*SCREEECH.*
Behind them were marched their forged eviction filings, their encrypted offshore banking tokens, and their twelve-million-dollar factoring ledgers, sealed inside heavy forensic evidence drums:
*CRASH-ROAR-PANT.*
The front doors of Parcel Nine closed behind them with an authoritative, airtight, pneumatic *THUD*.
The foyer returned to silence.
The only sound left was the sixty-cycle hum of the White Hawk’s turbine idling outside on the meadow, the steady breathing of Admiral Mercer beside me, and the rhythmic *tack… tack… tack* of Arthur Mercer’s chronometer watch on my wrist.
CHAPTER 5: PROLOGUE TO THE HIGH CAPITOL AUDIT
`23:45:12 EST.`
The subterranean command continuity bunker eighty feet beneath the foundations of the United States Naval Medical Center in Bethesda—accessible only through the high-security hydraulic blast hatch beneath the research laboratories—was completely dark except for the amber glow of thirty encrypted tactical monitors.
