Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Team Two
Three hundred yards away, deep in the reinforced basement of the Provost Marshal’s headquarters, Colonel Arthur Vance leaned over the shoulder of a twenty-two-year-old specialist whose fingers were flying across a mechanical keyboard.
"Give me the feed from Trauma Intake," Vance barked, his jaw tight around an unlit cigar. "What do you mean the external trunks are dead? We’ve got an entire mechanized infantry battalion five minutes down Gruber Road!"
"Sir, they hit the junction box on the perimeter road with thermite," the specialist replied, his voice cracking. "Cellular towers are jammed with a broad-spectrum white noise emitter. The landlines are dead. The gate guards at Gate 4 were hit with suppressed fire three minutes ago. We’re blind to the outside world, but the local CCTV loop is still functioning."
The main 60-inch tactical display flickered, then resolved into a four-panel split screen showing the interior of Womack’s ground-floor emergency wing.
Vance hissed through his teeth. "God almighty."
On the screen, ten armed figures in sanitized black kit were executing a text-book tactical interdiction.
"Look at their spacing," Vance’s operations sergeant major muttered, leaning over the rail. "That’s not militia. That’s not domestic terrorists. Look at the high-low stack at the elevator bay. That’s Tier-One contractor work. Black-market operators."
"They’re after Vale," Vance said grimly. "Vale was pulled out of an offshore black site twelve hours ago with an encrypted flash drive surgically embedded under his clavicle. That drive contains the entire operational payroll of the Archon Syndicate. If they scrub Vale and take that drive, twenty years of counter-intelligence operations turn to ash."
"Sir, look at Bay Three," the specialist pointed a trembling finger at the bottom-left monitor.
Vance leaned in closer. "Who is that? One of the nurses?"
On the monitor, a slender woman in faded blue scrubs was stepping directly into the path of an operative pointing a submachine gun at a mother and child.
"Is she insane?" the sergeant major muttered. "She's going to get herself slaughtered."
"Wait," Vance said. His eyes, trained by thirty years of infantry commands, tracked the woman's movements. "Look at her feet."
"Sir?"
"Look at her feet, damn it! She didn't flinch when that weapon came up. She didn't drop her eyes. Look at her weight distribution—she’s in a modified combat crouch, hips square, center of gravity over her balls of her feet. She’s measuring the engagement distance."
The specialist clicked his mouse, zooming in on her chest badge. "Name on the roster is Carter, Emily. Registered Nurse. Transferred in six months ago from civilian trauma care in Chicago."
"Run her prints from her civilian HR file through the internal DoD database," Vance ordered. "Bypass the civilian health-care registry. Punch it straight into the Naval Special Warfare personnel archives. Use my clearance code: *VANCE-SEVEN-SEVEN-BRAVO*."
"Sir, she’s a civilian nurse—"
"DO IT, SPECIALIST!"
The computer let out a succession of sharp electronic chirps as the system parsed through encrypted military records. A red warning banner flashed across the screen:
**RESTRICTED ACCESS – LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE REQUIRED**
**SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND / NAVAL SPECIAL WARFARE DEVELOPMENT GROUP**
**STATUS: SEPARATED / VOLUNTARY RETIREMENT**
**IDENTITY: CARTER, EMILY J.**
**PREVIOUS RANK: CHIEF PETTY OFFICER (E-7)**
**SPECIALTY: SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMBAT MEDIC (SOCM) / ATTACHED DEVGRU (SEAL TEAM SIX) TACTICAL ASSAULT ELEMENT**
**DECORATIONS: NAVY CROSS, SILVER STAR (2), PURPLE HEART (3)**
**CITATIONS: CLASSIFIED [OPERATION NEPTUNE'S SHADOW], CLASSIFIED [OPERATION BLACK ORCHID]**
The command bunker went dead silent. The only sound was the whirring of the cooling fans inside the server rack.
The sergeant major took off his cover, staring at the monitor with wide, disbelieving eyes. "A woman... in Team Six?"
"Not officially," Vance whispered, his face pale. "Unofficially, NSW ran three female tactical operators through a modified selection pipeline eight years ago for deep-cover reconnaissance and clinical combat extractions in non-permissive environments where male operators couldn't blend. Carter wasn't just a medic. She was the best close-quarters breacher in the unit. They called her the *Wraith of Khost*."
Vance looked back at the screen.
On the monitor, the nurse in the blue scrubs was walking slowly down the hallway toward the isolation bay, her hands empty, her face a mask of utter, terrifying serenity.
"My God," Vance whispered. "Those mercenaries think they’re hunting a crippled intelligence officer."
He gripped the back of the specialist’s chair until his knuckles turned ivory.
May you like
"They have no idea who they just locked themselves in a room with."
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