Chief Justice Arthur Vance did not sign immediately.
He smiled—a slow, razor-thin, terrifying line of white porcelain that had charmed forty congressional hearings:
“Arthur Bennett was an exceptional builder, gentlemen,” Arthur purred, his voice a deep, resonant velvet cello that echoed off the acoustic baffles of the vault:
“He bored forty miles of subterranean granite with naval sweat, and he left the master deed to a granddaughter who spent the last eleven months believing her husband was giving her organic green tea.”
Arthur dipped the gold nib of his pen toward the parchment:
“To the compliant invalid in Omaha, gentlemen.”
“May she spend the rest of her life staring at a padded wall while we manage the Republic.”
***
CHAPTER 4: THE BREACH OF THE WEST CONFERENCE ROOM
KABOOOOM.
The four-inch-thick steel blast door of the West Conference Room did not slide open on its automated tracks.
It was cleaved off its structural bronze rollers by an eighty-pound linear hydraulic breaching ram, the steel latch pins shearing clean out of the concrete jamb with an explosive, concussive roar that shattered three overhead light fixtures into a blizzard of incandescent glass:
