They fanned across the cold metal with a heavy wet slap. I looked down. There was no air left in my lungs.

I didn't call the local police.

I didn't call the Charleston County Sheriff.

In maritime operations, when you intercept a Tier-One arms trafficker operating on a sovereign naval facility, you don't invite local deputies with shotguns to a tactical engagement; you call the people who carry suppressed carbines and night-vision goggles.

I tapped the red override button on the terminal three times:

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

SIGNAL SENT: FLASH TACTICAL OVERRIDE

RECIPIENT: REAR ADMIRAL K. STERLING // OMNI-SPEC COMMAND

COORDINATES TRANSMITTED: MORRISON SHIPYARDS // DOCK 3

DIRECTIVE: AUTHORIZE IMMEDIATE MARITIME RECONNAISSANCE ASSAULT

The screen pulsed green once:

COMMAND CONFIRMED // FAST-INBOUND // TIME-ON-TARGET: 0432

I checked my watch. 0424 hours.

Eight minutes.

Down below, the six men were already chaining the final steel shipping container to the bed of the semi-truck. The diesel engine of the hauler roared to life, filling the cavernous hangar with a thick, blue haze of exhaust that swirled through the halogen light beams like toxic fog.

"Move it out to the river gate!" Malcolm shouted, waving his arm toward the heavy corrugated doors at the south end of the shop. "Geller, your car is staged behind the administration building. Take the frontage road to Highway Seventeen!"

Geller nodded, stepping toward the passenger side of an unmarked black Mercedes SUV idling near the tool crib.

They were preparing to roll.

If that truck cleared the gates and reached the public highway, the chain of custody would be severed. Geller’s private contractors would have three highway routes to Savannah, and twelve nuclear-adjacent guidance modules would vanish into the international black market.

I had eight minutes.

My squad took eight minutes to die on the Abyan roadside.

I didn't wait for the cavalry.

I unholstered my tactical knife, slid my service pistol from its Kydex retention holster on my right hip, and racked the slide with a clean, sharp, mechanical CLACK.

I kicked the rusted emergency escape door out with my right boot:

BANG.

The sound echoed through the eighty-thousand-square-foot hangar like an explosive breach.

The six men on the floor froze.

The two private security contractors near the rear of the truck raised their short-barreled carbines, their weapon-mounted tactical lights sweeping the catwalk in blinding, white beams:

"Drop from the rail!" one of them barked in a thick, South African accent. "Drop your weapon or we engage!"

I didn't drop from the rail.

I stepped onto the narrow steel beam running directly above the semi-truck’s cab, balanced my weight on the balls of my feet, and aimed the iron sights of my pistol straight at the radiator block of the eighteen-wheeler.

BANG.

Three nine-millimeter hollow-point rounds punched through the fiberglass hood, shattering the aluminum cooling manifold and severing the main fuel injector line in a concussive hiss of pressurized diesel spray:

HISSSSSSS.

The big diesel engine choked, sputtered twice, and died with a violent shudder that shook the flatbed.

"Kill her!" Malcolm screamed from the floorboards, his voice cracking into that raw, feral screech of an animal whose trap had just snapped shut on its own leg. "Kill her! She’s on the catwalk!"

The two contractors opened fire.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.

Automatic five-point-five-six rounds chewed into the steel beam beside my boots, sending hot iron splinters flying into the air like burning bees.

I didn't flinch.

I vaulted off the railing.

Thirty feet of vertical drop.

I hit the canvas tarp covering the shipping container on the flatbed, rolled across the corrugated steel roof to bleed the kinetic energy, and dropped off the side into the concrete shadows beside the generator.

My left shoulder hit the floorboards first.

The shrapnel wound tore open with a sickening, wet pop. A wave of blinding, white-hot agony ripped through my chest, but my right hand stayed locked around the grip of my weapon.

I pivoted on my right hip, brought the muzzle up, and engaged the first contractor who rounded the front bumper.

Two rounds to center mass.

DOUBLE-TAP.

The contractor collapsed like an empty sack of wet sand, his weapon clattering across the oily concrete.

The second contractor lunged from behind the tool crib, his carbine leveled at my face.

BOOM.

The entire southern wall of the machine shop exploded inward in a concussive flash of white light, shattered sheet metal, and deafening thunder:

FLASHBANG.

The heavy corrugated doors were ripped off their tracks by the armored steel prow of a Navy SEAL assault transport, throwing fifty feet of debris across the floor.

Through the smoke and dust, twelve operators from Naval Special Warfare Development Group charged into the hangar in a synchronized, lethal wedge, their night-vision optics glowing emerald-green beneath their high-cut helmets, their suppressed weapons spitting controlled, semi-automatic death:

PFFT-PFFT. PFFT-PFFT.

The remaining three private contractors were neutralized in three seconds flat.

Geller scrambled backward across the floor, his tailored coat shredding on the concrete, his hands raised in frantic, screaming surrender as two operators pinned his neck to the floor with their boots:

"Don't shoot! I have diplomatic immunity! I am an accredited commercial broker—"

"Shut your mouth, Geller," Admiral Kenneth Sterling’s voice boomed through the clearing smoke.

The two-star admiral strode through the shattered entryway, his heavy service greatcoat unbuttoned, flanked by eight federal marshals carrying tactical shotguns.

He stopped in the center of the machine shop, his eyes passing over the dead contractors, the immobilized semi-truck, until they landed on me where I sat leaning against the front tire, my black shirt soaked through with fresh crimson blood.

The admiral stepped forward, knelt on one knee in the oil-stained dirt, and gently placed his hand over my right shoulder.

"The perimeter is secure, Vivian," the old sailor said softly, his voice rich with an unshakeable, ancient pride.

"Your squad’s coordinates...

have been answered."

I looked across the floor.

Malcolm Morrison sat on his knees against the wall of his grandfather’s office, his Cuban cigar crushed in the dirt, his linen shirt stained with grease, staring at the silver eagles on my collar with the hollow, unrecoverable ruin of a man who had finally realized...

that the child he had tried to sell for seven thousand five hundred dollars...