Chương 5 - The Shadow Network
Meline tightened her grip on the burner phone as the reality of the bounty washed over her.
Two million dollars meant every freelance assassin and mercenary in the city would be looking for her face.
"David, I need you to secure a sterile location for my mother immediately," Meline demanded.
"I have an old, off-the-books clinic in Brooklyn, but you have to get there without hitting any traffic cameras," David replied.
Meline hung up the phone and guided Evelyn through the shadows of the alleyways.
They moved blocks away from the burning building before Meline dared to steal an idling delivery van.
She carefully loaded her exhausted mother into the passenger seat and drove through the back streets of Queens.
She kept her head down, avoiding the glare of streetlights and police cruisers speeding toward the fire.
An hour later, they arrived at a dilapidated brick building hiding in the industrial sector of Brooklyn.
David was waiting by the loading dock, looking older and more paranoid than Meline remembered.
He helped carry Evelyn inside to a clean, surprisingly well-equipped medical room hidden behind a false wall.
"I can keep her safe and medicated here for a few days, Meline, but Caldwell has eyes everywhere," David warned, locking the heavy steel door.
"He won't be looking for long," Meline stated, opening her tactical bag and pulling out her encrypted laptop.
She set it on a metal workbench and booted up the secure operating system.
"If we can expose the Dubai liquidation and the illegal offshore accounts, the feds will freeze his assets before morning."
David shook his head and pulled up a chair beside her.
"It is not that simple," David explained, typing a complex string of code into his own monitor.
"Caldwell keeps the master ledger for his illegal funds on an isolated server inside his corporate headquarters."
"Then we hack the server," Meline said firmly.
"It’s air-gapped," David replied, looking at her grimly. "It is entirely disconnected from the internet."
Meline stared at the blueprints of the Caldwell and Hayes building that David brought up on the screen.
The server was located on the forty-fifth floor, guarded by biometric scanners and armed security.
"The only way to get that ledger is to physically plug a drive into the terminal," David concluded.
Meline did not hesitate for a single moment.
"Get me a janitorial uniform and a cloned security badge," Meline ordered, her eyes burning with pure determination.
"You are going to walk into the headquarters of a man who just put a two-million-dollar hit on you?" David asked in disbelief.
"No," Meline replied, pulling her hair back into a tight bun. "I am going to walk into the headquarters of the man who just tried to kill my mother."
David nodded slowly, realizing there was no stopping her.
"I'll get the badge, but you should know that Caldwell isn't acting alone," David said, pointing to a newly decrypted file.
"The Dubai firm he is liquidating is owned by Tariq Al-Fayed."
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Meline felt the blood drain completely from her face.
Tariq Al-Fayed was the exact same arms dealer who had orchestrated the Beirut bombing that destroyed her career.
