Chapter 8 - The Lighthouse Grid
"They're coming from the water side," I said, peering through the slats of the shack door. The patrol boat was a sleek, black twin-engine interceptor, the kind used by special warfare units for coastal interdiction. Three men in full tactical gear stood on the bow, their weapons raised.
"We won't make it to the lighthouse on foot," Emma said, her voice tight as she helped Julian to his feet. He was burning up with fever now, his legs trembling under his weight. "The mud is too deep. They'll catch us before we clear the channel."
"There's an old skiff behind the processing plant," Julian gasped out, leaning heavily against my shoulder. "It doesn't have an engine, but the tide is running out fast toward the point. If we drop into the current, we can drift down to the lighthouse before they realize we've left the shack."
I looked at Emma. Her face was pale, her clothes soaked, her bare feet cut and bleeding from the sharp marsh grass. This wasn't her fight. She was a woman who restored old books, who argued with raccoons, who deserved a quiet, safe life on Pelican Row. Yet, she looked at me with an expression of absolute resolve that made my chest ache with an overwhelming warmth.
"Let's go," she said simply.
We slipped out the back door of the shack just as the patrol boat's spotlight swept over the front entrance. I guided Julian down into the rotting fiberglass skiff hidden beneath an old tarp behind the plant. Emma jumped in after him, taking the small plastic paddle while I pushed the boat off the mud into the deep, fast-moving center of the channel.
The current caught us instantly, dragging the light boat out into the black expanse of the bay. The rain was a deafening roar now, masking the sound of our movement as the patrol boat behind us opened fire on the empty bait shack, heavy rounds tearing through the wooden walls until the structure collapsed into the swamp.
We drifted through the dark for fifteen agonizing minutes, the current carrying us toward the jagged black silhouette of Pelican Point. The old lighthouse stood at the tip of the peninsula, its light long since deactivated, an empty brick tower guarding a graveyard of shoals.
The skiff crashed hard against the rocky beach below the lighthouse. I lifted Julian out of the boat, his body feeling dangerously light in my arms, and carried him up the slippery stone steps toward the heavy iron door at the base of the tower. Emma followed, her eyes scanning the dark bay behind us.
The door was locked with a heavy commercial padlock, but I didn't waste time trying to pick it. I raised the captured pistol and fired two rounds directly into the cylinder. The lock shattered, and we burst inside, slamming the heavy iron door shut behind us and throwing the manual deadbolts.
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The interior of the lighthouse was freezing, the air thick with the scent of salt, bat guano, and old iron.
"The foundation," Julian whispered, pointing a shaking finger toward the center of the concrete floor where an old iron hatch led to the original oil storage cistern. "It's down there, Jonah. Install the drive. End this."
