CHAPTER 3: THE DISARMAMENT OF THE DRILL SERGEANT
Staff Sergeant Cole Vega let out an un-human, animalistic shriek from the bottom of his lungs:
*“IT WAS AN ORDER! I WAS ORDERED BY BATTALION COMMAND! I WAS TOLD SHE WAS A THREAT TO THE LINEAL SECURITY OF THE INSTALLATION!”*
He lunged not toward me, but toward his black tactical nylon range bag resting on the floorboards of the medical Humvee, his hand clawing for the reinforced zipper pocket:
*CLACK.*
The two DIA Special Activities operators did not draw their sidearms.
The two-hundred-and-twenty-pound tactical operators moved across the red gravel in fluid, synchronized, terrifying mechanical velocity:
The lead operator caught Vega by his right shoulder and the back of his tactical duty belt, spun his six-foot frame one hundred and eighty degrees against the steel hood of the Humvee, and drove his face down onto the hot metal with four hundred pounds of linear downward kinetic leverage:
*SLAM.*
His cheek struck the sheet metal, his campaign hat flying off his head and tumbling across the gravel into the ditch, his bespoke combat watch snapping off his wrist and scattering across the clay:
*SNAP-SNAP.*
A pair of heavy-duty, double-locking, high-security stainless-steel military transport restraints ratcheted around Cole Vega’s wrists with two sharp, definitive snaps that sounded like twin rifle shots across the silent road:
*SNAP.*
A second set of chains clamped around his ankles—the identical stainless-steel irons used for capital traitors at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
Beside him, the second operator sliced Vega’s range bag open with a serrated bench blade:
*RIIIP.*
Dumping the contents onto the hood:
Two forged civilian diplomatic passports.
A satellite data transceiver encrypted with Swiss cryptographic keys.
And thirty-four thousand dollars in pristine, sequential, un-creased one-hundred-dollar bills stamped with the blue ink of the Cook County chancery registry.
“COLE VEGA!” General Grant read from the execution block of the capias warrant:
“UNDER ARTICLE ONE HUNDRED AND FOUR OF THE UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST FOR AIDING THE ENEMY, MUTINY, AND CAPITAL HIGH TREASON AGAINST THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”
Vega wept into the hot steel of the hood, blood and red clay pooling around his broken lower lip:
“General… please! I have twelve years of clean service! I have two Bronze Stars with Valor! Think of my pension! You can’t put a drill instructor in Leavenworth chains in front of his own recruits!”
I walked across the road.
My hand-welted leather field boots made a clean, concussive *tack… tack… tack* against the gravel.
I stood beside where he lay pinned.
I did not strike his cheek.
I did not raise my voice.
I reached down into the dust, picked up the torn, sweat-soaked collar of my OCP uniform jacket—the collar he had mocked for six straight weeks:
*SLIP.*
I laid the dirty, frayed cloth flat across the nape of Cole Vega’s neck:
*TINK.*
“You told me six weeks ago on the grinder, Staff Sergeant, that I was a mistake in uniform,” Colonel Rowan Mercer whispered softly.
Every syllable fell like an un-appealable decree that sealed twelve years of military career into solid rock forever:
“You told me that I looked like I should be asking for a hall pass.”
I leaned down until my clear slate-gray eyes filled his entire field of vision:
“You were right about one thing, Vega.”
“I kept my collar shut.”
“Because a real auditor never shows her cards until the trap is sprung.”
“The march is finished.”
“The contract is canceled.”
“The stripes are forfeited.”
“And around here…”
I pointed toward General Grant:
“…nobody ever, ever… breaks an auditor on the road.”
CLICK-CLACK.
The two DIA operators hauled Staff Sergeant Cole Vega to his feet by his armpits, marching him through the red dust in waist-chains and leg-irons toward the armored tactical transport van waiting on the perimeter:
*SCREEECH.*
Behind him were marched his gear, his encrypted transceivers, and his forged passports, sealed inside forensic evidence drums:
*CRASH-ROAR-PANT.*
The heavy steel doors of the transport van clicked shut behind them with an authoritative, airtight, pneumatic *THUD*.
The road returned to silence.
The only sound left was the sixty-cycle hum of the medical Humvee’s cooling fans, the steady breathing of General Grant beside me, and the rhythmic *tack… tack… tack* of my grandfather’s chronometer watch on my wrist.
CHAPTER 4: PROLOGUE TO PART 3: THE HIGH CAPITOL AUDIT (THE HOOK TO PART 3)
`23:45:12 EST.`
The subterranean command continuity bunker eighty feet beneath the foundations of the United States Naval Medical Center in Bethesda—accessible only through the high-security hydraulic blast hatch beneath the research laboratories—was completely dark except for the amber glow of thirty encrypted tactical monitors.
Outside, the cold Maryland sleet had turned into heavy, silent snow, cloaking the naval helipads and the dark expanse of the National Mall in three inches of pristine, un-trodden white velvet.
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.
The torn OCP uniform had been replaced by my immaculate, tailored Army Service Uniform, the silver eagles of a full Colonel gleaming on my shoulder boards, my chest bearing the ribbons of three classified foreign deployments and the Purple Heart with gold oak leaf cluster. Pinned to the left lapel of my grandfather’s tweed jacket was his unpolished bronze surveyor’s transit pin, its miniature brass vernier catching the amber instrument glow.
Beside my chair on the diamond-plate deck, fast asleep with his heavy golden head resting across my boots, was Barnaby—an eighty-pound retired military working dog, a Belgian Malinois whose instincts had never wavered in the dark.
Across the table sat Vice Admiral David Mercer, Chief of Naval Operations, his service bridge coat unbuttoned, his four gold stars catching the instrument lights.
Beside him sat Major General Michael Grant and United States Attorney Marcus Cooper, Chief Federal Prosecutor and Special Admiralty Master.
On the table between our forearms…
Resting atop the blue vellum deed to Conduit Ten…
