Cooper tapped the vellum:
“…your uncle Arthur is scheduled to convene an extraordinary emergency midnight session of the Supreme Court to deed this bedrock to The Valkyrie Trust in Vaduz for sixty billion dollars!”
CHAPTER 5: THE DISARMAMENT OF THE INTRUDER
Travis Vance let out an un-human, animalistic shriek from the floorboards:
*“CALL ARTHUR!
CALL MY UNCLE!
HE HAS THE APPELLATE IMMUNITY!
HE HAS THE SUPREME CUSTODY WARRANTS!”*
He twisted beneath Derek’s boot, his fingers clawing for the satellite transceiver bolted to his harness:
*CLACK.*
Two SOG tactical operators stepped forward in fluid, synchronized, terrifying mechanical velocity:
Their gloved hands caught Travis Vance by his cashmere collar and his right forearm in mid-flight, spun his six-foot frame one hundred and eighty degrees against the hallway wall, and drove his face down onto the oak floorboards with four hundred pounds of linear downward kinetic leverage:
*SLAM.*
His cheek struck the wood, his nose cracking with an audible, sickening crunch:
*CRACK-SMASH.*
A pair of heavy-duty, double-locking, high-security stainless-steel military transport restraints ratcheted around Travis’s wrists with two sharp, definitive snaps that sounded like twin rifle shots across the silent house:
*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:
*SNAP-CLINK.*
Beside him, two female federal marshals pinned Lena to the sofa:
*SLAM.*
Her designer silk blouse ripped along the shoulder seams, her diamond tennis bracelet popping from her wrist and scattering across the rug:
*click-clatter-roll.*
The transport irons snapped around Lena’s wrists with an authoritative, metallic crunch:
*SNAP.*
Lena wept into the sofa cushions, spit, makeup, and tears pooling around her split lip:
“Cole… please!
I am Noah’s mother!
You loved me!
You can’t let them take Noah’s mother away in chains!”
I handed sleeping Noah into the arms of Dr.
Bennett, who wrapped him in a sterile heated blanket and carried him toward the waiting medical suite inside the White Hawk.
Then I walked across the floorboards.
My hand-welted leather field boots made a clean, concussive *tack… tack… tack* against the hardwood.
I stopped two inches from where Travis Vance lay pinned in his own blood.
I did not strike his cheek.
I did not raise my voice.
I reached down, picked up the thirty-four-inch titanium resonator bat from the floor—the weapon he had used to fracture my four-year-old son’s arm:
*SLIP.*
I laid the cold, heavy titanium cylinder flat across the nape of Travis Vance’s neck:
*TINK.*
