Chapter 24 - The Geneva Extraction
Forty-eight hours later, a private jet touched down on a private runway outside Geneva amid a raging blizzard.
We didn't call the international authorities; Lord Vance had bought every government official within a hundred miles. Instead, I mobilized the full military-grade security fleet of Sterling Global. Marcus led a team of twelve elite former special forces operatives, while Claire and I sat in the armored command vehicle parked two miles from the Alpine fortress—a fortified concrete bunker built into the side of Mount Saleve.
"You don't have to go inside, Claire," I said, checking the magazine of my sidearm.
"He's my father, Ethan," Claire said, her voice like steel. She pulled on her tactical coat, looking me dead in the eye. "Nine years ago, I let your mother tear our lives apart because I was terrified. I am never running again."
At 3:00 AM, Marcus detonated EMP charges at the facility’s main power substation, plunging the mountain fortress into complete darkness.
We moved like ghosts through the snow, breaching the heavy blast doors using thermal charges. Red emergency lights bathed the concrete corridors in a blood-colored glow as suppressed gunshots echoed through the underground complex. Marcus’s team systematically cleared the security forces while Claire and I rushed down to the lowest subterranean medical ward.
We threw open the heavy reinforced steel door of Cell 04.
Inside, hooked up to life-support monitors, sat an elderly man with silver hair and hollow cheeks. He looked frail, but when he turned his head toward the door, his dark eyes carried the exact same fiery intellect I saw in Leo every single morning.
"Claire...?" the old man rasped, his voice trembling as if he were seeing an apparition.
Claire dropped her weapon, rushing across the room and falling to her knees beside his bed. "Dad! Oh God, Dad!" she sobbed, wrapping her arms around his frail shoulders.
Richard Sterling held his daughter, tears streaming down his weathered face. "I knew you would come... I knew my little girl would find me..."
Before we could unhook his medical lines, a heavy blast door slammed shut behind us, locking with a metallic thud.
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The wall monitors lit up. Lord Alistair Vance appeared on the screen, sitting comfortably in an upper-level control room, holding a glass of scotch.
"How touching," Vance sneered. "The whole tragic family reunited at last. Did you really think it would be this easy, Ethan? You've walked straight into a kill box. In ninety seconds, nerve gas will flood that chamber, and Aegis-X will belong to me forever."
