***
Outside, above the limestone bluffs of Great Falls, the screech of twin turbofan jet engines tore through the freezing fog.
Harrison Cole’s sleek, dark-gray **Gulfstream G650** flared onto the private two-thousand-foot asphalt runway cut through the river bluffs, its heavy carbon brakes groaning as the aircraft decelerated violently, turning into the gravel clearing sixty yards outside the substation gates!
The hydraulic airstair dropped with a concussive bang: *SLAM.*
Stepping down onto the wet asphalt, his bespoke charcoal wool overcoat unbuttoned, his face flushed with unhinged, cocaine-fueled corporate desperation, was **Harrison Cole**.
In his left hand, Harrison gripped the chain linking a pair of heavy, stainless-steel transport handcuffs that were clamped around the wrists of my thirteen-year-old son, Tyler.
Tyler’s face was bruised along his left temple, his expensive navy blazer torn at the shoulder, his lips pale and chapped from the cold.
But his spine was straight.
His chin was up.
His hazel eyes were fixed on the rusted iron bulkhead door of the substation with an unyielding, unbreakable defiance that took my breath away.
Behind them stepped **Arthur Sterling-Vance**—the eighty-year-old chairman of **The Valkyrie Trust**, wearing his bespoke three-piece suit of English flannel, holding an open, four-hundred-page leather litigation brief.
Flanking the aircraft were the four armed contractors from Apex Tactical, their suppressed carbines held at low-ready.
Harrison dragged Tyler across the gravel toward the heavy chain-link gate, shoving the boy against the wire:
“EMILY!”
Harrison roared through the gale, his voice cracking into that raw, feral shriek of a predator whose empire is crumbling:
“I know you can hear me through the perimeter microphones!”
Harrison reached into his coat, drawing a compact, matte-black Glock automatic pistol, racking the slide with a sharp, metallic snap:
*CLACK-CLICK.*
He pressed the muzzle of the weapon directly against Tyler’s bruised temple:
“You have sixty seconds to open that titanium hatch and bring the card to this fence!”
“If that door doesn’t swing open by the count of sixty…
