Chapter 104 - The Iron Vanguard
David’s finger tightened on the trigger until the slack was entirely consumed. He had killed men on three continents. He had breached compound walls through mortar fire and watched comrades bleed out in the back of vibrating Strykers. He knew the precise amount of pressure required to drive a nine-millimeter hollow point through the throat of a ghost.
Yet he did not squeeze.
"The ballroom," David said, his eyes never leaving Arthur's face. "The folder General Morrison opened. The Silver Star. You put my name in that sealed dossier."
Arthur didn’t deny it. He held out the field notebook until David snatched it with his left hand, tucking it against his chest without breaking his aim.
"Morrison is a stubborn mule, but he still honors the oath he swore to me in the caves of Tora Bora," Arthur said. "He thought he was executing a posthumous order to vindicate a forgotten hero. He didn't know the medal was a homing beacon. It carries a sub-atomic tracer keyed to your biological frequency. From the moment Morrison pinned that silver five-pointed star to your chest, every satellite in my constellation locked onto you."
"You used Morrison. You used the entire joint staff as bait."
"I used them to draw Eleanor out of the shadows," Arthur said coldly. "She had spent ten years diverting the sovereign grid’s encryption keys to her own private vaults. She was preparing to lock down the entire eastern seaboard and declare herself the sole arbiter of the nation's nuclear triad. She would have burned this continent to ash just to rule the cinder block."
Arthur turned slightly, gesturing toward the edge of the radar tower. Below them, the frozen Chesapeake Bay suddenly began to fracture.
Not with a natural crack of ice, but with a horrifying, groaning scream of steel.
Three hundred feet below, rising out of the deep shipping channel, the hulls of two massive stealth submersibles breached the motionless water. They were not naval vessels. Their hulls were coated in the same matte-black, light-devouring iron as the leviathan above. Heavy boarding ramps slammed onto the shoreline concrete, and from within poured hundreds of soldiers in pressurized titanium armor.
They did not establish defensive perimeters. They moved with the cold, systematic savagery of an extermination squad. The remaining private mercenaries Eleanor had deployed—the men who had fled David's assault on the radar array—were cut down where they stood. Suppressed kinetic fire tore through their armored vehicles, turning fuel tanks into blooming fireballs that froze halfway into their detonations under the dreadnought’s stasis field.
"The vanguard has secured the perimeter," Arthur stated, checking a tactical display embedded in the wrist of his glove. "Your brother Julian was taken twenty minutes ago at a safehouse in Langley. He wept. He offered to sell his mother's access codes for a glass of scotch and a private jet to Zurich."
David felt a knot of dark disgust tighten in his gut. "Where is Eleanor?"
Arthur looked back at him, the human eye cold, the amber lens glowing faintly.
"She is in the lower brig of the *Invictus*," Arthur said. "She requested an audience with her husband. I told her that in my house, traitors do not sit at the table. They sit in the dark."
Arthur took another step forward. He was now within arm’s reach. David did not retreat.
"Now, David," the old general said, extending his bare right hand. "Your war with your family is finished. But the war for what lies beyond that sky has just begun. Board the transport. Take your command."
May you like
David looked down at his father’s outstretched hand. Then, with deliberate, slow precision, he raised his Glock, pressed the muzzle directly against Arthur Vance’s forehead, and spoke.
"You left me in the dirt with that woman for twenty-two years, Arthur. You don't get to welcome me home."
