“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…
