The Captain’s Old-School Aim

“You are bluffing,” Briggs said. “There is no way you opened that drive.”

“Its key phrase was THEYLIED,” I told him. My voice sounded flat, almost detached. “Matthew was not accusing Washington. He meant you.”

The corridor went still beneath the haze of burned propellant. The operators on the floor made pained noises, but neither reached for a weapon.

They had seen the position. They understood there was no winning it now.

“Go ahead and kill me,” I said. “Send someone through that door and put a round through my skull.”

“It changes nothing. That countdown is protected, and the relay cannot be canceled from here.”

“If I die, you still face Leavenworth. Assuming treason does not earn you something worse first.”

The display read 02:30.

“Grace.” Briggs altered his voice, sanding away the command edge. He wanted reason now, because fear had finally caught him.

“We can still contain this,” he said. “You have no idea what Blackbriar prevented.”

“We protected this nation when nobody else could make the necessary choices. Your father knew that. Matthew was a patriot.”

The words struck harder than gunfire. For years, I had wanted my father to be the man I remembered.

But the evidence had burned that illusion out of me.

“My father was a monster,” I said. Grief pushed through my discipline, hot and sharp. “You turned him into one.”

“You exploited his loyalty. You poisoned everything he believed in. When he tried to escape your nightmare, you had him murdered.”

01:45.

“I can make this worth your while,” Briggs said, edging into view with his palms raised and his pistol lowered.

“Matthew had accounts. I can release them to you. Millions, Grace.”

“You can disappear with a clean identity, a life anywhere you choose. Just terminate the relay.”

I studied him across the ruined room. He was the source of two decades of unanswered questions and carefully managed grief.

He had stood behind me at the range, sneering at my father’s rifle, while carrying the truth about Matthew’s death.

Then I checked the screen again.

00:30.

“I already got what I came for,” I said.

Briggs moved without warning. He ignored his weapon and threw himself toward the desk instead.

His hands stretched for the laptop, aiming to destroy the keyboard or crack the display before the final seconds expired.

I did not fire.

I let the M14 fall, closed the distance, and drove my boot into the outside of his knee.

The joint collapsed with a brutal snap. Briggs screamed and crashed against the desk, dragging the laptop down with him.

The computer struck hard, but its screen remained alive.

He clawed at it from the floor, bloody fingers hunting for keys, trying to close the program and break the connection.

I drew my M11 from beneath the journal and aimed it at the back of his head.

“Do not,” I said quietly.

He stopped. His hands hung just above the keyboard while he looked up at me, his blue eyes emptied of calculation.

Together, we watched the last seconds disappear.

00:03.

00:02.

00:01.

TRANSMISSION COMPLETE.

The red clock vanished. A green confirmation symbol replaced it, clean and final: the Blackbriar files had gone out.

Twenty years of concealed bodies, stolen weapons, and manufactured lies had escaped his control in an instant.

Then the base alarm tore across the predawn air outside, a security klaxon rather than the call to reveille.

Boots hammered along the hallway. Voices bounced off concrete. “MP! Drop the weapons!”

I set the M11 carefully on the desk. Briggs stared at the green mark as though it had pronounced sentence on him.

“It is finished, Nathan,” I told him.

Two Military Police officers stormed inside with rifles trained. They took in the wounded operators, Briggs’s ruined knee, and me standing amid the wreckage.

“Captain Thornton, move away from the Colonel!” the lead MP ordered.

I put my hands behind my head and stepped back without argument. They secured the room, restrained the operators, and summoned medics.

They hauled Briggs upright and cuffed him despite his injury. When he looked at me, the smug certainty was gone; only vacancy remained.

Another MP placed cuffs on my wrists under standard procedure for a shooting incident. The M14 remained on the floor, battered and scarred, its hidden cross lost in the metal.

I had lost Matthew twice: first the hero I had worshipped, then the flawed man he had truly been. But I had not surrendered the principles he betrayed.

The MPs led me away in handcuffs, and I knew the truth had been transmitted and Briggs’s control was over.