Chapter 2 - OPERATIONAL RECOVERY
At St. Jude’s Hospital, the ICU was bathed in harsh fluorescent light and the steady, rhythmic beep of life-support monitors.
Violet lay in the center of the bed, surrounded by tubes and wires. The surgeon had spent four hours repairing her skull fracture and stopping internal bleeding. She was in a medically induced coma.
"She’s a fighter, Mr. Harper," the lead surgeon told me, placing a hand on my shoulder. "The next forty-eight hours will be critical. But her brain activity is stable."
"Thank you, Doctor," I said.
I sat beside her bed, taking her tiny, cold hand in mine. For two hours, I didn't move. I squeezed her hand, leaning close to her ear.
"You did your job, Vi," I whispered. "You survived. Now it's Dad's turn to work."
At midnight, I made a single phone call on an encrypted sat-phone from the hospital balcony.
"Apex actual, this is Ghost," I said when the line connected.
A heavy pause came over the line, followed by the deep, gravelly voice of my former unit commander, Master Sergeant Marcus "Bull" Vance.
"Thomas? Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be on leave for your kid's birthday."
"My daughter is in an ICU bed, Bull," I said, my tone as quiet as a falling blade. "Someone disarmed my house, beat her within an inch of her life, and tried to frame it as a random robbery. They were looking for her trust documents."
Silence on the other end. Then the sound of a chair rolling back.
"What do you need, Brother?" Bull asked without hesitation.
May you like
"Everything. I need satellite telemetry on Maple Drive between 3:00 PM and 4:30 PM. I need deep-packet inspection on Victor Vance-Drake's financial servers. And I need a secure forward operating base in the city."
"Consider it done," Bull replied. "I'm calling in Miller and Dax from the team. We’re landing in two hours. Nobody touches our family and lives to talk about it."
