I pretended to fly to Canada after suspecting the housekeeper was doing something terrible to my daughters whenever I was away. Instead, I secretly returned home and turned on the hidden cameras….007

CHAPTER 8: PROLOGUE TO PART 3: THE CIPHER IN CONDUIT TEN (THE HOOK TO PART 3)

`23:45:12 PST.`

The subterranean command continuity bunker eighty feet beneath the foundations of our Bel-Air estate—accessible only through the concealed hydraulic blast hatch behind the library vault—was completely dark except for the amber glow of thirty encrypted tactical monitors.

Outside, the first cold rains of an early Pacific winter had begun to sweep across the Santa Monica Mountains, cloaking the ridgelines and the dark waters of the Pacific in two inches of pristine, silent velvet mist.

I sat at the head of a twelve-foot reclaimed chestnut drafting table—the table Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer Senior had constructed with his own hands in 1944—wrapped in his twenty-ounce Scottish tweed hacking jacket, sipping a steaming ceramic mug of dark-roast chicory coffee that Marcus Cooper had poured from an insulated field thermos.

Across the table sat Marisol.

She had showered, her hair pinned back in an unyielding, military knot, wearing an immaculate service dress blue uniform with the gold oak leaves of a Commander in the Naval Civil Engineer Corps pinned sharply to her epaulets. Pinned above her ribbons was her father’s unpolished bronze surveyor’s transit pin.

In the adjacent climate-controlled observation suite, visible through the reinforced ballistic glass, Valeria and Sofia were fast asleep in twin mahogany four-poster beds, their small hands resting peacefully against their pillows, guarded by two armed naval sentries.

Beside my chair on the concrete floor, fast asleep with his heavy golden head resting across my boots, was Barnaby—an eighty-pound retired naval working dog, a Belgian Malinois that Admiral Mercer had brought to the bunker four hours ago.

On the table between our forearms…

Resting atop the blue vellum deed to Conduit Ten…

Was the four-inch antique solid-titanium **Admiralty Sovereign Master Key**:

`KEY IDENTIFIER: MERCER-VANCE-010`
`CLASSIFICATION: STRATEGIC SOVEREIGN ESCROW // TITLE 50 CONTINUITY`
`TITLE: CONDUIT TEN // THE PACIFIC BASIN COMMAND REDOUBT`

The heavy bronze blast doors of the subterranean pressure manifold clicked open softly on their oiled tracks:

*CREEEAK.*

Stepping into the room, wearing his full service dress blue uniform bearing the four silver stars of the **Chief of Naval Operations**, his chest covered in ten rows of medals and ribbons including the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal…