Chapter 37 - The Iron Perch
Two hours later, the battered Aston Martin pulled into a rusted hangar on the fog-shrouded airstrip of Lydd.
A weathered man in a grease-stained flight jacket stood waiting beside a sleek, twin-engine matte-gray turboprop aircraft. The engines were already humming, cutting through the salty coastal air with a low, menacing thrum.
"Naomi," the man said simply, nodding toward the plane without offering a handshake. "Flight plan is cleared as a weather-reconnaissance run over the Channel. But if you cross into North Sea sector four, radar will flag you as unauthorized hostile. You've got twenty minutes before air defense launches interceptors."
"Twenty minutes is plenty, Frank," Naomi replied, grabbing the gear bags and heading up the small hydraulic boarding ladder. "Ethan, get in. Strap into the jump seat."
Ethan scrambled into the cabin, fastening the heavy four-point harness as the turboprop began rolling down the cracked tarmac before the door was even fully sealed. The G-force pressed him back into the seat as the plane took off into the swirling coastal storm, climbing rapidly through the clouds.
Naomi moved through the cabin, opening a reinforced locker. She stripped out of her torn, mud-caked maid’s uniform, revealing the compact, corded muscle and intricate web of surgical scars across her shoulders and ribs. She pulled on a form-fitting, thermal-regulated tactical dive suit, sliding ceramic body plates into the torso sleeves and fastening magnetic weapon holsters to her thighs.
Ethan looked away out of instinct, but his eyes caught the glow at the base of her neck. "The glow... it's spreading."
Naomi glanced into a small wall mirror, seeing the faint web of azure light tracing along the veins toward her jawline. "The neural core is reacting to the proximity of the Sterling satellite network. When Marcus Sterling booted his uplink on Platform Echo-Seven, it activated my core's handshake protocol."
"Does that mean they know we're coming?"
"Yes," Naomi said, racking the slide of an MP7 submachine gun and locking two spare magazines into her belt. "They're waiting for us. Vanessa is probably watching the radar right now, celebrating."
"Then why fly straight into it?" Ethan asked, leaning forward against his harness.
Naomi checked her altitude altimeter on her wrist. "Because they think we're going to land."
She walked to the rear cargo ramp, gripping the emergency release lever. The pilot’s voice crackled through the cabin intercom: *"Target in sight through the fog. Platform Echo-Seven, bearing zero-four-zero. Two minutes to airspace violation!"*
Naomi looked back at Ethan, tossing him a parachute rig and an emergency respirator. "Put it on."
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"What?!" Ethan’s eyes widened with pure terror. "I've never jumped out of an airplane in my life!"
"Then pull the red cord when you see the water," Naomi said, pulling her tactical mask over her face, her gray eyes narrowing through the tinted visor. "And don't swallow the sea."
