Was my maternal grand-uncle.
**Vice Admiral David Mercer**.
Seventy-four years old.
Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer Senior’s surviving younger brother.
Beside Admiral Mercer walked **Major General Michael Grant**, Deputy Director of Special Operations Command, and **United States Attorney Marcus Cooper**, Chief Federal Prosecutor and Special Admiralty Master, flanked by **Clara Benitez, Esq.**, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page leather litigation brief bound with dark-crimson silk ribbon.
And walking on a short, heavy-duty lead between their boots on the laminate floor, his massive golden head held high, his amber eyes scanning Mark’s throat with silent, predatory discipline…
Was Barnaby—an eighty-pound retired naval working dog, a Belgian Malinois whose dark muzzle had tracked military ordnance across sixty miles of subterranean bedrock.
CHAPTER 3: THE AUTOPSY OF A FIVE-THOUSAND-MILE LIE
Admiral David Mercer stopped three paces from where Mark lay groveling on the floorboards.
He did not look at Brenda Vance hyperventilating against the wall, clutching her pearls as if they were a life preserver.
He did not glance at Mark’s linen trousers soaked in cold sweat.
The four-star Admiral snapped his polished heels together with an audible *CRACK* against the floorboards and brought his right hand up to an unyielding, razor-sharp military salute directly toward the woman standing over the bed:
