Chapter 3 - The Breach in the Wire
"Get him out of my sight," I instructed Brody. "Hold him in SCIF Three. Strip his comms, seize his personal devices, and place two armed guards at the door. If he speaks to anyone without my explicit authorization, treat it as an active espionage event."
"Understood, Director," Brody replied cleanly.
"Morgan, wait! You can't do this! You're making a catastrophic mistake!" Vance pleaded as the two JSOC operators stepped forward. They didn't show the deference typically afforded to a three-star general. Their grips on his arms were ironclad and unyielding.
Vance struggled, but he was an aging bureaucrat against tier-one operators. As they dragged him through the side service exit, his polished shoes scraped the floor, leaving scuff marks that mirrored the ones he had forced me to make only minutes before.
I turned back to Brody, my adrenaline spiking. "Talk to me, Marcus. Where is the payload now?"
Brody opened the folder fully on the lectern, flipping past the personnel files to a high-resolution satellite imagery printout. The thermal map showed Green Ramp, the military airfield adjacent to Fort Bragg where heavy transport aircraft staged for global deployments.
"The bird hasn't wheels-up yet," Brody said, pointing to a dark thermal silhouette sitting on the remote staging apron. "Tail number Charlie-Four-Zero-Niner. Officially, it's slated for a routine logistical run to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Unofficially, flight plans filed with European air traffic control don't match the transponder profile. It’s got enough fuel to divert to an unregistered airstrip in Northern Africa."
"Who’s on the ground securing the perimeter?"
"That’s the problem," Brody gritted his teeth. "The ground security detail isn't regular base MP. Vance signed an emergency memorandum at midnight outsourcing flight line security to a private defense contractor: *Aegis Vanguard*."
My jaw tightened. Aegis Vanguard wasn't just a contractor. They were a mercenary outfit founded by disgraced former Delta and Special Forces operators, heavily funded by private equity firms tied to foreign defense conglomerates. For the past six months, my covert investigations had linked them to illegal arms diversions across Eastern Europe.
"They brought their own guns to our airfield," I murmured, piecing together the timeline.
"Not just guns. They have ex-Tier One personnel manning the chocks, and they've placed the ramp on lockdown under the guise of an active chemical-biological drill," Brody warned. "If we roll up with standard MPs, they'll claim jurisdictional confusion and stall until that bird gets airborne. Once that C-17 crosses into international airspace without an active military transponder, we lose the tech forever. And the Chinese or Russian buyers waiting on the other side will have American sixth-generation drone telemetry within twenty-four hours."
"How much time do we have?"
Brody glanced at his tactical watch. "The turbine engines are already spinning up. Pilot received clearance for taxi twelve minutes ago. Air traffic control has held them on a fake ground stop, but the tower chief says the pilot is getting agitated. They’re threatening to roll without clearance."
"Not on my watch," I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a heavy, encryption-scrambled keycard.
For seven years, I had played the silent, forgotten daughter. I had taken the insults, the snide remarks at holidays, the condescending pats on the head from men who weren't worthy to shine my boots. I had endured it all to maintain the integrity of a long-term counterintelligence net. But the net was closed now. The time for hiding behind spreadsheets and coffee pots was over.
"Brody, get your strike team ready," I commanded, unbuttoning the plain service jacket and tossing it onto the chair where I had been shoved. Beneath it, I wore a dark, tactical compression shirt. "We're going to Green Ramp."
"Director, rules of engagement?" Brody asked, his eyes gleaming with the predatory focus of a seasoned combat veteran who knew the cuffs were off.
I pulled my hair back into a tight braid, checking the loaded magazine of the concealed SIG Sauer P320 I retrieved from a lockbox under the lectern.
May you like
"If they draw on federal agents," I said coldly, "neutralize them."
***
