“David Mercer…?! You deployed an active special warfare assault stack onto my acquisition site?!”
Vice Admiral David Mercer stepped to my side, his Service Dress Blue uniform unbothered by the blizzard:
“You are trespassing on a sovereign Title Fifty national defense redoubt, Arthur,” Admiral Mercer announced, every syllable dropping like an eighty-pound iron anvil into thirty fathoms of sub-zero ocean water:
“And the officer who holds the warrant for your arrest… is standing right in front of you.”
Arthur’s gaze shifted to me.
He looked at the four-inch solid-titanium surveyor’s transit key in my hand.
He looked at my blue surgical scrubs, un-creased and radiant in the halogen lights.
He looked at his daughter Melissa, bruised, weeping, and chained in the mud.
Arthur Vance’s skeleton seemed to liquefy.
The satellite terminal slipped from his paralyzed fingers, shattering across the stones:
CRASH.
“The cardiac surgeon from the airplane…?” Arthur wheezed, his breath whistling past his dry lips in spastic micro-tremors:
