Look at the way they stand. They don't look at you like they're afraid of your gun. They look at you like you're an obstacle, a minor inconvenience. They're arrogant, Boyd dismissed, crossing his arms. I've dealt with arrogant before.
A light encounter usually fixes that right up. By tomorrow morning, they'll be begging to plead down and surrender the truck. I ran the names through NCIC, Montgomery whispered, ignoring Boyd's bluster. Jackson Hayes, Tyrone Miller. The system spit back a red flag, Frankie.
It didn't give me warrants. It didn't give me a rap sheet. It gave me a Department of Defense lockout screen. It told me I didn't have the clearance to view their files. Local cops don't get locked out of civilian files, Frankie.
Boyd's jaw tightened. A flicker of genuine doubt finally breaking through his impenetrable wall of ignorance. But pride was a venomous thing, and Boyd had swallowed too much of it. It's a glitch. Or they're using fake IDs tied to some federal witness protection nonsense.
Doesn't matter. They were hauling locked crates, and they resisted a lawful order. We have probable cause. You'd better hope you're right, Montgomery said, rubbing his face with trembling hands. Because if you're wrong, we didn't just step in it.
We jumped off a cliff. 2,000 mi away, in the secure subterranean depths of the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado, California, there was no panic. There was only absolute, terrifying efficiency. The operations center was a hive of controlled chaos. Monitors glowed with encrypted satellite feeds, and the air hummed with the sound of rapid communication.
Standing at the center of the room, looking at a massive digital map of Texas, was Vice Admiral Thomas Cole. Admiral Cole was a man carved from granite and salt water. He had spent 40 years in the Navy, earning his trident in the bloody jungles of Central America, and wearing it proudly through dozens of classified campaigns. He was fiercely protective of his operators. They were his ghosts, his weapons, his sons.
And two of them had just been kidnapped by a corrupt traffic cop. "Report!" Cole barked, his voice echoing through the command center. A young intelligence officer stood up, her fingers flying across a keyboard. "Sir, we have confirmed the GPS locators embedded in the transit cases.
They are currently stationary at the Oak Creek Sheriff's Department in Texas. Chief Hayes and Petty Officer Miller have missed their scheduled check-in window. Based on the brief comms transmission, they are in local custody under false pretenses." "The gear?" Cole asked, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
"The biometric locks remain active, sir. Telemetry indicates unauthorized attempts to breach the cases using blunt force and cutting tools. All attempts have failed. The integrity of the classified optics and encrypted comms is secure for now." Cole turned to a man standing to his right, a sharp-eyed officer wearing the gold oak leaves of a JAG lawyer.