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"Warden, I don't know what day it is, much less why I'm in your facility," I replied.

"It's Thursday. President's Day weekend is coming up. A holiday," he said, as if that mattered to me. Finally, he turned and looked at me. "I've been instructed to give you two pieces of information."

He paused, but I said nothing.

"First, your lawyer was found dead yesterday," Smyth said.

My "lawyer" was Charles Green, a family friend of my late grandfather, General Garrett "Coop" Sinclair. Green was a garden-variety attorney who handled everything imaginable in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Before writing a dozen letters to the president and chief of staff of the army about my confinement, to no avail, his most important duty had been handling Coop's estate when my grandfather had passed a few years ago. Coop was a genuine World War II legend, having scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on D-Day during the Normandy Invasion with the Second Ranger Battalion. Green had smuggled my grandfather's combat diary inside a leather-bound Bible during his one and only visit a year ago.

I shrugged. I had liked Green and knew him mostly from when I was a kid helping Coop work on his cars.

"Our communications department tells me he sent a package for you, which you can have tomorrow," Smyth said.

"Why can't I have it today?" I didn't really care, but I was mildly curious.

He coughed and said, "That's the second piece of information. I've been instructed to release you. Tomorrow, you'll be officially discharged from my facility and the army. The inspector general's office has completed their investigation and made their recommendations to the secretary of defense, who has reported the findings to the president. The president, evidently, showed mercy and granted you a pardon, which allows you to maintain your rank. Your discharge is effective at noon tomorrow. Behave until then and you're free, a retired three-star general. Give me one reason... one reason...to keep you here, and I will. Understand?"

I stood there motionless. His words were artificial. They didn't resonate. They couldn't be real.

"You're gone tomorrow," Smyth said again. "Discharged. Full pension. Not my choice, but the president is in charge."

I remained motionless and said nothing.

"Sinclair. Do you hear me, inmate Sinclair?"

The volume of his voice cracked the veneer of my protective shield. In prison I felt nothing, believed very little, and said even less.

"One more time, Sinclair. Do you understand me?!"

I didn't respond then, either, but a sense of sorrow washed over me. I'd had nearly a year to contemplate my situation and the likelihood that my career was over, but that didn't make this news any easier to accept. I had never expected a gold watch or farewell party, not even before I'd been secreted to the shadowy confines of the DB. But I had thought this mistake would have been rectified, that they would have cleared my name when I was released. At the very least, I wanted the opportunity to thank my troops and say goodbye to a few friends. Instead, I was being shamefully ushered into the cold winter of Kansas. The finality was incomprehensible.

A year ago, the FBI had swarmed across the sand dunes of Figure Eight Island, North Carolina, and snatched Sergeants Major Joe Hobart, Randy Van Dreeves, and me when we were debriefing the Eye of Africa mission with President Campbell. Somehow my former team member Jake Mahegan had avoided capture. Last I saw, he had a federal agent in a hammerlock as they wrestled on the beach. My money had been on Mahegan, though I had never learned the outcome.

Once a college roommate of my wife and a theoretical friend to me, President Campbell was now trying to salvage what was left of her term and consolidate her political power. Her cabinet had secretly enhanced ties with the Chinese government and some tech moguls, but only she and her team knew their part in the endgame in that relationship. Once someone who had been read on to every special access, code word program in the United States government, I was now just another prisoner and, evidently, a soon-to-be discharged veteran. No charges filed. No trial date set. And now released and retired? I didn't believe what Smyth was saying.

"I'm calling the guards unless you acknowledge that you understand what I just said, inmate Sinclair."

"I do," I said, but I didn't. There was no way it was over, just like that. Either I was being ambushed when I left tomorrow, or I would find an untimely demise this evening in my cell.

"Nothing to say? Your career is over and you're speechless?"

"No farewell party?" I quipped.

Smyth's eyes got distant, and the faintest hint of a smirk turned on his lips.

"I'm sure your peers will think of something," he said. "Golden handcuffs might be fitting, don't you think?"

I caught the flash of a police strobe outside on Route 73, which bordered the military reservation. A gaggle of black-and-white police cars had gathered about a mile away. A spider of intuition crawled along my spine.