Chapter 14 - Interrogation in the Dark
Back in the command van in Baltimore, my primary radio roared to life on the secondary emergency microwave link.
"Colonel Vance! Charlie-4 is under attack! Multiple hostiles breached outer perimeter!"
The world seemed to drop into absolute zero. The rain, the roar of the container cranes, the shouts of my tactical team—everything faded into white noise, replaced by the deafening rhythm of my own heartbeat.
*Lily. Mom.*
"Miller!" I roared, grabbing the communications officer by the collar with enough force to lift him off his stool. "Patch me to Fort Meade QRF right now!"
"QRF is deployed, Colonel! ETA four minutes! But the safehouse door just blew!"
Four minutes. In a close-quarters assault, four minutes was an eternity. Four minutes was enough time to execute everyone in that room twice over.
I pulled out my secure satellite phone and dialed a ten-digit sequence reserved for national defense crises. It rang once before clicking open.
"Director Keller," the voice answered. The head of Homeland Security Counter-Terrorism.
"Director, this is Colonel Amanda Vance," I said, my voice dead, flat, and colder than a grave. "The Sterling syndicate just breached Charlie-4 to execute my family. You have an armed Black Hawk detachment conducting live-fire drills at Aberdeen Proving Ground, twelve miles east of Meade. Reroute them. Authorized under Directive 52. If they do not engage within ninety seconds, I will release the entire raw intelligence package on every compromised official in your agency to the press."
Keller gasped on the other end. "Amanda, you can't threaten—"
"Authorize the bird, Keller, or by God, I will tear this city down with my bare hands."
"Bird is airborne," Keller choked out. "God help those mercenaries."
I hung up, chest heaving, my tactical knife already in my left hand and my sidearm in my right. "Miller, leave two men on surveillance here. You and the assault squad are with me. We are taking the *Caspian Sovereign* down right now. If Sterling’s people think they can buy leverage with my blood, they will die drowning in their own."
I kicked open the van door and charged toward the gangway of the container ship, the team falling into tactical diamond formation behind me.
On the main deck, two sentries in rain slickers spotted our advance. They reached for their submachine guns.
I didn't yell a warning. I didn't announce my rank.
May you like
Two double-taps echoed over the roar of the downpour. The sentries dropped like discarded sacks of grain against the wet steel deck.
***
