57: Chapter 57 Ironclad Formation, A Beam of Light Breaks Through the Defenses

Arizona, Scottsdale, Casablanca Manor.

Ever since Diana made that decision in the quiet room— "Wait for them to come to us" —Casablanca Manor began operating at the highest level of combat readiness.

The Hopkins Family had sat firmly as one of the top five giants in the military-industrial defense circle since the generation of her grandfather, relying not just on shares in Northrop Grumman and procurement contracts with The Pentagon, but also on a private force system passed down through three generations.

Now, this entire system had been mobilized in less than a week.

On the Sonoran Desert surrounding the manor, the passive infrared sensor arrays previously scattered among the bushes were recalibrated, with low-altitude target tracking modules and geomagnetic anomaly detection nodes added.

Behind the stone walls of the inner perimeter, there was a two-person sentry post every fifty feet, each equipped with night-vision thermal imagers and encrypted shortwave communicators.

The inner sides of the main building's sandstone walls were embedded with Kevlar ballistic linings, and retractable titanium-alloy blast panels were installed behind the glass curtain walls.

In the garage of the east wing, four SUVs with military-grade armor were parked, fuel tanks full, engines never turned off.

In the basement of the west wing, the weapon inventory list had been personally reviewed by Harlan, from M4 carbines to M249 light machine guns, from Javelin anti-tank missiles to Stinger surface-to-air missiles, from directional fragmentation mines to anti-personnel mines.

The elite forces of the Colt Association were the last to arrive.

These people were not like the ordinary security guards on the perimeter; they were professionals—retired special forces, former intelligence field operatives, and several veterans who had worked in private military companies in Europe and the Middle East for over a decade.

Everyone's files had been deleted from all public records, and everyone's loyalty had been tested through layers of scrutiny by three generations of Hopkins Family heads.

By the evening of the seventh day, the entire manor had been transformed into a military stronghold with over five hundred armed loyalists, equipped with comprehensive anti-aircraft and anti-armor firepower.

Diana stood in the central courtyard of the manor's main building, looking through the seamless glass curtain wall at the last tactical team from the Colt Association running from the helipad direction along the gravel road into the outer sentry posts.

Standing behind her were Wallace Keating, Beatrice, and Harlan Croft.

Keating was using a tablet to view the deployment density map of the outer defensive perimeter in real-time. On the screen, red sectors representing the coverage of firepower overlapped, covering all possible approach paths to the manor's perimeter.

"Miss," Keating handed the tablet to a position in front of her, his tone carrying a confidence rarely revealed by an old intelligence officer, "We have currently deployed a systematic interlocking fire grid in all four directions of the perimeter."

"In terms of air defense, the Stinger missile teams are in position, and low-altitude targets will be locked in advance by the outpost infrared tracking system once they enter range."

"On the ground, all dirt roads and open areas leading to the manor have been covered by directional mines and fragmentation mines. Any unauthorized vehicle entering a half-mile radius will trigger an alarm."

"This is the strongest configuration the Hopkins Family has ever had, and I dare say there isn't another private force in all of Arizona that can compare to it."

Beatrice stood next to Keating, pressing a freshly printed personnel deployment report onto the stone table, her speech as crisp as ever:

"All five hundred people have been verified and organized into rotating shifts."

"The core team of the Colt Association is deployed on the perimeter of the main building, each equipped with M4 carbines and night-vision goggles."

"The outer defense line is the responsibility of the family guard, and light machine guns and snipers have taken up high ground positions."

"The encrypted communication links have been tested. Even if someone attempts to use electronic warfare means to interfere, the backup laser communication system can ensure the command chain inside the manor remains uninterrupted under any circumstances."

She paused slightly, flipped the report to the last page, and added:

"Even if the Delta Force from The Pentagon came to attack, they might not be able to breach our outer defense line in the first wave of assault."

"And the Deep State..."

"Regardless of who they are, the force they can mobilize cannot exceed the federal government's highest-level special operations forces."

Harlan Croft had remained silent throughout.

This old retainer, who usually didn't like to talk, was currently just leaning against the stone wall with his arms crossed, scanning the defense deployment map with eyes that had worn away all excess emotion from too many gray affairs.

When Beatrice finished her last sentence, he nodded slightly. The movement was small, but everyone present knew that Harlan's nod meant he professionally approved of this assessment.

He had carried out assassinations at the grassroots level of the CIA and had executed gray orders for three generations of the Hopkins Family. He never needed to say anything more; anything that made him nod was something he would bet his life on.

"If there really is such a thing as the Deep State," Harlan spoke, a rare occurrence, his voice raspy and steady, "they would have to cross this desert, break through twelve interlocking fire points and a missile air-defense circle, and then sneak into the center of the manor without alerting any of the outer sentry posts—and I don't see them having that capability."

"Not even a fly could fly in."

Diana stood before the glass curtain wall, watching the last sliver of sunset on the desert outside sink into the silhouette of cacti and rocky hills.

Harlan's words lingered in her ear for a moment.

Harlan was right; the current Casablanca Manor was indeed an ironclad fortress that not even a fly could enter.

But what truly put her at ease wasn't the accumulation of these numbers and firepower configurations, but a more fundamental logical question:

She truly couldn't imagine how people from the Deep State could hunt her down amidst such arrangements.

Infiltrate with special forces? Five hundred men were guarding it, and the outer defense line was airtight.

Use missiles or air strikes? Not to mention whether the Stinger missile teams could shoot down low-altitude aircraft, launching an air strike on a private manor within the Lighthouse Country would require at least three levels of presidential authorization, even for The Pentagon.

Infiltrate with spies? The loyalty of the Colt Association had withstood half a century of testing, and every member had been personally selected by the Hopkins Family.

Assassination? She had Harlan and a tactical team guarding her twenty-four hours a day.

She thought through every possibility; there was no path that would allow the Deep State to touch a hair on her head without paying an unbearable price.

Just the second that this confidence solidified firmly in her heart, the sky changed.

The afterglow of the Sonoran Desert had not yet completely disappeared, and the western skyline still hung with a thin layer of twilight transitioning from orange-red to deep purple.

And in the sky to the direct north, which had been empty and just beginning to be occupied by starlight, a point of light approached from the extreme distance with impossible acceleration.

At first, it was just a cold white spot of light at the zenith, brighter than the morning star.

Then, in an instant, it expanded, approached, and loomed, turning from a spot of light into a disc of light, and from a disc of light into a circular aircraft covering the airspace directly above the entire manor.

Its underside was a smooth, silver-gray metal surface; no rivets, no seams, no engine air intakes, no aerodynamic structure of any kind that you could name on human aircraft.

It hovered at an altitude of about three hundred feet, completely stationary.

There was no roar of rotors, no roar of jet exhaust, only a very low-pitched vibration, lighter than infrasound, traveling from the soles of their feet deep into everyone's bones, stirring up circles of faint resonance ripples on all the glass curtain walls of the manor.

Diana saw it.

Keating, Beatrice, and Harlan saw it.

All five hundred loyalists at the outer sentry posts saw it too.

No one spoke.

It wasn't because they weren't afraid, but because in that half-second, everyone was experiencing the same cognitive collapse:

All the defense plans in their minds, all the firepower configurations, all the interlocking fire angles, and missile locking procedures had never included "an alien spacecraft hovering directly overhead" on any page of their emergency plans.

Then, the first fire team on the outer defense line pulled the trigger.

This team didn't open fire based on orders; they opened fire because when a massive unidentified flying object suddenly hovers over your head, your instinct is to raise your gun and shoot at it, whether it's useful or not.

From the first gunshot of an M4 carbine, the entire defense line on the perimeter of the manor was like a powder keg with a lit fuse, erupting fully in less than three seconds.

The continuous fire of light machine guns dragged arcs of orange-red tracer fire through the twilight.

Snipers on high ground fired continuously at the bottom of the spacecraft.

After reacting, the Javelin missile teams quickly hoisted the launchers and completed the lock-on; the missiles dragged white smoke tails and rushed straight toward the bottom of the spacecraft.

Then came the anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, two rising simultaneously, their exhaust flames drawing two sharp white arcs in the desert evening wind.

All ammunition hit the target.

The light of the explosions burst into a dozen bright yellow, scorching fireballs in mid-air, and shrapnel and blast waves spread into a dense thunder at the bottom of the spacecraft.

Then the firelight faded.

Those silver-gray metal surfaces that faded back to their original appearance from the firelight were unscathed.

There were no scorch marks from the explosions, no dents from shrapnel, no breaches of any kind.

The continuous hits from the interlocking fire of five hundred loyalists on the west defense line, the Javelins, and the Stingers left marks on the spacecraft's silver-gray shell that were no deeper than the impression of a person flicking a tabletop with their finger.

Then, the bottom of the spacecraft lit up.

A ring of light waves spread outward from the center point of the bottom surface of the disc, like a glowing stone thrown into a pool of still water.

The light was transparent and cold, between white and a very pale sky blue, spreading out from the spacecraft as the center, sweeping across the entire manor in a fraction of a second.

The air itself that was swept by this ring of light began to resonate slightly.

Then, everyone's body felt it at the same time.

It wasn't pain, at least not in the first second.

It was heat.

This heat was not the kind that seeps from the outside in, like being baked by the sun or roasted by fire.

It burned from the deepest part of the body, as if something in the blood vessels had been ignited. The heat surged out from the gaps in the bones; from the inside out, the whole person felt as if they were being swallowed by a silent fire.