Chapter 7 - The Inheritance of Lies
The interior of the bait shack smelled of kerosene, wet wool, and the bitter, metallic tang of sickness. A single lantern sat on a wooden crate, throwing long, flickering shadows against the walls. Julian lay back against a pile of old fishing nets, his chest heaving as he recovered from a violent coughing fit.
Emma sat beside him, holding a plastic cup of fresh water she had found in his supplies, her face filled with an immense, protective sorrow. It was clear to me now that over the last three months, Emma hadn't just been keeping a secret—she had been caring for my dying brother while I was safely away at sea.
"They're on us, Julian," I said, leaning against the damp wooden wall, my eyes fixed on his frail form. "An agent breached my house twenty minutes after I got back. I took him down, but more are coming."
Julian nodded slowly, wiping a trace of blood from his lips with a tattered handkerchief. "They know the encryption on that drive is designed to alert their local field office if it's accessed within fifty miles of the coast. I was hoping you'd wait until you were inland to open it, Jonah. But you always were too damn curious for your own good."
"You left me a puzzle about our father's murder, Julian!" I said, my voice rising with a sudden, uncontrollable fury. "What did you expect me to do? Keep it in my pocket while I did my laundry? Tell me what happened on the Vanguard. Tell me what Dad took."
Julian looked up at me, his gray eyes shining with an old, deep-seated guilt. "In 2012, our dad's unit was tasked with recovering an experimental electronic warfare module from a downed Russian spy satellite in the Greenland Sea. It was called the Svarog Project—a system capable of completely blinding a carrier strike group's radar from five hundred miles away."
He paused, taking a shallow, rattling breath. "Dad recovered the module, but when he brought it on board the Vanguard, he found out that a high-ranking officer in the Office of Naval Intelligence had already cut a deal to sell the tech to a private defense contractor in Virginia. They were going to stage an accident, report the module lost at sea, and split a hundred million dollars."
"Dad wouldn't let that happen," I whispered, the puzzle pieces finally locking together.
"No, he wouldn't," Julian said, a fierce spark of pride lighting up his pale face. "He took the module, slipped off the ship in a black-skiff survival craft before the explosion, and hid it. The contractor blew the ship anyway to cover their tracks and kill the rest of the crew who might have seen something."
"Did Dad survive?" I asked, my heart stopping as I waited for the answer.
"For three years, yes," Julian said softly. "He lived under an assumed name in Canada, trying to build a case against the ONI circle. That's why I enlisted, Jonah. I found him. We were working together to expose them. But in 2014, they found our safe house in Vancouver. They killed him, Jonah. For real this time. I barely escaped with my life, and that's when I had to stage my own death in Afghanistan to go deep underground."
He reached out, his thin, calloused hand grabbing my arm with surprising strength. "The module is still hidden, Jonah. It's buried less than three miles from where we're sitting right now. Under the old lighthouse foundation at Pelican Point. That drive you have has the decryption keys needed to activate the unit and broadcast its location to every major international news outlet and federal oversight committee simultaneously. It's the only way to expose them. The only way to get justice for Dad and the forty men who died on the Vanguard."
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Suddenly, the low, powerful rumble of a boat engine vibrated through the floorboards of the shack. Through the cracks in the wall, I saw a brilliant white spotlight cut through the rain, sweeping across the dark waters of the marsh toward our position.
The clean-up crew had arrived, and they weren't using cars this time. They had a tactical patrol boat.
