*TACK.
TACK.*
Across the front, in clean, sharp, gold-embossed lettering, gleamed the title:
`STAFF SERGEANT BEN REED & SCOUT`
`UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS // FORCE RECON`
`STATUS: 100% VERIFIED & HELD TRUE.`
The twenty-two third-graders erupted into spontaneous, roaring applause:
*CHEERS-APPLAUSE-STOMPS.*
Clara wrapped her arms around Scout’s neck, burying her face into his fur as the dog’s tail thumped against the floorboards: *thump… thump… thump.*
Ben looked at Captain Morales:
“Captain.”
“Yes, Staff Sergeant?”
“Get the White Hawk ready.”
“Colonel Mercer is waiting in Bethesda.”
“We have an audit to conclude in Washington.”
CHAPTER 6: PROLOGUE TO THE HIGH CAPITOL AUDIT
`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 uniform was spotless; the silver eagles of a full Colonel gleamed on my shoulder boards, my chest bearing four dense rows of combat decorations.
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.
In the adjoining pressurized observation suite, visible through the reinforced ballistic glass, eight-year-old Clara sat beside her father, Staff Sergeant Ben Reed, and Scout.
Clara was drinking hot chocolate, reviewing the sovereign academy appointment folios that proved she was registered as a future cadet of the United States Naval Academy, completely severed from the Vance syndicate’s educational sabotage.
