Was my maternal grand-uncle.
**Vice Admiral David Mercer**.
Seventy-four years old.
Chief of Naval Operations.
Surgeon General Emeritus of the United States Navy.
Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer Senior’s surviving younger brother.
Beside Admiral Mercer walked **Major General Michael Grant**, Deputy Director of Special Operations Command, and **United States Attorney Marcus Cooper**, Chief Federal Prosecutor and Special Admiralty Master, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page leather litigation brief bound with dark-crimson silk ribbon.
And walking on a short, heavy-duty braided lead between their boots on the floorboards, his massive golden head held high, his amber eyes scanning Julian’s throat with silent, predatory discipline…
Was Barnaby.
An eighty-pound retired naval working dog.
A Belgian Malinois whose dark muzzle had tracked military ordnance across sixty miles of subterranean bedrock.
***
CHAPTER 4: THE AUDIT ON THE HARDWOOD
