THEY LOCKED ME IN A CAGE WITH THREE "KILLER" MILITARY DOGS TO DESTROY MY CAREER. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT SILENCED THE ENTIRE PENTAGON.

"Security!" Whitfield screamed, backing away toward the curtain line, his hands scrambling at the holster of his dress-uniform sidearm. "Security, shoot that animal! Shoot her!"

Two Vanguard contractors disguised as plainclothes naval security guards leaped onto the stage from the side wings, their hands drawing concealed subcompact pistols from under their blazers.

They never cleared their holsters.

Zeus closed the twenty-foot gap between the wing and the stage in two explosive bounds. He hit the first contractor at chest level, the impact throwing the two-hundred-pound man off the edge of the stage into the orchestra pit, his weapon skattering across the linoleum.

Ares took the second guard by the gun arm, his jaws locking around the wrist with a bone-grinding crunch that made every journalist in the first three rows drop to the floor in screams of panic. The guard collapsed, pinned under Ares's merciless weight, unable to move without tearing his own tendon from the bone.

Whitfield finally managed to rip his chrome-plated ceremonial .45 from his holster, pointing the barrel directly at my forehead.

"You're a traitor, Mercer!" Whitfield bellowed, his eyes bulging, veins standing out like cords along his neck. "You're a disgrace to the uniform! I’ll bury you under Leavenworth!"

I didn't blink. I didn't stop walking.

"Thor," I said softly, the command carrying effortlessly through the dead quiet of the room. "Prends-le."

Thor didn't charge with wild, frantic barking. He moved with the terrifying, inevitable momentum of a wrecking ball.

Whitfield pulled the trigger.

The bullet whipped past my left ear, shattering the decorative wooden trim behind me.

Before Whitfield could cycle the action for a second shot, eighty-five pounds of hardened Belgian Malinois slammed into his chest.

The impact lifted the Brigadier General entirely off his feet. Whitfield hit the auditorium stage floor with a sickening thud that knocked the wind out of his lungs in an explosive gasp. The chrome pistol went spinning across the polished oak boards, clattering against the foot of the lectern.

Thor didn't bite to kill. He didn't tear out the General's throat, though every instinct forged in the blood of Kandahar must have screamed for it.

He planted his front paws squarely on Whitfield's gold-braided epaulets, pinning the General's shoulders flat against the stage floor. Thor lowered his massive head until his black mask was half an inch from Whitfield's terrified, sweat-drenched face.

Thor opened his jaws, exposing four inches of pristine fangs dripping with saliva, and let out a single, earth-shaking roar—a war cry of pure, unadulterated grief and judgment that reverberated through the microphones and shook the glass light fixtures hanging from the ceiling.

Whitfield closed his eyes and wept like a child, his hands held up in total, cowardly surrender.

"Marcus Dole didn't die for your stock options, General," I said, walking up to the fallen commander, looking down at him with cold disgust. "And these dogs aren't weapons you can throw away when your paperwork gets messy. They remember. And today, the whole world knows what you did."

Down in the audience, four uniformed Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) special agents, accompanied by the base Provost Marshal, marched up the center aisle with their service weapons drawn, not pointing at me, but locking onto Whitfield and his downed contractors.

"General Daniel Whitfield," the Provost Marshal announced, his voice trembling with fury as he stared at the video still playing on the massive screen. "By order of the Commander of Naval Special Warfare, you are relieved of your post and placed under immediate arrest for high treason, conspiracy to commit murder, and the unlawful execution of United States service personnel."

Thor lifted his head slowly. He looked back at me, his amber eyes clear, steady, and finally at peace.