BEYOND THE RED LINE: THE ADMIRAL'S SEALED ORDERS

Reed lunged with terrifying speed.

Even with a ruined right shoulder and a blood-soaked bandage, the sheer mass and momentum of a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound combat veteran moving in close quarters is catastrophic. The serrated steel blade slashed across the air, missing my throat by less than an inch as I swayed back.

The draft of the blade cut the top button off my collar.

I didn't try to block him—blocking a knife strike from a man twice your weight is a fast way to get your forearm shattered. Instead, I used his own forward momentum against him.

As he drove forward with a low thrust aimed at my midsection, I pivoted on my right foot, slapping the inside of his wrist with my left palm to redirect the blade while driving the heel of my combat boot straight into the lateral side of his injured left knee.

The exact ligament injury I had identified on the mess hall floor.

CRACK.

Reed let out a strangled roar of agony as his knee buckled inward under his weight. He crashed hard onto the steel decking, the knife skittering across the diamond plate floor toward the terrified hostages.

Before he could recover, I drove a vicious elbow strike down into the back of his neck, driving his face into the metal floor.

"You're done, Walker!" I shouted over the hum of the ship's engines.

"Not yet!"

With a surge of desperate, feral strength, Reed twisted beneath me, throwing his good arm around my waist and slamming me backward into a steel stanchion. The impact drove the broken fragments of my rib straight into my muscle tissue. The world went blindingly white; the breath exploded from my lungs, and my vision swam with black static.

I dropped to my knees, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

Reed dragged himself to his feet, leaning heavily against the bulkhead, his face twisted in a mask of sweat, blood, and sheer psychotic hatred. He picked up a heavy three-foot steel breaker bar from a tool rack.

"You should have stayed behind your desk, Vance," he panted, raising the heavy bar with both hands. "Now they're going to pull your body out of the surf in pieces."

Suddenly, the heavy hatch behind us was blown off its hinges by a directional breaching charge.

The shockwave knocked Reed off balance. Smoke, fire, and the deafening concussion of flashbang grenades filled the hold.

Through the smoke charged a squad of Navy SEALs in full desert digital gear, led by Master Chief Miller—the twin brother of the murdered logistics officer—with automatic weapons raised and laser sights burning through the haze.

"DROP THE WEAPON, REED! DROP IT NOW!"

Reed looked at the laser dots painting his chest, then at the elite warfighters who had once been his brothers in arms.

He dropped the bar.

Master Chief Miller walked forward, kicked Reed's uninjured leg out from under him, and drove his boot into the back of Reed's neck, driving his face back into the bloody deck.

"That's for my brother, you piece of garbage," Miller growled, ratcheting zip-ties around Reed's wrists until the plastic bit into bone.

I leaned against the bulkhead, coughing up a spatter of dark blood, and looked up as Admiral Bennett walked through the breached doorway, a satellite phone pressed to his ear.

"The bridge is secure, Commander," Bennett announced. "Sterling tried to jump overboard near the harbor mouth. Coast Guard interceptor fished him out of the water five minutes ago."

He looked down at me, his eyes full of fierce, fatherly pride.