The Flight to the Wachau

The dark, icy waters of the Danube river coursed silently against the matte-black carbon-fiber hull of the tactical skiff as it cut through the predawn river mist. Forty miles west of the burning ruins of the Blackwood Citadel, the landscape transformed from industrial city outskirts into the dramatic, steep-sided granite gorge of the Wachau Valley. Ancient terraced vineyards, dusted in fresh powder snow, cascaded down four-hundred-foot cliffs toward the water,…