Chapter 7 - BRIGGS HAD ONE CHANCEThe first bullet shattered the motel window.
Avery dropped behind the bed.
Briggs pulled Pierce to the floor.
Vale reached for his sidearm.
Another burst tore through the wall.
“They found us!” Briggs shouted.
Avery crawled toward the bathroom.
“Back exit?”
“Window!”
The team split.
Two military police officers returned fire from the hallway.
Avery smashed the bathroom window with a towel wrapped around her hand.
“Pierce first.”
Briggs pushed the injured captain through.
Vale followed.
Avery climbed out last.
Three vehicles were moving along the motel perimeter with headlights off.
Professional ambush.
No warning shots.
Whoever had come wanted everyone dead.
Avery and Briggs dragged Pierce toward a drainage ditch.
A shooter appeared near the corner of the building.
Briggs saw him first.
He shoved Avery down.
A round struck Briggs high in the shoulder.
He collapsed.
“Briggs!”
“I'm good!”
He wasn't.
Blood immediately darkened his sleeve.
Avery returned fire long enough to force the shooter behind cover.
Vale reached them.
“We need extraction.”
“Radios jammed,” Avery said.
Briggs clenched his teeth.
“Vehicle.”
Their SUV sat thirty yards away.
Open ground.
Avery looked at Briggs.
“Can you move?”
“Try stopping me.”
They waited for the attackers to shift position.
Then ran.
Pierce stumbled.
Vale supported him.
Briggs kept one arm pressed against his wound.
They reached the SUV.
Avery drove.
Bullets hit the rear panel as she accelerated across the motel parking lot.
One tire blew.
She kept driving.
“Roadblock ahead!” Vale shouted.
Two pickup trucks blocked the highway.
Avery didn't slow.
Briggs looked at her.
“You're not seriously—”
“Brace.”
She swerved onto the gravel shoulder.
The SUV struck a drainage berm, lifted briefly, and slammed back down beyond the trucks.
Briggs groaned.
“I liked you better when you were just throwing me.”
Despite everything, Avery almost laughed.
They reached a state police station twenty minutes later.
Federal investigators descended within hours.
The ambush changed everything.
This was no longer a quiet internal investigation.
Somebody had attempted to murder active-duty personnel and a senior officer on American soil.
Briggs underwent surgery.
The bullet passed cleanly through his shoulder.
Avery visited the following afternoon.
He looked terrible.
“You look pleased,” she said.
“They gave me pudding.”
“Congratulations.”
“Vanilla.”
“Heroic.”
Briggs glanced toward her.
“I saved your life.”
“You pushed me into gravel.”
“Same thing.”
Avery sat.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then Briggs said, “I was wrong.”
“About the pudding?”
“About you.”
Avery waited.
He looked uncomfortable.
“I spent the first week treating you like you didn't belong.”
“Yes.”
“I made it personal.”
“Yes.”
“I was an ass.”
“Yes.”
Briggs frowned.
“You could make this slightly easier.”
“No.”
He almost smiled.
Then grew serious.
“I thought being tougher meant making everybody prove themselves the way I did.”
Avery folded her arms.
“That isn't toughness.”
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
Briggs looked away.
Avery continued.
“You weren't hard on me because I lacked capability. You were hard on me because you assumed I did.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
“You made the room worse.”
“I know.”
“And some younger soldiers copied you.”
“I know that too.”
Avery stood.
Briggs expected her to leave.
Instead she said, “So fix it.”
He looked up.
“How?”
“Start with the people watching you.”
That mattered more than an apology.
Two days later, Briggs returned to limited duty with his arm in a sling.
The first thing he did was gather the same trainees who had laughed at Avery.
Nearly three hundred attended voluntarily.
Briggs stood in front of them.
“I owe somebody an apology.”
Avery watched from the back.
No dramatic speech.
No excuses.
Briggs told them exactly what he had done.
He had judged before evaluating.
Used rank and reputation to humiliate someone.
And encouraged others to do the same.
Then he said something Avery hadn't expected.
“Strength isn't making sure everybody knows you're the biggest person in the room. Sometimes strength is realizing the smallest person in the room can teach you something and shutting your mouth long enough to learn it.”
A few soldiers laughed.
This time, with him.
Afterward, Briggs approached Avery.
“Better?”
“Beginning.”
He nodded.
Then his expression changed.
“There's something else.”
He handed her a photograph recovered from one of the attackers' phones.
Avery stared.
It showed Rourke meeting a man outside a restaurant three months earlier.
The other man was General Marcus Thane's civilian chief of staff.
Avery looked up.
“Where is Rourke?”
Briggs's face went grim.
“Gone.”
Rourke had disappeared from Fort Grafton twelve hours earlier.
But he hadn't left empty-handed.
A storage inventory revealed three missing crates.
Training explosives.
Secure radios.
And ammunition.
Then Avery received a message from an unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
It showed Specialist Evan Cole kneeling in a dark room.
Hands tied.
Blood on his forehead.
Below the image was a sentence.
BRING THE HAMILTON FILES OR THE KID DIES.
Avery's face hardened.
Briggs read over her shoulder.
“I'm coming.”
“You were shot two days ago.”
“Then I'll stand behind you and complain.”
Avery looked at him.
He wasn't joking.
For the first time since meeting Wade Briggs, she trusted him.
Not completely.
Trust didn't work that way.
May you like
But enough.
And sometimes enough was what saved lives.
