Arthur dipped the gold nib of his pen toward the parchment:
“To the compliant widow in North Carolina, gentlemen.”
“May she weep over her dead flowers in silence while we manage the Republic.”
KABOOOOM.
The four-inch-thick steel blast door of the West Conference Room did not slide open on its automated tracks.
It was cleaved off its structural bronze rollers by an eighty-pound linear hydraulic breaching ram, the steel latch pins shearing clean out of the concrete jamb with an explosive, concussive roar that shattered three overhead light fixtures into a blizzard of incandescent glass:
CRASH-ROAR-SHATTER.
Through the smoke, through the pulverized concrete dust, through the freezing draft of subterranean air…
Moving with that fluid, terrifying, synchronized mechanical velocity of an active direct-action assault element…
Came the twelve SOG operators.
Their suppressed carbines came up to compressed high-ready, the red laser dots dancing across the chests, throats, and foreheads of the fourteen executives and jurists seated around the black granite table:
“FEDERAL INQUEST! REMAIN SEATED! HANDS ON THE TABLE SURFACE! DO NOT REACH FOR BRIEFING FOLDERS!”
The clerk dropped the satellite transceiver onto the granite, the casing cracking across the display:
SMASH.
The two associate justices at the table vaulted to their feet, their hands flying to their chests:
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!” an Associate Justice roared:
“THIS IS A CLOSED CONFERENCE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES! ARMED GUARDS IN THIS ROOM CONSTITUTE AN ACT OF ARMED INSURRECTION!”
“Stand down, Justice,” a voice commanded from the breach.
Walking through the pulverized concrete…
Wearing his full service dress blue uniform, his four silver stars catching the remaining halogen downlights…
Came Vice Admiral David Mercer, Chief of Naval Operations.
Beside him walked Major General Michael Grant and United States Attorney Marcus Cooper, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page federal grand jury indictment stamped with the red wax seal of the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT.
And walking between them…
Wearing her father’s twenty-ounce Scottish tweed hacking jacket over her naval auxiliary uniform, her hand-welted leather field boots crushing the shattered glass into the floorboards with a clean, concussive *tack… tack… tack*…
Her bronze transit pin and her Master Chancery seal gleaming beneath the downlights, her gaze steady, unbroken, and holding forty decibels of pure polar diamond…
Was Eleanor Mercer-Vance.
Me.
The daughter.
The widow.
Alive.
Beside me walked young Eleanor, her gold-headed surveyor’s cane striking the stone in synchronized cadence.
