Chapter 4 - THE COUNTER-STRIKE
By six o’clock that evening, the story had broken across every major news network.
*“BREAKING: PENTAGON RAIDS VANCE DEFENSE DYNAMICS; CHARGES OF FRAUD, TREASON, AND PROCUREMENT SABOTAGE EXPECTED.”*
Arthur and Julian had been escorted from the Bethesda campus under armed guard, though Arthur’s legal team had immediately managed to secure a twelve-hour administrative bail pending formal indictment. They were trapped at Arthur’s Potomac estate, surrounded by news vans, flashbulbs, and federal surveillance teams parked down the lane.
Inside the penthouse office of VDD, I sat surrounded by boxes of physical evidence. Elena was on the phone with the Department of Justice, coordinating the preservation of digital assets.
Suddenly, the red landline on the executive desk—a secure, hardwired defense line—rang.
I picked it up. “Colonel Vance.”
“Clarissa.” Arthur’s voice was ragged, laced with the slurred cadence of heavy Scotch and pure desperation. “Listen to me very carefully.”
“You shouldn't be calling me, Arthur. Every word on this line is recorded by the Defense Information Systems Agency.”
“I don't care!” he snarled, his breath hissing through the receiver. “You think you won today? You naive little girl. You think the board was the only entity invested in the Aegis Horizon deal? Who do you think owns Aegis, Clarissa?”
I paused, grandfather’s journal resting open in front of me. On page 142, Grandpa had written a single name circled in red ink: *The Augustus Syndicate.*
“A consortium of private equity giants in Zurich and Singapore,” Arthur hissed, laughing bitterly. “Men who hold the personal debts of half the Senate Armed Services Committee. If VDD goes down, their twelve-billion-dollar merger collapses. They aren't going to let an Army colonel with a bleeding heart destroy their liquidity.”
“Are you threatening me, Arthur?”
“I’m trying to save your life, you fool!” he shouted, though his voice cracked with a terrifying blend of terror and manic rage. “They have already initiated protocol Cerberus-Omega. Julian took the contingency drive from our home safe two hours ago. He’s meeting their courier at the private airstrip in Manassas at midnight. If those proprietary weapons designs and our supply encryption keys leave the country, VDD is worthless, the Army’s tactical network is compromised, and you won’t survive to testify at the grand jury!”
My heart iced over. “What did you say?”
“Julian panicked!” Arthur wept, suddenly sounding like a broken, pathetic old man whose empire had slipped through his trembling fingers. “I told him to burn the drive! But Julian... he made his own deal with Aegis. He thinks they’re going to fly him to Dubai! He doesn’t understand who these people are! They won’t put him on a plane, Clarissa. They’ll put him in a shallow grave in the Virginia woods to close the loose end!”
The line went dead.
I slammed the receiver down, my pulse spiking into combat rhythm.
“Elena!” I called out, strapping on my tactical boots and grabbing my sidearm holster from my field bag.
Elena ran into the room, her eyes wide. “What happened?”
“Julian is at Manassas Regional Airport. He has the master encryption keys to the Army’s frontline trauma monitoring network and next-generation tactical gear. He’s selling them to Aegis operatives to secure an escape.”
“I’ll call the FBI Hostage Rescue Team—they have units in Quantico—”
“Quantico is forty-five minutes out through the rain,” I said, checking the magazine of my service Beretta M9. “Manassas is twelve minutes from here by air. Call General Sterling. Tell him I need an immediate tactical air-mobility authorization under Title 10 Special Operations mandate.”
“Clarissa, you can’t go in alone—you’re an active officer, but you don’t have federal arrest authority!”
I looked Elena dead in the eye, the spirit of Marcus Vance roaring through my veins. “Julian is my brother. He may be a coward, an embezzler, and a traitor. But he’s still Marcus Vance’s grandson. And I will be damned if I let foreign mercenaries execute him on American soil because my father raised him to be a monster.”
Ten minutes later, the twin turbines of a Black Hawk helicopter rattled the glass of the Bethesda helipad. The downwash blasted through the freezing drizzle, ripping at my combat fatigues as I hauled myself into the cabin.
The crew chief, an old Master Sergeant with salt-and-pepper stubble who wore a combat medic badge on his chest, grabbed my arm, helping me into the jump seat.
“Colonel Vance?” he shouted over the deafening whine of the rotors.
“Yes, Sergeant!”
May you like
He gave me a hard, fierce grin, tapping the headset over his ear. “General Sterling sent word from the Pentagon. The airspace over northern Virginia is closed to all civilian traffic by presidential directive. You have tactical command of this bird, ma’am. Let’s go get your brother.”
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