In my left hand, I held my grandfather’s antique brass drafting compass. The needle point, which I had bent back straight against Nick Sterling’s boardroom table forty minutes ago, was cold and sharp against the pad of my thumb.
In my right hand, resting in an open canvas thigh holster, was the titanium transponder key stamped with the naval anchor and the oak leaf: THE SOVEREIGN KEY // CODE: ANCHOR-OAK-01.
Sitting across the ribbed aluminum floorboards from me, checking the chamber of an un-suppressed SIG Sauer MCX Rattler with two rhythmic, mechanical snaps of his wrist, was Marcus Vance.
Beside Marcus sat two federal tactical operators from the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team (HRT), their faces obscured by black balaclavas, their quad-tube night-vision mounts folded flat against their ballistic helmets. On the bench behind them rested three heavy Pelican cases containing acoustic audio sensors, pneumatic breaching rams, and an electronic signal-jamming array capable of severing every cellular and satellite uplink within a two-mile radius.
