Chapter 11 - THE INFILTRATIONWith the estate locked down by federal marshals and guarded by heavy private security contractors hired under the emergency injunction, Daniel knew he couldn't fight them in a courtroom that Apex already owned.
He had to strike from the inside.
At 2:00 AM under a moonless sky, three shadowy figures crept through the dense cypress swamps bordering the southern edge of the estate.
It was Daniel, Marcus, and an unexpected ally—Evelyn Vance.
Though Daniel had fired Evelyn six months prior, she had returned with vital intelligence. Having worked inside Apex’s legal network for years, she knew the exact security protocols and digital blind spots of the private contractor firm guarding the site.
"They've set up a mobile data extraction terminal right above the central wine cellar," Evelyn whispered, ducking behind an oak tree as a sweep beam from a security tower cut through the fog. "They're trying to drill directly down into the analog server vault before sunrise."
"How much time do we have?" Daniel asked, adjusting his night-vision goggles.
"Forty-five minutes before their thermite drill breaks through the vault ceiling," she replied.
"Then we don't go through the doors," Daniel said, unslinging a heavy leather tool bag from his shoulder. "We use the maintenance drainage tunnels grandfather built during the 1950 drought."
Crawling through four hundred yards of mud and iron drainage pipes, the trio reached the underground foundation beneath the main workshop. The air vibrated with the heavy, low rumble of an industrial thermite drill cutting into reinforced concrete directly above them.
Daniel pulled a heavy pneumatic cable-cutter from his bag.
"If I sever their main power generator," Daniel whispered to Marcus, "the security feed goes black for ninety seconds. That’s your window to upload the contents of my father's 1994 data drive directly to the federal inspector general's secure server."
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"And what are you going to do?" Evelyn asked anxiously.
Daniel looked up toward the ceiling where the drill was whining louder. "I'm going to meet the man who gave the order."
