Tyler shrieked, dropping to his knees on the galley floorboards, his captain’s cap tumbling into the aisle:
clatter-roll.
TACK.
TACK.
TACK.
The sound of hand-welted military leather bridge boots stepping through the shattered jet bridge breach was unhurried, rhythmic, and concussive.
Every step fell with the mechanical, heavy cadence of a naval battery firing across an enclosed harbor.
Walking through the breach behind the tactical stack…
Wearing his full Service Dress Blue uniform of heavy midnight-blue wool, his four solid-silver cast stars catching the cabin lights, his broad chest covered in ten dense rows of combat decorations…
Was my maternal grand-uncle.
Vice Admiral David Mercer.
Seventy-four years old.
Chief of Naval Operations.
Surgeon General Emeritus of the United States Navy.
Beside Admiral Mercer walked Major General Michael Grant, Deputy Director of Special Operations Command, and United States Attorney Marcus Cooper, Chief Federal Prosecutor and Special Admiralty Master, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page federal grand jury indictment stamped with the raised red-wax dry seal of the DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY // SPECIAL ADMIRALTY CHANCERY.
