“Arthur Mercer was an exceptional surveyor, gentlemen,” Arthur purred, his voice a deep, resonant velvet cello that echoed off the acoustic baffles of the vault:
“He bored forty miles of subterranean granite with naval sweat, and he left the master deed to an estranged nephew who spent fifteen years playing gangster in Lower Manhattan nightclubs, completely blind to the fact that my grandson was managing his surveillance while we prepared to seize the defense bedrock from beneath his family’s name.”
Arthur dipped the gold nib of his pen toward the parchment:
“To the dead mobster on Fifth Avenue, gentlemen.”
“May he sleep in peace while we manage the Republic.”
CHAPTER 4: THE BREACH OF THE WEST CONFERENCE ROOM
KABOOOOM.
The four-inch-thick steel blast door of the West Conference Room did not slide open on its automated tracks.
It was cleaved off its structural bronze rollers by an eighty-pound linear hydraulic breaching ram, the steel latch pins shearing clean out of the concrete jamb with an explosive, concussive roar that shattered three overhead light fixtures into a blizzard of incandescent glass:
