Chapter 10 - Protocol Viper
Up on the eighth floor of the VIP tower, Agent David Cross screamed in shock, clutching his bleeding wrist as the shattered remnants of the disarmed detonator clattered harmlessly across the marble floor.
Because Nora's bullet had jammed the master broadcast switch on the wall console wide open, every sound and high-definition security camera angle inside the luxury suite was instantly projected onto the five gigantic LED scoreboards towering above the stadium.
Down in the crowded parking lot and across the surrounding range, five thousand spectators stopped dead in their tracks and stared up at the giant screens as Victor Blackthorne and David Cross yelled at each other in blind panic.
"You lunatic, the live feed is broadcasting to the entire stadium—shut off the Project Viper laptop before the Secret Service traces the Syria telemetry logs," Blackthorne roared across the giant speakers for the whole world to hear.
"It is too late, the woman in the gray hoodie just blew the satellite relay transmitter in half and locked the unencrypted Syria confession files onto the public broadcast server," Cross shouted back in horror just as the heavy oak doors of the VIP suite blew inward.
A dozen heavily armed federal tactical marshals from the Defense Secretary's helicopter escort stormed into the luxury box on live television, tackling both Agent David Cross and billionaire Victor Blackthorne to the floor and snapping steel handcuffs around their wrists.
Down in the parking lot, range bomb technicians popped the lock on the armored maintenance truck and deactivated the unprimed collar around Garrett Locke's neck, who stumbled out onto the asphalt and looked up toward the distant water tower in sheer amazement.
At the referee podium, Chief Referee Arthur Miller picked up his master microphone, his voice booming proudly across the valley as the five giant screens flashed back to the replay of Nora's impossible mile-long shot.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the threat has been neutralized, the conspirators are in federal custody, and the true champion of the Apex National Range is Captain Nora Vance," Miller announced.
Five thousand people in the parking lot and grandstands erupted into a deafening, thunderous standing ovation that echoed all the way up to the rocky ridge behind the target berms.
At the base of the rusted water tower, Nora slid down the iron ladder onto the warm desert sand, dropped to her knees as her little brother Toby ran out of the calibration shed, and wrapped her arms tightly around his trembling shoulders.
For the first time in eighteen months of living like a hunted ghost in the dark, Nora closed her eyes against her brother's hair and felt the crushing weight in her chest finally melt away.
They had exposed the traitor who murdered her unit, saved five thousand innocent people from a massacre, cleared her name on live television, and put Victor Blackthorne and David Cross in chains.
Suddenly, the bone-conduction implants behind Nora's ears emitted a shrill, piercing military proximity whine, and all five gigantic LED scoreboards above the stadium flickered blood red with an incoming satellite override stamped PENTAGON COMMAND—PROTOCOL VIPER STAGE TWO.
Up on the VIP balcony, shown live on the giant screens, the federal tactical marshals who had just handcuffed David Cross did not lead him out to the prison transport—instead, their commander unlocked Cross's cuffs, snapped to attention in a crisp military salute, and ordered his men to seal the electrified perimeter gates around the five thousand spectators below.
Down on the range helipad, the armored side door of the Defense Secretary's Marine helicopter slid open, and the four-star general stepping out onto the tarmac slowly removed her dark aviation sunglasses to look straight into the broadcast camera.
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Nora froze on her knees in the desert sand as she stared up at the fifty-foot projection of the woman who had personally signed her death certificate eighteen months ago—Four-Star General Evelyn Vance, Nora's own estranged mother.
"Magnificent shot, Nora—you just provided the final human-benchmark calibration data my autonomous AI sniper satellites needed to complete their neural targeting matrix," her mother's icy voice boomed across the locked-down stadium as twelve automated fifty-caliber drone turrets rose from the arena roof with their red laser sights locked directly onto Nora's chest, "and now my foreign buyers have wired three billion dollars to watch my machines hunt the legendary Ghost Zero to the death in front of five thousand live witnesses."
