Chapter 2 - The Trap at Dawn
By 0430, the sky above Fort Havenfield had turned from ink to a bruised, sulfurous purple.
The kitchen had transformed into an operational command node. Hayes had stripped off his dress uniform, now wearing a black tactical sweater, his fingers flying across the keys of a ruggedized Panasonic Toughbook. Vance was on the phone in the pantry, his voice pitched to a murmur, running background traces through back-channel contacts at the Defense Logistics Agency.
Spencer stood behind me, a steaming mug of black coffee placed at my elbow. He hadn’t slept. Neither had I. The adrenaline had burned off the fatigue hours ago, leaving behind a sharp, icy clarity.
"The freighter is the *Caspian Dawn*," Hayes said, tapping the screen. "Panamanian flag. It docked at the Port of Savannah forty-eight hours ago under the guise of an engine overhaul. It’s sitting at Berth 14. The manifests Freya forged show four crates of classified titanium alloy housing units being transferred from the Naval Weapons Station Charleston to that vessel via civilian flatbed."
"Which was scheduled to happen today," I said, tracing the route on the digital map. "While I was supposed to be on a flight to Saint Lucia for my honeymoon."
"Exactly," Spencer said. He pointed to the time stamps on the shipping authorizations. "If you were mid-air over the Caribbean, your phones would be off. By the time Charleston realized the crates were missing from their secondary holding warehouse, the *Caspian Dawn* would be in international waters, clearing past the twelve-mile limit. When the paper trail unraveled, your electronic signature would be on every clearance slip, and you wouldn't be around to refute it."
"And when I landed," I continued, "NCIS would have met me at the tarmac in Saint Lucia with extradition papers. Freya gets a wire transfer from Sterling in the Caymans, and I spend the rest of my adult life in a federal penitentiary."
"She’s ruthless," Vance remarked, stepping out of the pantry. "I just pulled her financials. Freya Sullivan’s credit cards were maxed out three weeks ago. She has an eviction notice pending on her condo in Brickell, and two liens on her Porsche. She was drowning. Sterling threw her a rope, and she decided to hang you with it."
My phone—my personal, secured military device—buzzed against the table.
It wasn't a call. It was a security alert from the automated surveillance system at my mother’s house in rural Georgia, sixty miles south of the base.
I pulled up the feed.
A silver Mercedes-Benz was parked in the gravel driveway of the single-wide trailer where I had grown up. The porch light was on. Sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette, was Freya. She had changed out of the silk slip dress into designer denim and an oversized trench coat, her blond hair pulled back into a sloppy knot.
"She went to Mom's," I said, showing the feed to Spencer.
Spencer looked at the screen, his expression unreadable. "She’s establishing an alibi. Or she’s collecting whatever collateral she left there before the drop."
"Or," I said, feeling a knot tighten in my ribs, "Mom was in on it from the start."
The thought was a physical blow, worse than the forged signatures, worse than the ruined wedding. But I couldn't afford the luxury of sentimentality. In logistics, when a failure occurs along the supply chain, you don't mourn the broken link—you identify the defect and isolate it before it corrupts the entire cargo.
"We leave now," Spencer said, reaching for his sidearm from the lockbox on top of the refrigerator. He racked the slide of the Sig Sauer P320 with a sharp, metallic *clack*, holstering it beneath his jacket. "Hayes, lock this house down. Monitor the Savannah terminal feeds. If those trucks move an inch before we reach that trailer, ping us on the tactical channel."
"Copy that, Boss," Hayes said.
We walked out into the gray dawn. The air was cool now, washed clean by the storm, but the dampness clung to my skin like an oil slick. Spencer unlocked the passenger side of our heavy-duty truck. As I climbed in, I caught my reflection in the side mirror.
My eyes were hollowed out, dark circles bruising the skin beneath them. But my posture was rigid, my jaw set.
"Sullivan," Spencer said, pausing before he shut my door.
"Yeah?"
"When we walk into that house, remember who you are. You aren't the girl who had to scrounge change for groceries while they spent your father's pension. You’re an officer. You hold the line."
"I know," I said.
May you like
He shut the door, rounded the hood, and got behind the wheel. The engine roared to life, a low, guttural vibration that echoed through the empty neighborhood, and we accelerated down the asphalt, leaving Fort Havenfield in our wake.
***