And vaulting up the gantry stairs three steps at a time, his golden coat bristling with frost, his dark, scarred muzzle parted in a low, resonant battle growl…
Was Barnaby.
The eighty-pound Belgian Malinois hit the top platform, charged straight through the galley into row fourteen, and planted his massive paws squarely in front of my boots, his amber eyes locking onto Melissa Vance’s jugular with silent, predatory discipline!
GRRRRRRR.
Melissa let out an ear-splitting, strangulated shriek, burying her face into her daughter’s blanket:
“NO! GOD, NO! DON’T LET HIM TOUCH ME!”
Vice Admiral David Mercer stepped into the cabin.
The seventy-four-year-old four-star Admiral snapped his hand-welted leather bridge shoes together with an audible CRACK against the deck, looked at his grand-nephew standing unbowed in surgical scrubs, turned forty-five degrees toward me, and brought his white-gloved right hand up to an unyielding, razor-sharp military salute:
“Chancellor on deck!” Admiral Mercer boomed across the aircraft.
