The Admiral pulled a ruggedized Panasonic Toughbook from his leather portfolio and set it flat atop the medical tray:
*CLACK.*
A satellite LiDAR survey resolved across the screen:
Red vector lines pulsed through the pre-Cambrian crystalline schist and reinforced granite bedrock eighty feet beneath the streets of Lower Manhattan, tracing an unbroken, twenty-foot-wide reinforced concrete-and-titanium artery running from the deep submarine berths at the Brooklyn Navy Yard straight under the East River into the subterranean vaults beneath the Supreme Court:
`INFRASTRUCTURE PROFILE: CONDUIT TEN // THE MANHATTAN COMMAND SPUR`
`BUILT: 1944 // US NAVY CORPS OF ENGINEERS & NAVAL FOUNDRY`
`ORIGINAL RECORDED MASTER SURVEYOR: CWO ARTHUR MERCER SENIOR`
`PURPOSE: HARDENED ANALOG RETALIATORY CIPHER CONDUIT // NUCLEAR TRIAD CONTINUITY`
`SURFACE ANCHOR: THE HISTORIC ARCHIVAL VAULTS // BROOKLYN NAVY YARD`
`LEGAL DEED OF RECORD: THE ARTHUR MERCER SOVEREIGN LINEAL CHARTER (1944)`
`CUSTODIAN OF RECORD: ETHAN ARTHUR MERCER-VANCE (FEE SIMPLE ABSOLUTE)`
`BENEFICIARY OF RECORD: LEO ARTHUR MERCER-VANCE (LINEAL HEIR)`
“Conduit Ten is not an auxiliary municipal utility line, Ethan,” Marcus Cooper explained, every word dropping like lead shot into fifty fathoms of dark water:
“It carries the analog mechanical launch ciphers for our nation’s strategic nuclear deterrent.”
“Your father, Arthur Mercer Senior, designed the conduit in nineteen-forty-four under Title Fifty National Security Secrecy.”
