chest.
Heavy steel transport chains bound his wrists and ankles, clanking against the wet stones as he was forced to his knees in the mud.
Beside him stood Deputy Chief Harlan, dressed in an immaculate black trench coat, holding an electronic megaphone to his lips.
"Elena!" Harlan’s amplified voice boomed across the granite cliffs, drowning out the roar of the surf.
"You have Karen Bennett's evidence locker inside that house!"
"Bring the ammunition box and the child out to the road!"
"If you walk out with your hands up, I will allow Adrian to sign his confession and spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary."
"If you refuse, my snipers will level this cottage in three minutes, and Adrian will take the first bullet through his skull!"
Adrian struggled violently against the chains, throwing his shoulder into one of the tactical guards and knocking him into the mud.
"Don't do it, Elena!" Adrian roared into the wind, his voice raw, savage, and unbroken.
"Do not give him the child!"
"Barricade the tower and let them burn the earth!"
"I would rather die on this rock than let this monster touch our daughter!"
One of Harlan’s guards struck Adrian across the face with the butt of an assault rifle, knocking the crime boss flat against the gravel.
Inside the cottage, Elena clutched the window frame, her knuckles white with agonized rage.
"He's going to kill him," Elena whispered, tears streaming down her face.
"He's going to execute Adrian right in front of us."
"Not if we take the tower," Vance commanded, pulling three spare magazines from his tactical vest.
"The keeper's cottage is made of cedar and drywall—it won't hold against rifle fire."
"The lighthouse tower is solid granite three feet thick, built in eighteen-eighty."
"The ground floor has a reinforced iron blast door that can withstand dynamite."
"We move to the tower now!"
Julia scooped Ava into her arms, while Elena grabbed the twelve-gauge shotgun and two boxes of heavy buckshot from the pantry.
Vance carried Karen’s ammunition box and kicked open the heavy rear door that connected the cottage to the stone base of the lighthouse tower.
They rushed through the narrow stone breezeway into the circular base of the granite lighthouse.
Vance swung the massive iron blast door shut, dropping three heavy forged-iron drop bars into their steel cradles.
Seconds later, a deafening barrage of high-caliber rifle fire ripped through the wooden cottage outside.
The sound of shattering glass, splintering cedar, and collapsing roof beams echoed through the breezeway.
Bullets ricocheted harmlessly off the three-foot-thick exterior granite blocks of the tower with dull, metallic pings.
"They're going to use cutting torches on the hinges!" Vance warned, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he pointed up the spiraling cast-iron staircase.
"Take Ava to the lantern room at the top!"
"The observation deck has a narrow choke point—they can only come up single file!"
Julia, Elena, and Ava began the exhausting ascent up the spiral stairs, their boots ringing on the cast-iron steps.
One hundred and forty steps wound around the hollow granite interior like the inside of a massive stone shell.
At step eighty, Julia stopped, looking down at the ammunition box in Vance's hands.
"Vance! The tapes aren't the only thing Karen left!" Julia yelled down through the stairwell.
Vance paused, looking up through the spiral.
"What did you find?"
Julia unzipped the side pocket of the canvas case, pulling out a heavy, rubberized handheld unit with a folding satellite antenna.
"Karen had a military-grade emergency transponder!" Julia shouted.
"There’s a laminated instruction card taped to the back!"
"It's pre-programmed to transmit an uncompressed data burst of the audio files and bank records to the State Governor’s emergency desk and the Federal Bureau of Investigation!"
Elena’s eyes widened with sudden, fierce hope.
"The lantern room has an auxiliary generator and an external transmission mast!" Elena cried.
"If we get that unit to the top, we can broadcast the entire file to every federal frequency on the eastern seaboard!"
A sudden explosion rocked the base of the tower.
The concussion rattled the iron stairs under their feet, sending dust and chips of stone raining down from the vaulted ceiling.
Harlan’s assault team had detonated a breaching charge against the outer blast door.
The iron door held, but the hinges groaned under the blast, warped and smoking.
"Move! Move to the top!" Vance roared, taking up a firing position behind the iron balustrade at the midpoint of the stairs.
Julia pushed Ava up the final flight of stairs, bursting through the trapdoor into the glass-enclosed lantern room.
The massive, antique Fresnel lens dominated the center of the chamber, its concentric glass prisms gleaming like a colossal diamond.
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Outside the curved glass windows, the storm raged in all its fury, lightning illuminating the cliffs below.
And down on the access road, through the sheets of rain, Julia saw Adrian Russo rising from the mud once more, his eyes fixed on the revolving beam of light above.
