Part 2: An arrogant sergeant grabbed my hair and ordered his crew to handcuff me like a common criminal upon arriving at my new airbase, completely unaware that I was a high-ranking colonel on a classified command assignment.

"Drop the valve, Wayne," I said, closing the distance between us until I was barely five paces away.

Riggs was breathing hard, his eyes wild, darting between me, the OSI agents, and the dark runway behind us. He had the desperate look of an animal backed into a corner.

"You don't understand, lady," Riggs sneered, his voice shaking with adrenaline. "Vance is just a grunt. The people who bought those radar arrays... they don't let people testify. If I go to Leavenworth, I'm dead before I finish intake. If I get off this base tonight, I have a chance."

"You don't have a chance," I told him, keeping my voice level, steady, commanding. "You have two choices. You lay that component on the ground and surrender to OSI, or you take another step toward that van and you will be shot where you stand for treason and attempted murder of an American aviator."

Riggs glared at me, his knuckles white around the heavy steel valve. For a split second, I saw his shoulder dip—he was preparing to hurl the metal piece directly at my head and dive into the truck.

I didn't wait.

Before he could complete the motion, I stepped inside his reach, my left arm deflecting his throwing motion upward while my right palm drove hard into his sternum. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs. As he stumbled backward, I hooked his trailing leg and took him down hard onto the tarmac.

The metal valve clattered across the concrete.

Riggs groaned as I pinned his arm behind his shoulder blade, planting my knee firmly between his shoulder blades.

"You're done, Sergeant," I whispered into his ear. "Cross, cuff him."

Cross rushed forward and secured the zip-ties. Two security forces airmen grabbed Riggs by his armpits and dragged him to the back of the patrol cruiser.

I picked up the discarded fuel valve from the ground, inspecting the severed safety wire. My hands were steady, but my mind was racing.

"Colonel," Cross said, walking back over with a satellite radio in his hand. "We just intercepted an encrypted comms burst from the civilian airstrip five miles north of here. A private Gulfstream just touched down without filing a flight plan."

"The buyers," I said, wiping grease from my sleeve.

"Or the real boss," Cross replied. "The tail number is registered to Vanguard Global Solutions. The CEO is retired Major General Thomas Henderson."

The pieces fell into place with terrifying clarity. Thomas Henderson was the former wing commander of Blackridge, who had retired four years ago to take the helm of a massive defense contracting conglomerate. He was the one protecting Vance through Bradley. He was the one orchestrating the pillaging of our avionics.