Chương 15 - The Huron Descent
The night was an endless sheet of black ice.
Our chartered Gulfstream had touched down at the tiny regional airstrip outside Sarnia just before midnight. The wind coming off Lake Huron was ferocious, carrying a relentless, horizontal barrage of lake-effect snow that stung the eyes and froze the moisture in our nostrils.
Waiting on the tarmac were two matte-black, heavily modified Ford F-350s with reinforced bumpers and tinted windows. Four men stood beside them, dressed in arctic tactical gear, their faces obscured by balaclavas and ballistic goggles. They carried short-barreled automatic rifles strapped across their chests.
As Marcus and I stepped down the mobile airstair, the driver of the lead truck stepped forward. He didn't introduce himself. He simply gestured to the open rear door.
"Leave the weapons," the man said, his voice flat through his mask. "You get scanned at the gate."
"The weapons stay on my belt," Marcus replied, his voice calm, deadpan, and utterly immovable. "Or we turn around, get back on that plane, and your boss can try to open that vault with a sledgehammer and a prayer."
The man stared at Marcus for three long seconds. The tension was thick enough to choke on. Then, a voice crackled through the radio on the man’s tactical vest: *"Let them keep their sidearms. It will give David an illusion of control."*
The guard stepped aside.
Marcus and I climbed into the rear of the truck. The interior was stripped bare, smelling of diesel exhaust, gun oil, and damp wool. We drove north for forty-five minutes along the deserted lakeside highway, the high beams cutting narrow tunnels through the swirling whiteout.
Eventually, the trucks slowed, turning off the main road onto a private, fenced service access marked with high-voltage warning signs and faded Canadian corporate logos. We passed through three security gates, each manned by private contractors in heavy winter parkas who waved us through without checking IDs.
We pulled up to the main hoist house of the Goderich salt mine.
The industrial complex looked like a relic of the mid-twentieth century—towering corrugated steel buildings, rusted conveyor housings, and massive steel cables disappearing into the ground. But nestled among the decay were new, high-tech additions: satellite uplinks, perimeter motion sensors, and portable diesel generators purring with steady power.
Waiting inside the heated hoist lobby stood Arthur Vance.
He looked older than the corporate portraits my father kept, but his posture was ramrod straight. He was well into his seventies, with silver hair cropped close to a skull that seemed entirely composed of sharp angles. He wore a tailored charcoal wool coat over a dark tactical sweater, leaning lightly on an ebony cane topped with a polished silver sphere.
"David," Vance said, his voice echoing in the concrete staging area. "You have your mother’s eyes. But your father’s jaw. Rigid. Stubborn."
"Vance," I said, stepping out of the truck. Marcus flanked me, his eyes instantly tracking the four armed guards positioned on the catwalk above us.
"You brought the crystal?" Vance asked, ignoring Marcus completely.
I reached into my pocket and held up the silver ring, the tiny optical crystal catching the harsh fluorescent light overhead.
Vance’s eyes flared with an almost religious hunger. For a split second, the polished veneer of the elder statesman slipped, revealing the voracious beast beneath.
"Remarkable," Vance whispered. "Twenty-two years. Hidden in plain sight on the finger of an illiterate servant."
"She wasn't illiterate," I countered. "And she was more loyal than anyone you ever bought."
Vance smiled thinly. "Loyalty is a currency for people who lack vision, David. It depreciates rapidly under pressure."
He turned toward the open cage of the mine hoist—a massive, industrial elevator suspended by steel cables as thick as a man's torso.
"Eighteen hundred feet down," Vance said, gesturing with his cane. "Beneath the ice, beneath the lakebed, where the world cannot reach us. Shall we?"
Marcus caught my eye. There was no backing out now. We were stepping into a steel cage that would drop us into the belly of the earth, surrounded by men who had every intention of leaving our bodies behind.
"After you," I said.
We stepped into the cage. The heavy iron gate slammed shut with a deafening clang that rattled my bones.
May you like
The winch engaged. And with a sickening drop in my stomach, we plunged into the black throat of the earth.
***
