Chapter 17 - Flight into the Tempest: The Ghost Flight to Geneva
Within forty minutes, the mountain sanctuary was abandoned. Under the cover of the raging spring blizzard, Sarah Lin led Daniel, Emily, and the baby through the underground mining tunnels to an abandoned logging airstrip carved into a remote plateau three miles west.
Sitting on the tarmac, its twin turboprop engines idling with a low, vibrating growl, was an unmarked matte-black cargo plane. The pilot, an old acquaintance of Sarah’s from her days running covert operations in the pharmaceutical trade, gave a quick nod as they rushed up the loading ramp.
"The FAA has grounded all civilian aviation due to the storm," the pilot shouted over the roar of the propellers. "We have a sixty-minute window to breach Canadian airspace before the military intercepts us on Arthur Sterling’s orders! Strap in!"
The interior of the plane was stripped bare—no seats, just metal ribs, cargo netting, and rows of auxiliary fuel tanks strapped down with heavy chains. Daniel secured Emily and baby Sarah into a reinforced jump seat, wrapping them in thermal survival blankets. Emily’s face was pale, the exhaustion of the past twelve hours carving hollow lines into her youthful features, but her eyes burned with an unrelenting, protective fury.
Daniel knelt in front of her, his hands clasping hers. "I promised you that down on that icy cliff, the descent was over. I was wrong, Em. I brought this curse back into your life."
"Stop," Emily whispered, reaching up to press her hand against his bruised cheek. "You didn't bring this. Their greed brought this. But listen to me, Daniel... if it comes down to a choice between me and our daughter, you save Sarah. You promise me that right now."
"I am saving both of you," Daniel swore, his voice thick with unyielding resolve. "I survived the cliff. I survived Julian. We finish this together."
The aircraft surged forward, tearing down the icy runway before banking sharply into the violent turbulence of the mountain storm. Outside the tiny, scratched portholes, the jagged peaks of the Rockies disappeared into a swirling abyss of black clouds and blinding lightning.
Sarah Lin sat across from them, methodically disassembling and cleaning a sidearm. Her hands did not tremble despite the violent jolts of the plane.
"Julian is already in Europe," Sarah Lin said, not looking up from her work. "He boarded a private supersonic jet thirty minutes after Eleanor was extracted. Eleanor is traveling with Arthur on their private yacht across the Mediterranean to establish an alibi. They expect Julian to secure the vault before we can even reach the continent."
"How does Julian plan to open the vault if he doesn't have Sarah?" Daniel asked.
Sarah Lin paused, her fingers hovering over the weapon's slide. When she raised her eyes, there was a profound, chilling darkness in them.
"Julian believes he can bypass the biological lock by using your blood, Daniel. You share fifty percent of Sarah’s genetic markers. It won't unlock the full database—it will trigger a partial retrieval protocol. But to get enough pure bone marrow from an adult to satisfy the biometric scanner... Julian will have to drain every drop of blood from your living body."
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Suddenly, the plane dropped two hundred feet in a pocket of violent downdraft. The metal frame groaned in agony. Red cockpit emergency lights flickered on, and the pilot’s voice crackled through the intercom:
"Mayday! Mayday! We have an unidentified electronic warfare bird tracking us from thirty thousand feet! Our radar is blind! Someone just painted our tail with a surface-to-air missile lock over the North Atlantic!"
