The silence that followed was absolute. It was louder than a gunshot.

Reed’s face went from confused to a blotchy, ashen white. His eyes widened, not in anger, but in pure, unadulterated terror.

He understood. The SEALs behind him didn’t, not fully, but they knew a kill shot when they saw one.

“I signed yours.”

In the rarefied air of top command, a Major General who speaks about ‘signing orders’ for a three-star Admiral like Reed means one thing, and one thing only: Oversight.

It meant I didn’t work for the Navy. It meant I didn’t work for any branch he could see. It meant I worked for the Department of Defense, for a classified inter-agency review board, for a committee in the Pentagon so deeply nested in the intelligence apparatus that it held the final veto on the careers—and the continued existence—of entire operational wings.

Wings like the West Coast SEALs.

Reed’s eyes weren’t just wide; they were unblinking. He was staring at a ghost. He, in a single moment of casual hubris, had just publicly challenged, mocked, and demanded the rank of the man who, in all likelihood, was overseeing the multi-billion dollar budget review that kept his entire command afloat. He had tried to humiliate the man who held his entire career in the palm of one hand.