Stop pretending you're a nurse,” my brother ridiculed me at the military gala. I ignored him and invited the general’s disabled son to dance.

The crack of the gunshot was a deafening slap inside the brick chimney, the bullet gouging a shower of red dust and molten lead from the mortar inches above my ear. But Nathan had already moved.

He didn't climb; he launched himself. Driven by pure, unadulterated combat instinct honed in the blood-soaked valleys of Kandahar, he ignored the shredded muscle in his shoulder and the agony tearing through his ribs. His hand found the greasy edge of the catwalk above, his combat boot slamming into Thorne’s sternum with the force of an artillery shell.

The air blew out of Thorne’s lungs in a sickening gasp. The semi-automatic flew from his grip, clattering down through the darkness until it splashed into the sewer brine fifty feet below. But the detonator was still clutched in his white-knuckled fist.

"Die with me, then!" Thorne screamed, spit flying from his split lips as he rolled violently onto Nathan on the rusted steel grating.

The metal framework groaned under their combined weight, decades-old bolts popping like rivets under pressure. Nathan had Thorne pinned by the collar, one hand wrapped around the throat of the man who had ordered our executions, but Thorne’s thumb was coming down on the armed ignition rocker.

"Nathan!" I screamed, scrambling up the wet rungs, my boots slipping on grease and moss.

I didn't have a weapon. I had my hands, my trauma kit, and the raw fury of a woman who had spent months being treated like disposable trash by men in tailored suits. I threw my arm over the grating, lunging forward with my tactical shears—the same stainless-steel shears I had used to cut away Nathan’s combat vest in the Kandahar dust.

I slammed the heavy, blunted tip directly into the soft flesh between Thorne’s thumb and forefinger.

Thorne howled in agony. His grip involuntarily severed, the black plastic detonator slipping from his hand. It bounced once on the metal grate, teetering on the edge of the opening. Nathan didn't hesitate. With a violent thrust of his heel, he kicked the device out into the void, sending it tumbling deep into the subterranean runoff, far beyond the radio-frequency trigger range of the gas mains.

"It’s over, Marcus," Nathan snarled, blood dripping from his chin onto Thorne’s immaculate Italian wool lapel. Nathan pulled back his fist, the sinew of his battered arm taut as steel. "You sold out your country, you murdered fifty men in the desert, and you tried to slaughter my family. Yield, or I put you down right here."

Thorne looked up at Nathan, his eyes wild, swimming in the mania of a fallen king. He began to laugh—a wet, rattling cackle that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

"You think you won because the television spoke?" Thorne rasped, blood bubbling between his teeth. "You stupid, loyal dog. You think this started with me? Look up, Captain. Look at who opened the grate."

Before Nathan could strike, a blinding cone of white light engulfed the shaft from above. The roar of a twin-rotor transport helicopter shook the brickwork so hard that ancient mortar showered down like hail.

Through the silhouette of the opening fifty feet above, men in unmarked black tactical gear rappelled down, weapons raised—not with the insignia of the Old Guard, but bearing the distinct, cold crest of the Directorate of Special Projects.