Chapter 11
The freezing mountain wind whipped Sarafina’s hair across her face as she scrambled up the metal steps of the waiting helicopter, the deep roar of the twin turbine engines drowning out the shouting security guards behind them. Victoria slammed the cabin door shut, sealing the heavy latch just as a barrage of automated security spotlights swept across the tarmac, illuminating the falling snow in blinding white bursts.
“Lift off! Now!” Victoria shouted to the pilot through the cockpit headset.
The aircraft surged violently upward, banking hard to the left as it cleared the perimeter fence of the Zurich depository and plunged directly into the dense, churning mass of a midnight snowstorm. Sarafina slumped back into the leather jump seat, clutching the weathered leather journal inside her trench coat pocket so hard her fingers ached.
“They think I killed him,” Sarafina shouted over the deafening roar of the rotors, her voice cracking with a mixture of grief and disbelief. “Julian is dead, and the syndicate has already rewritten the entire narrative to pin his murder on me.”
Victoria sat across from her, calmly wiping a speck of soot from the lapel of her charcoal blazer as she adjusted her headset.
“Julian was a liability to them the moment he failed to secure the eighty-two million dollars permanently,” Victoria said coldly, staring out the reinforced cabin window into the blinding white void. “The syndicate doesn't leave loose ends. If they couldn't control him, they eliminated him and used his death to execute a complete corporate execution of the Greenfield estate.”
Sarafina pulled the weathered journal from her pocket, tracing the embossed gold lettering on the spine with a trembling thumb.
“My father knew this would happen,” Sarafina said, lifting the cover to reveal pages filled with dense, handwritten calculations, names of offshore accounts, and encrypted corporate codes. “Every transaction Julian made, every shell company he used—it’s all documented right here in these pages. My father tracked the syndicate for ten years before they poisoned him.”
“Then we have everything we need to dismantle them,” Victoria replied, reaching into her briefcase and pulling out a satellite uplink modem. “We just need to upload the decrypted ledger to the international financial oversight committee before Interpol intercepts our transponder signal.”
Before Sarafina could answer, the helicopter lurched violently to the right, a loud metallic warning chime pinging frantically from the cockpit dashboard. The pilot’s voice crackled over the internal comms, strained and urgent.
“We’ve been painted by a military-grade radar lock!” the pilot shouted over the engine roar. “Unidentified aircraft closing in from our six o'clock position—no transponder codes!”
May you like
Sarafina spun around in her seat, pressing her face against the rear cabin glass. Through the swirling curtain of snow, two dark, unmarked military interceptors appeared out of the whiteout, their running lights dark as they closed the distance with terrifying speed.
“They tracked our satellite uplink!” Victoria yelled, slamming her laptop shut. “They’re going to force us down!”
