Chapter 5 - The Standoff at Building 204
By eighteen-hundred hours, Fort Bragg was under a flash-flood warning, but the real storm was gathering outside Building 204.
Four marked military police cruisers sat in a semi-circle around the brick entrance, their red and blue strobe lights painting the wet pine trees in pulsing streaks of emergency light. Major Thomas Yates stood under the concrete overhang of the loading dock, holding a clipboard, flanked by six armed military police officers with their sidearms holstered but their hands resting nervously near their hips.
And standing in the center of the loading dock, wearing a dripping wet service trench coat over his three-star dress uniform, was Lieutenant General Richard Bradley.
When our convoy of black Suburbans rolled past the perimeter gate and came to a halt fifty feet from the dock, Richard stepped forward, his face dark with fury.
"Colonel Vance!" Richard roared, his voice echoing off the brick facade. "This installation is under my command! Step out of that vehicle with your hands clear, or I will order the Provost Marshal to use lethal force!"
The door of the center Suburban opened.
I stepped out first.
Richard’s mouth snapped shut for a fraction of a second, his eyes widening in pure disbelief. He had clearly expected federal agents, or perhaps an armed tactical team, but seeing me—stepping out of a JSOC command vehicle in combat trousers and a tactical softshell—broke his mental circuitry.
"Claire?" Richard stammered, before his rage roared back to life. "You insolent little... Major Yates, arrest her! Handcuff her immediately! She has stolen classified materials and fled a military command!"
Yates stepped off the dock, motioning to two MPs. "You heard the General! Detain her!"
Before the MPs could take two steps, the rear doors of the Suburbans flew open.
Ten JSOC operators formed a skirmish line between the MPs and me, their short-barreled carbines held at low-ready, their faces hidden behind ballistic masks. Colonel Vance stepped forward, unbuttoning his tactical jacket to reveal the black credentials hanging from his neck.
"Major Yates," Vance said, his voice loud enough to carry across the entire parking lot. "Stand down. As of fifteen minutes ago, this facility has been designated an active federal crime scene by order of the United States Attorney General and the Secretary of the Army."
"That's a lie!" Richard shouted, his face purple, his fingers trembling with rage as he pointed at me. "She manipulated you! She’s an administrative subordinate! She has no authority, no clearance, and no standing in this army! I am a three-star general! My word is law on this post!"
"Your word," I said, stepping past the line of operators and walking directly toward the loading dock, "is about to be entered into evidence in a federal treason trial, Richard."
Richard recoiled as if I had struck him across the face.
"How dare you use my first name!" he bellowed. "I raised you! I took you in when your mother was dying! I gave you my name, you ungrateful little bitch!"
"You didn't give me your name," I said, stopping at the base of the concrete stairs. "You used my mother's name to set up a dummy trust to launder five million dollars in stolen tactical hardware through Apex Logistics Solutions."
The silence that fell over the parking lot was suffocating.
Major Yates went dead white. The clipboard in his hands slipped slightly, his fingers twitching.
Richard blinked, his expression shifting from blind rage to a stunned, uncomprehending blankness. "What... what did you just say?"
"Ask Tyler," I said, gesturing back toward the second Suburban.
The passenger door opened.
Agent Miller stepped out, holding Tyler by the arm. Tyler’s face was bruised, his clothes torn and muddy, his eyes red and swollen. He looked at Richard, his knees buckling, leaning heavily against Miller to keep from falling into the gravel.
"Tyler?" Richard whispered, taking an involuntary step back toward the dock doors. "Tyler, what happened to you? Did... did they assault you?"
"Dad..." Tyler wept, his voice cracking, echoing pathetic and broken in the rain. "They caught Marcus Vance. They have the hard drives, Dad. They have the manifests I signed."
Richard froze. He looked at Tyler, then at Major Yates, and then down at me.
"Manifests?" Richard said, his voice suddenly hollow, stripped of all its brass and thunder. "What manifests, Tyler? You... you manage excess desks and filing cabinets. That’s what Yates told me. That’s what we set up."
I watched Richard’s face very carefully in that moment.
And for the first time in thirty-three years, I realized something that turned my stomach completely inside out.
Richard Bradley was an arrogant bully. He was a vain, pompous tyrant who enjoyed tearing down anyone who threatened his fragile sense of importance. He was petty enough to humiliate his stepdaughter in front of two hundred junior officers just to remind the world that he was the patriarch.
But he hadn't known about the weapons.
He was too blinded by his own vanity, too desperate to believe that his worthless biological son was running a successful administrative office, to see that his favorite aide-de-camp and a private contractor had turned his entire command into an international arms pipeline right under his nose.
Richard hadn't orchestrated the treason.
He had merely enabled it through his own monumental, self-absorbed stupidity.
Beside Richard, Major Yates slowly began backing toward the interior door of Building 204.
"Major Yates," I said, my voice cutting through the rain like a razor. "Don't touch that door."
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Yates didn't freeze. He lunged backward, his hand reaching inside his service jacket, pulling a subcompact automatic from his waistband as he tried to cross the threshold into the dark corridor of the annex.
***
