“Mason wanted to surprise the Best Pilot Ever.”
I took one measured step forward, looking into the hollow eyes of the man I had loved for nine years:
“He brought his crayons.”
“He brought his gummy bears.”
“And you gave him seat Two-B.”
Vanessa’s face turned an ugly, mottled plum as the realization of my identity crashed through her arrogance:
“You’re the wife,” Vanessa sneered, crossing her arms over her cashmere coat, lifting her chin with cruel, patrician defiance:
“Well, Clara, now you know.
Tyler is finished playing suburban father in a drafty Virginia house.
His flight kit contains fifty-six million dollars of Valkyrie factoring notes, and our charter to Zurich leaves in thirty minutes.
You can take your little brat and crawl back to your government desk, because you don’t have the legal standing to touch a single cent of his future!”
Tyler reached for Vanessa’s arm, his voice shaking with terror: “Vanessa, shut up!
Shut your mouth!”
“Why should I shut up, Tyler?!”
Vanessa snapped, laughing maliciously: “She’s an administrative clerk!
What is she going to do, complain to the airline?!”
Before Vanessa could draw another breath…
Outside the aircraft, through the thick passenger windows of the forward cabin…
KABOOOOM.
The entire terminal ramp of Concourse B did not merely rumble with thunder.
The atmosphere tore open in an apocalyptic, concussive roar of supersonic twin-turboshaft downwash, pulverized de-icing fluid, and high-pressure tactical propellant as two massive, dark-olive Sikorsky MH-60M Black Hawk helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers) flared into an aggressive tactical hover forty feet directly outside Gate B-12!
CRASH-ROAR-SHATTER.
The sixty-thousand-pound rotor downwash hit the jet bridge like an eighty-knot hurricane, shattering two plate-glass terminal windows and sending ground-crew luggage carts spinning across the tarmac!
Turning onto the ramp at forty miles per hour came two black armored Cadillac Escalades and two tactical transport BearCats bearing the official gold seal of the United States Marshals Service Special Operations Group!
