Chapter 46 - THE THREE TOWERS
The Severn River was a churning, black expanse under the driving rain as the convoy reached the perimeter of the decommissioned Naval Radio Station outside Annapolis.
Rising three hundred feet into the storm clouds were the three massive steel lattice towers of the vintage low-frequency broadcast array, known locally as the Three Needles. Built during the First World War to communicate with submarines in the North Atlantic, the towers had been officially decommissioned for two decades, their control buildings abandoned and rusted behind high chain-link fences topped with razor wire.
The lead Suburban halted at the perimeter gate. The heavy chain had been severed cleanly with an oxyacetylene torch, the links lying scattered in the gravel like dead insects.
"No perimeter guards," Sterling noted, stepping out into the lashing rain with his service weapon drawn, five MP riflemen forming an immediate tactical wedge around him. "If Kincaid is in there, he’s inside the central generator building."
"No," Emma said, stepping into the dark without a flashlight. She smelled the air—salt from the bay, damp pine, and the unmistakable, faint metallic tang of freshly oiled machine steel drifting down on the north-northwest breeze. "Kincaid wouldn't put himself in a basement. He needs elevation. He’s on the middle tower."
"Tower Two?" The MP sergeant looked up at the skeletal steel structure vanishing into the low-hanging cloud deck. "That’s three hundred feet of exposed girder in a forty-knot wind, ma'am. Nobody can shoot from up there."
"Kincaid can," Emma said. "And from that platform, he has an unobstructed line of sight across the bay to the microwave relay tower on Kent Island. If he transmits the override signal from there, the entire grid along the coast will execute the shutdown."
"Then we storm the base of the tower," Sterling said, motioning his men forward.
"If you step onto the open concrete around the tower bases, you will be dead before your foot hits the mud," Emma commanded, her voice cutting through the wind with absolute authority. "Kincaid’s rifle is a heavy .338 Lapua, suppressed. At this range, in this wind, you won't even hear the round that takes your head off."
She unslung her rifle and checked the elevation turret on her scope.
"Stay behind the stone foundations of the transformer sheds," she ordered. "Keep your radios off. Kincaid has a directional scanner; he will track your transmissions and shoot through the masonry."
"What are you going to do?" Sterling asked, watching her slip into the black shadows of the overgrown tree line.
May you like
"I’m going to climb Tower One," Emma said.
***
