Chapter 41 - The Impossible PlanThe air in the concrete office was thick with tension.
Mateo stared at the weapons on the desk, feeling a heavy, suffocating dread. He had spent his entire life trying to avoid violence, trying to keep his family out of the shadows. Now, an old federale was asking him to walk directly into the heart of a cartel stronghold.
"You are out of your mind, Silva," Mateo said, shaking his head. "I am a mechanic. I am a father. I am not a soldier."
"I am the soldier," Silva said coldly, loading a magazine into a heavy tactical rifle. "I need you because you understand structural vulnerabilities. Where is Hector keeping the ledger?"
Mateo rubbed his temples, trying to think. "Hector is paranoid, but he’s also arrogant. He won't trust a bank. He won't trust a digital server. He likes to hold his power."
"The Vargas family owns a private compound in the Zapopan district," Silva said, pinning a satellite map to the whiteboard. "High walls. Armed guards. A biometric security vault in the basement. Arturo used it to store cash. Hector will undoubtedly use it for the ledger."
"A biometric vault?" Mateo looked at the map. "I can't bypass a retinal scanner or a fingerprint lock with a wrench, Silva. It's impossible."
"Nothing is impossible," Silva countered. "Biometric locks run on localized power grids to prevent remote hacking. They have a physical fail-safe."
Mateo’s mechanical mind slowly began to process the problem.
"If you sever the primary power line, the system defaults to a heavy internal battery backup," Mateo muttered, tracing the lines on the map. "But if you surge the backup battery with a massive, localized EMP blast... the biometric lock fries. It defaults to an open state to prevent trapping the owner inside during a catastrophic fire."
Silva smiled, a terrifying, wolfish grin.
"Can you build an EMP?"
"From car parts and microwave capacitors? Yes," Mateo said, looking at Laura, who was watching him with terrified, wide eyes. "But we have to get close enough to the vault door to deploy it. That means walking through fifty armed men."
"I will handle the men," Silva stated, strapping a tactical vest over his chest. "I will hit the front gates hard. I will make enough noise to draw every guard on the compound to the perimeter. You will slip in through the rear drainage tunnels, find the vault, blow the lock, and get the ledger."
"And if you die at the front gates?" Mateo asked, his voice entirely serious.
"Then you die in the basement," Silva replied flatly. "But your family lives. Because if you don't do this, Hector will never stop hunting them."
Mateo looked at his sleeping children. He looked at Laura, who silently, tearfully nodded her head. She knew he had to go.
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"I need an alternator, a high-voltage battery, and a lot of copper wire," Mateo said, turning toward the warehouse door.
The knight was going back into the dark.
