Chapter 30 - Bloodline Reckoning
Lieutenant General Thomas Vance. My father’s brother. The uncle who had vanished from public military service six years ago into the classified echelons of the Joint Special Operations Command.
The man whose name had been sealed inside the folder General Hayes brought into the ballroom.
"Thomas..." Eleanor gasped from the floor of the cage, looking up with wide, disbelieving eyes. "Thomas! Thank God... you're here. Tell Marcus to stand down! Tell him... Vance is dead, Thomas! They murdered Vance!"
General Thomas Vance didn't look at her. His eyes—steely, gray, and completely devoid of familial warmth—were locked directly onto me.
"You took your time getting down here, Marcus," Thomas said, his voice deep, gravelly, and echoing off the vaulted concrete walls of the bunker.
"Uncle Thomas," I said, my rifle resting at the low ready, not lowered an inch. "I should have known. The logistics corridor through Syria wasn't built by an Undersecretary and a corrupt socialite. It required theater-level joint combatant command authority. It required the J-4."
Hayes stepped forward, his jaw set in stone. "Thomas. You orchestrated the entire supply line. Vance was just your front."
"Vance was an idiot," General Vance said coldly, glancing down at Eleanor with utter disdain. "My brother married a vain, empty-headed social climber who raised a weak, greedy coward. I needed a civilian intermediary who could sign off on private defense procurement manifests without raising the suspicion of the Armed Services Committee. Vance was so desperate for Daddy’s approval, and Eleanor was so desperate for social standing, they did everything I asked and thought it was their own brilliant idea."
Eleanor froze, the breath catching in her throat. The realization was far more devastating than any physical wound. The empire she thought she was building, the high-stakes political influence she had sacrificed her eldest son to preserve, was nothing more than an uncle using his nephew as a disposable pawn in a multi-billion-dollar black-market arms ring.
"You... you used us?" Eleanor whispered, her voice cracking into a ragged sob. "Thomas... he was your nephew! Your own blood!"
"Blood doesn't win wars, Eleanor," Thomas Vance snapped. "And blood doesn't fund deep-black special operations that Congress is too cowardly to authorize. The weapons that moved through Al-Qaim funded the creation of an off-the-books strategic deterrent network across three continents. Marcus... you understand that. You're a soldier. You know what it takes to keep this country standing while the sheep in the ballrooms drink their champagne."
"Don't you dare put your treason on the uniform, Uncle," I said, my finger tightening on the trigger. "You killed seven of my men. You left me to die in a burning convoy."
"A necessary operational casualty," Thomas replied calmly, raising his right hand.
May you like
Behind him, the six operators brought their rifles up, leveling them directly at my chest, Hayes, and Miller.
"The bunker-busters will hit the hangar in forty seconds," Thomas said, pointing toward the heavy blast door at the end of the platform. "The terminal on that door is coded to my retina. You can kill me, Marcus, but if you do, that door remains sealed, and you, Hayes, and your mother die when the roof caves in. Drop your weapon, Colonel. Hand over the dossier. And you can walk through that door as the commander of the new task force."
