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The flight deck of the military transport aircraft hummed with a deep, vibrating roar that rattled teeth and vibrated straight through the floorboards. I sat strapped into a jump seat near the bulkhead, wearing a standard-issue tactical flight suit over my clothes, my old combat boots laced tight. The worn leather of my tactical gloves felt familiar against my skin, like an old friend welcoming me back home after a long absence.

Seated across from me was Commander David Vance (no relation to Viktor, a coincidence we had chuckled about during our early days in Task Force 88), a seasoned naval aviator commanding the P-8 Poseidon intercept mission. He tossed me a secure tactical tablet displaying real-time satellite telemetry and flight path vectors for the Falcon 900 carrying Derek Vaughn.

"Target is maintaining cruising altitude at thirty-six thousand feet, heading east-southeast over the North Atlantic corridor," Commander Vance briefed me, shouting slightly over the roar of the turbofan engines. "We have diplomatic authorization to escort them down under suspicion of unregistered cargo manifest discrepancies, but let’s be entirely clear, Laurel—if your brother-in-law realizes we’re on his tail and decides to dump his encrypted hard drives into the ocean, we lose our leverage."

"Derek isn't going to dump his data, David," I replied coldly, tapping the screen to zoom in on the charter jet’s telemetry data. "He’s a narcissist and a coward. He believes he’s smarter than everyone in the room. He’ll keep the encrypted drive on his person because he thinks he can talk his way out of anything, exactly like he did at my mother’s backyard cookout."

Commander Vance nodded, a grim smile touching the corners of his mouth. "All right. We intercept in twelve minutes. Once we box him in, we’ll force a diversion down to a secure naval air station in the Azores. You ready to play boarding officer?"

"Born ready," I said, checking the secure satellite comms headset clipped to my collar.

Twelve minutes later, the transport aircraft executed a smooth, high-altitude convergence maneuver, sliding neatly alongside the sleek white corporate jet. Through the reinforced cockpit windows of our P-8, I could clearly see the Falcon 900’s silver fuselage gleaming under the blinding afternoon sun, cutting effortlessly through the sea of clouds below.

Our tactical radio operator patched directly into the charter flight's civilian emergency frequency.

"Falcon N742X, this is United States naval interception authority," Commander Vance’s voice boomed crisp and authoritative over the radio channel. "You are operating under an unregistered cargo manifest security hold. Alter your heading immediately to zero-four-zero and descend to flight level two-zero-zero for mandatory inspection at a designated secure facility. Acknowledge."

For nearly thirty seconds, there was absolute silence over the frequency.

Inside the corporate jet cockpit, Derek and his handlers were undoubtedly panicking. I pictured Derek sweating through his expensive designer suit, his smug arrogance instantly replaced by the same pathetic, whimpering terror he had shown when I pinned him to the grass in Richmond.

Then the radio crackled to life. A tense, shaky voice—not Derek’s, but clearly an operative—responded: "Negative, United States authority. We are a chartered private vessel under sovereign corporate transit. We refuse diversion."

"You don't have a choice," I leaned forward, pressing the comms toggle on my headset, speaking directly into the secure frequency with the chilling, flat authority of a commanding officer. "Derek Vaughn. I know you're listening in that cabin. You can either let us guide your bird down peacefully, or we can scramble F-35s out of Lajes Air Base and escort you down at gunpoint. Your choice."

A heavy, breathless silence hung over the radio channel for five agonizing seconds.