The sixty students in the gym looked down at their feet in terror.
“Eighty feet beneath this mat, Vance,” Cole revealed, every word falling like an iron deadbolt into its strike plate:
“…lies **Valve Station Ten**.”
“The primary northern maritime-overland surface access hatch, hydraulic ventilation manifold, and emergency cryptographic staging terminal for **Conduit Ten**.”
“The classified, electromagnetic-shielded, pressurized analog command artery running from the naval installations at Norfolk straight through the bedrock of Loudoun County into the nuclear retaliatory vaults beneath the Supreme Court of the United States.”
“Inside that vault are forty-eight titanium cylinders containing the physical, analog mechanical targeting release matrices for our nation’s strategic nuclear deterrent.”
Cole stepped until his eyes were six inches from Vance’s trembling nose:
“Twelve years ago, your partner Harold Vance—Derek’s father—purchased this condemned industrial parcel through a shell company registered in Vaduz, Liechtenstein.”
“He didn’t build a martial arts gym to teach kids how to armbar.”
“He built this gym because the sub-basement provides the only un-monitored vertical access shaft to the secondary coolant lines of Conduit Ten.”
“For three years, Harold Vance and his private equity syndicate—**The Valkyrie Trust**—have been using diamond-tipped horizontal boring equipment hidden behind your sauna wall to tap into the sovereign defense artery.”
