Chapter 17 - THE ATTACK ON THE COURTHOUSE
The first masked attacker opened fire before his boots touched the pavement.
Ethan dragged me behind a marble planter as bullets struck the courthouse façade. Military police returned fire. Civilians crawled across the ground, leaving abandoned cameras, purses, and phones scattered across the plaza.
“Are you hit?” I asked Ethan.
“Not badly.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one we have time for.”
He shoved the metal drive into my hand.
It was warm from his body.
“Get this to Commander Sarah Keene at JAG,” he said. “No one else.”
General Miller crouched behind a patrol vehicle. He shouted orders with the practiced authority of a decorated officer, but he was directing security away from the attackers’ escape route.
I saw it clearly.
He wasn’t trying to stop them.
He was helping them.
One attacker rushed our position. Ethan rose, fired once, and dropped him beside the planter. I grabbed the fallen man’s rifle and covered the east stairwell.
For the first time since the diner humiliation that had begun this nightmare, my mind became perfectly calm.
The sheriff.
My wife’s betrayal.
The false charges.
The financial records.
The military ambush.
They had never been separate events.
They were parts of one machine.
Vance ran toward us, pretending to provide cover.
“Give me the drive!” he shouted. “I’ll secure it!”
I pointed the rifle at his chest.
“Take one more step.”
His face changed.
The mask of local authority disappeared, revealing the frightened man beneath it.
“You don’t understand what you’re holding,” he said.
“Then explain why people are dying for it.”
A second explosion tore through the courthouse lobby. Smoke rolled through the shattered doors. General Miller disappeared inside.
Ethan cursed.
“He’s going for the evidence room.”
“What’s in there?”
“The original mission files JAG seized this morning.”
Commander Keene emerged through the smoke with blood on her forehead and a pistol in both hands.
“Miller’s gone,” she said. “And so are the files.”
Ethan swayed beside me.
I caught him before he collapsed.
His coat opened, revealing a gunshot wound high in his chest.
“Stay with me,” I ordered.
He gripped my wrist.
May you like
“Miller has a helicopter waiting at Fort Grant,” he said. “If he reaches it, the proof disappears with him.”
Then Ethan’s eyes closed.
