Chapter 9 - Into the Storm
The storm intensified into a gale, churning the bay into ten-foot waves of churning black water. At the private marina, Alexander’s high-speed military interceptor vessel idle-thrummed against the dock, its twin thousand-horsepower diesel engines rumbling with low, dangerous vibration.
Alexander stepped aboard, the salt spray soaking his tailored coat, his posture as upright and commanding as an admiral going to war. Victor was dragged onto the deck, handcuffed to a steel support rail, his breathing shallow and ragged. The watch on his wrist read: 00:19:45.
“We can’t launch in this!” the boat captain yelled over the screaming wind. “The Coast Guard has issued a hurricane warning! Any vessel out there will capsize!”
Alexander stepped into the wheelhouse, his presence instantly dominating the small cabin. “Cast off the lines.”
“Sir, the waves—”
Alexander placed a thick black titanium corporate card on the control console. “Five million dollars wired to your family if this boat is damaged. Ten million if we arrive in fifteen minutes. Cast off, or I take the helm myself and leave you in the harbor.”
The captain swallowed hard, looked at the card, then slammed the throttle forward. The interceptor surged out of the slipway, cutting through the towering swells like a knife through silk.
Down in the passenger cabin, Alexander stood over Victor. “Platform Nine was abandoned by Vance Petroleum twenty years ago. Why there?”
Victor spat blood onto the steel floor, shivering from the cold ocean spray. “Because your father built it with a submerged submarine vault during the Cold War. Deep water. Soundproof. Completely off any modern satellite map. Marcus figured out Julianna was siphoning funds through the offshore shell company that held the platform’s maintenance lease. When Marcus confronted her, she came to me. We couldn't let him audit the accounts.”
“And you kept him alive for what?” Alexander asked. “Spite?”
“Leverage!” Victor hissed, his voice cracking against the roar of the engines. “We needed his retinal scan to unlock the primary family trust! Marcus refused to open his eyes for the scanner. Every day, I ordered the guards to beat him, but he held out... waiting for you. He knew you’d come back!”
Alexander’s jaw tightened. The thought of his only son enduring six months of torture inside a rusted steel cage beneath the ocean ignited a cold fire in his chest.
“Timer at ten minutes, sir!” Briggs called down the hatch.
Through the salt-encrusted windows of the bridge, the massive industrial skeleton of Platform Nine emerged from the mist. It looked like an iron leviathan rising from the raging ocean, completely unlit except for a single pulsing red beacon on its upper crane.
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As the interceptor approached within half a mile, a searchlight on the derrick suddenly blazed to life, blinding the bridge crew.
A heavy caliber machine gun mounted on the platform’s lower catwalk opened fire, ripping lines of white foam across the water directly toward the interceptor’s hull.
