Chapter 11 - The Red Line
It wasn't a guest.
Major Miller, General Sterling’s chief aide-de-camp, rushed through the crowd with urgent, heavy strides. His face was entirely drained of color. In his right hand, he held a hardened, encrypted tactical satellite phone—the red-cased secure terminal reserved exclusively for DEFCON-level national security emergencies.
The festive murmur in the ballroom died instantly as the aide reached the General.
"General, sir," Major Miller whispered, his voice trembling despite his training. "Emergency flash-traffic from JSOC Headquarters in Tampa. Red Priority."
General Sterling’s relaxed demeanor vanished in a millisecond. He snatched the secure phone and pressed it to his ear. "Sterling. Speak."
I watched the General’s jaw clench until the muscles in his neck bulged like iron cords. His eyes shifted sharply from the phone directly toward me.
"Say that again," Sterling commanded, his tone dropping an octave into pure, lethal gravity. "...Are you certain of the identification?"
A beat of terrifying silence hung in the air.
"Contain the perimeter," General Sterling ordered into the receiver. "Scramble the alert bird at Andrews. Major Vance—Colonel Vance—is with me now. We are moving immediately."
The General lowered the phone. Caleb leaned forward, his face pale. "Dad? What is it? What happened?"
General Sterling looked at me, his eyes wide with a cold, terrifying dread I had never seen in a four-star combat veteran.
"Harper," the General said, abandoning protocol completely. "Tariq Al-Khatib didn't die in the Sangin airstrike three years ago."
My blood turned to pure ice.
Al-Khatib. The warlord who orchestrated the ambush in Helmand. The butcher who executed my forward scout team and hunted Task Force Viking through the desert.
"Intelligence intercepted a high-frequency burst transmission ten minutes ago," General Sterling continued, his voice barely above a whisper, sending a tremor of pure horror through the room. "Al-Khatib is in the United States. He’s in northern Virginia. And his cell didn't intercept the motorcade tracking me..."
General Sterling stepped between me and the grand glass windows overlooking the estate's dark perimeter.
May you like
"...They tracked you here, Harper. The outer security gate just went offline."
Suddenly, every light across the entire Vance estate plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
