CHAPTER 5: THE STRANGER WITH THE FOUR STARS
*TACK.*
*TACK.*
*TACK.*
The sound of hand-welted naval leather bridge boots ascending the grand limestone steps of the portico was not hurried.
It was a clean, concussive, military cadence that cut through the lingering tactical exhaust like an iron deadbolt falling into its strike plate.
Walking through the pulverized wreckage of the front double doors…
His service bridge coat unbuttoned to reveal the four silver stars of the **Chief of Naval Operations**, his chest covered in ten dense rows of medals and ribbons including the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and the Distinguished Service Medal…
Was my maternal great-uncle.
**Vice Admiral David Mercer**.
Seventy-four years old.
Arthur Mercer Senior’s surviving younger brother.
Beside Admiral Mercer walked **United States Attorney Marcus Cooper**, Chief Federal Prosecutor for the Northern District of Illinois, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page federal grand jury indictment stamped with the raised red-wax seal of the **UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT**.
And walking between them…
His massive golden head held high, his amber eyes scanning the frozen parents with predatory, unyielding discipline…
Was Barnaby—an eighty-pound retired naval working dog, a Belgian Malinois whose instincts had never wavered in the dark.
Robert Vance stopped breathing.
His knees gave a microscopic, violent buckle, his hands catching the edge of the fireplace mantel to keep from pitching face-forward into the gas flames:
*scrape.*
“David… Admiral Mercer…?!” Robert wheezed, the word tearing out of his throat like raw sandpaper:
“You’re… you’re in Washington! Your naval command was retired twelve years ago!”
“My command was never retired, Robert,” Vice Admiral David Mercer spoke from the foyer.
His voice had no volume.
Yet it filled that four-thousand-square-foot room with sixty decibels of mountain quarry explosive:
“And my grandniece Abigail was never an administrative operations clerk.”
The Admiral stepped to the edge of the Persian rug, stopped beside where Emma stood holding my hand, and brought his right hand up to an un-yielding, razor-sharp military salute directly toward my left lapel:
“Commander Abigail Eleanor Mercer,” Admiral Mercer announced:
“The Northern District of Illinois has executed the attachment.”
“The tactical perimeter is established.”
“And the master vellum deed to Conduit Ten… has returned unto the mother.”
***
