Chapter 7 - The Old Mill
The Old Mill sat deep in the pine hollows of Camden, a rotting relic of nineteenth-century timber and rusting water wheels. It was an off-the-grid safehouse Vance had maintained for thirty years, known only to his most trusted inner circle.
Marek backed the Humvee into a collapsed barn covered in kudzu vines, completely concealing the vehicle from aerial thermal imaging. Together, they carried General Vance’s body into the mill’s cellar, laying him across an old workbench beneath a clean canvas tarp. Elena stood over her father for thirty seconds in complete silence, her head bowed, before turning her back on the corpse to face the mission.
""I took photos of my arm and enhanced the contrast,"" Elena said, laying the phone on a wooden table beside a vintage shortwave radio console. ""Look at the spacing between the talons and the star.""
Marek leaned over the screen, squinting at the blown-up monochrome image. ""Those aren't feather quills. Those are coordinates. Lat-long pairs, but using an old cold-war military grid reference.""
""Miller’s coordinates,"" Elena confirmed. ""The first pair matches the northern Iraq sector Vance showed me. But the second pair... it’s not in the Middle East.""
Marek traced the second string of numbers. ""Where does it lead?""
""Geneva. An underground safe deposit vault beneath the Swiss Union Bank."" Elena opened Vance’s red folder. Inside were forged transit documents, two clean civilian passports, and a set of encrypted flash drives. ""Miller didn't keep the Orion Manifest on him when he stayed behind. He hid the physical ledger in Europe, and used the Iraq bunker as a decoy relay to draw Cole’s people away if the protocol was ever triggered.""
""Then why broadcast from Iraq now?"" Marek asked. ""If he wanted to stay hidden, why send an SOS after seven years?""
""Because he's running out of time,"" Elena said grimly. ""Cole found the Iraqi compound. Miller knew his capture was imminent, so he activated the transponder to warn my father to secure the vault before Cole could extract the master key.""
Suddenly, the shortwave radio on the desk sparked to life, static crackling through the dusty room. A mechanical, distorted voice broke over the emergency frequency:
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""Aquila Actual to Nest. Transponder compromised. Hunter teams deployed to secondary assets. If you can hear this, Elena... burn the ledger. They are inside the wire.""
A heavy crash echoed from the floorboards directly above their heads.
