My mother grabbed my wrist in front of two-star generals and told me I had no place in the ballroom, while my brother mocked my uniform—but when the commanding general opened his sealed folder, he announced a name that made my entire family freeze… / Chapter 64 / 131

Chapter 64 - The Cold Harbor Protocol

Sterling heard my footsteps over the howling wind, but he was expecting a retreat, not a direct frontal assault. He spun around the iron sundial, raising his M1911, his eyes widening as he saw me closing the distance in three violent, surging strides.

I didn't draw my gun. I ducked beneath his firing arc as his weapon roared, the muzzle blast scorching the air inches above my ear. I drove my right shoulder straight into his midsection with the full force of my two-hundred-pound frame, lifting the seventy-year-old three-star general completely off his feet.

We crashed into the sodden grass together, the air tearing from Sterling’s lungs in a violent heave. His pistol skittered across the wet flagstones. Even at his age, the man fought with the savage instinct of an old ranger—he drove his thumb toward my right eye socket, his other hand clawing for my throat.

I caught his wrist, twisting it until the bones ground together with a sickening crunch. Sterling let out a muffled groan of agony, but his face remained fixed in a sneer of pure contempt.

"You're... too late, Marcus," he hissed, blood bubbling at the corner of his lip from a cracked rib. "The first wave is already airborne from Dover. The airborne division doesn't know who gave the order—they only know the Continuity of Government protocol was signed by your father's cipher!"

"The cipher belongs to a dead man," I growled, pinning his arm to the flagstones and grabbing the iron dial of the sundial with my free hand. I wrenched it clockwise with all the strength in my back.

The iron squealed against centuries of rust, then clicked with a dull, heavy *thud* beneath our bodies. Ten feet away, beneath a thick curtain of English ivy growing against the stone retaining wall, a six-foot slab of reinforced concrete swung inward with a pneumatic hiss, revealing a pitch-black rectangular opening descending into the bowels of the bluff.

"Eleanor! Get inside!" I roared.

My mother, crawling on hands and knees through the mud, didn't look back. She scrambled into the dark maw of the tunnel like an animal seeking shelter from an abattoir.

From the dock, heavy boots hammered up the wooden steps. Two operators in black assault gear rounded the terrace, their night-vision goggles glowing with an eerie emerald sheen. They spotted us instantly, their carbines coming up to their shoulders.

I used Sterling’s body as a pivot, hauling him upward by his tactical harness to shield my chest. "Hold your fire!" Sterling screamed at his own men, coughing blood. "Don't shoot!"

The operators hesitated for a fraction of a second—the fatal flaw of mercenaries dealing with a VIP.

I drew my sidearm from beneath my coat with my right hand and fired twice through the narrow gap between Sterling’s shoulder and neck. The first round punched through the throat of the lead operator; the second caught the second man squarely between the lenses of his NVG mount. Both collapsed into the mud without a sound.

"You're a monster, Marcus," Sterling wheezed, his eyes rolling back slightly as shock set in from his shattered wrist and broken ribs.

"I’m what you made me when you gave me that medal and told me to bury the truth about Al-Qaim," I whispered into his ear.

I shoved him violently away from the opening, drew my final grenade—a white phosphorus canister I had palmed from the armory locker during the extraction—pulled the pin with my teeth, and hurled it toward the dock where the Mark VI’s engine was idling.

"Miller! Inside!" I yelled toward the carriage house.

Out of the darkness, Miller sprinted like a phantom, diving headlong through the gap in the stone wall just as the phosphorus grenade erupted into an incandescent, white-hot sun on the lawn. The chemical fire hissed violently against the rain, throwing blinding plumes of smoke that completely blinded the gunners on the river.

I tumbled through the concrete hatch after Miller, slamming my fist into the interior manual release.