“Let’s go, Miller,” I said, turning back toward the emergency exit. “I’ll take point. You cover the rear.”
I didn't hear Miller move.
I heard the metallic, unmistakable sound of a weapon’s safety being clicked off.
I stopped. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I turned around slowly.
Agent Miller was not pointing his weapon at the emergency exit. He had raised the submachine gun, the barrel leveled squarely at the center of the President’s chest.
“Agent Miller?” the President asked, his voice thick with confusion. “What are you doing?”
Miller’s face was a mask of cold, professional detachment. He didn't look at the President. He looked at me.
“General Vance sends his regards, Captain,” Miller said quietly.
Before I could move, before I could breathe, Miller shifted his aim slightly and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 4
The deafening roar of the gunshot in the enclosed cabin shattered the tense silence.
Miller didn't shoot the President. He fired directly at the other surviving Secret Service agent, who had been guarding the rear corridor. The heavy kinetic impact of the round struck the loyal agent squarely in his armored vest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward against the bulkhead. He slumped to the floor, the wind completely knocked out of him, gasping for air.
In the fraction of a second it took Miller to swing the barrel back toward me, my body reacted faster than my conscious thought.
I dove sideways, throwing my entire weight over the shattered remnants of the heavy oak conference table. The wood splintered violently as Miller’s weapon tracked my movement, chewing through the place I had been standing a heartbeat earlier.
I hit the slanted, debris-covered floor and scrambled frantically into the dense shadows of the ruined communications suite.
The fuselage was plunged into an eerie quiet, broken only by the crackle of electrical fires and the ragged, terrified breathing of the President huddled behind a damaged bulkhead.
“It’s over, Hayes,” Miller’s voice echoed through the dark cabin. It was eerily calm, the voice of a man who held all the cards. I could hear the slow, deliberate crunch of his boots stepping over the wreckage as he stalked me. “The perimeter is secured. My men are outside. There is nowhere to run.”
I pressed my back against a mangled server rack, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I had left the stolen assault rifle near the emergency exit. I reached down and drew my standard-issue 9mm, my palms slick with sweat.
“Why, Miller?” I shouted, trying to project my voice away from my actual position to throw off his aim. “You took an oath to protect him!”
Miller let out a short, humorless laugh. “I took an oath to protect the country. The man cowering in the corner is about to destroy it. He was going to declassify the Phoenix Directive. He was going to expose the network General Vance spent two decades building. A network that keeps our enemies terrified and our borders secure.”
I tightened my grip on the pistol. “A network built on treason. Built on murdering your own people.”
“Casualties of a necessary war,” Miller said. His footsteps paused. He was close. Just on the other side of the server rack. “Your father understood that, Captain. Right up until the moment he lost his nerve.”