Phoenix

26. The Arctic Gambit

​"You're all nothing but useless, incompetent morons!"
​The voice of Douglas Bullock—the man known in the darker corridors of Washington as "Bulldog"—didn't just fill the room; it seemed to vibrate the very air molecules within the Research Facility Director’s office.

He wasn't merely angry; he was in a state of controlled, vitriolic rage, and he made no effort to sanitize his language for the sake of professional courtesy.

​He sat in the plush leather chair belonging to the facility’s director, his boots—still caked with Arctic slush—resting shamelessly on the polished mahogany desk. His eyes, sharp and predatory, flicked between the three men standing before him.

​"You shouldn't be insulting us like this, Mr. Bullock," said Lyall Fanning, the Director of Brighton Technology’s Montego branch. Fanning was a man of science, unaccustomed to the raw, visceral aggression of the intelligence community.
He adjusted his glasses, his hands trembling slightly. "We had nothing to do with the specific tactical failures that occurred here. We are researchers, not soldiers."

​"Then why in the hell are you paying the salaries of these idiots?" Bulldog’s finger snapped toward Trevor Blickman, the Security Chief. "If you're paying for protection and you get a massacre, you've been robbed, Fanning. Or perhaps you deserved it being so utterly damn fool!"

​Trevor Blickman, a man who prided himself on three decades of law enforcement and private security experience, felt the heat rise in his neck.

He was still nursing a headache from the neuro-sedative gas, and his pride was far more bruised than his body. "This is going too far, sir," Blickman said, his voice straining for a dignity he no longer felt he possessed. "You may hold a significant position in the government, but that doesn't give you the right to walk into my facility and disparage my men. We were hit by a sophisticated, multi-pronged assault."

​"I'm not kidding, Blickman. You really are an idiot," Bulldog growled, leaning forward until his face was inches from the security chief’s. "What kind of security chief allows a breach like this? First, Kim Seokjin enters your facility—a man whose face is on every watchlist from Seoul to Langley—and you let him walk right in. Then, a second group launches a commando-style gas attack. It doesn't seem like there was any security at all! You claimed thirty years of experience? In what? Guarding shopping malls? How did a single man render your entire response team unconscious so easily?"

​"This is the first time in my career I've had to deal with professionals of that caliber," Blickman replied, his voice growing timid under Bulldog’s blistering stare. "There might have been a mistake or two in the initial assessment of the threat..."

​"Shut up! Don't you dare play the victim card with me," Bulldog barked. "You can't even begin to fathom the mess you’ve made the moment you let them slip through your fingers. Dr. Donnen wasn't just a scientist; he was a priceless strategic asset for the United States. His death has caused irreparable damage to our national security infrastructure. Do you have any idea what his research represented? Damn it! I should have the authority to throw every last one of you into a black-site prison for criminal negligence."

​"What was I supposed to do?" Blickman stammered. "We were gassed! We were incapacitated before we could even draw our weapons!"

​"Why weren't you more careful after receiving the priority message from the Coast Guard?" Bulldog countered. "They warned you a vessel was inbound. They warned you of the threat. Why didn't you move Donnen to the hardened sub-levels? Why was he even near the surface?"

​Blickman shrugged, his mouth hanging open in a silent, desperate search for an excuse that didn't exist. The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. Finally, he found a target for his frustration. "It’s that Seokjin’s fault. None of this—the gas, the deaths, the chaos—would have happened if I could have beaten him to death the moment I caught him in the corridor. He brought the trouble with him."