The Eastern Service Road

Rain started as our vehicles crossed the eastern service road.

Warehouse Seventeen had been decommissioned after a roof fire and removed from normal patrol routes. Its broken windows faced the rail line. We approached without sirens, headlights dimmed, while thunder rolled over the hills.

Agent Shaw ordered me to remain behind the first vehicle.

"You are the principal victim in an assault investigation," he said. "Try not to become the principal victim in a homicide."

"Captain Vance called me."

"That does not make bullets respect your rank."

He was right, so I stayed with Ortiz behind the tactical team. It lasted thirty seconds.

A shot cracked from inside the warehouse. Glass burst from an upper window. The team scattered behind concrete barriers. A second shot struck the hood of the lead vehicle.

Then someone inside shouted, "Don't shoot!"

The side door flew open and Captain Vance stumbled into the rain with his hands raised. Blood darkened the sleeve of his uniform. Behind him, a hooded figure ran between two loading bays and vanished through a gap in the fence.

Shaw's agents chased the figure toward the rail yard. I reached Vance as he collapsed beside the road.

"My family," he whispered.

"They're being located now. Stay with me."

His wound was a deep cut, not a gunshot. Someone had tied his wrists and beaten him. Ortiz pressed a field dressing against his arm while he fought to stay conscious.

"Who warned Harker?" I asked.

Vance looked toward the warehouse as if the walls themselves might report him.

"Brigadier General Silas Crowe."

The name carried weight. Crowe was deputy commander of the regional readiness command and the reviewing authority for several complaints against Fort Halden. His office had dismissed each complaint for insufficient evidence.

"Why?"

"Money. Harker's brother wasn't only selling equipment. Crowe steered maintenance contracts to shell companies. Harker kept soldiers quiet and moved cash through the store." Vance coughed. "I changed access logs and warned them about inspections. I thought it was paperwork. Then Bell got hurt. Then you came."

"Where are the records?"

"Harker kept a second ledger on an encrypted drive. I stole it from his office after the dining hall. That's why they took me."

"Where is it now?"

Vance's eyes shifted toward the warehouse.

The building exploded before he could answer.

The blast threw Ortiz and me into the mud. Flames punched through the roof. Burning fragments rained across the road. For a moment there was no sound except the shriek in my ears.

Then Vance began screaming.

The medics dragged him behind an armored vehicle. The team near the fence reported that the fleeing suspect had escaped into the rail yard. Fire crews moved in, but Warehouse Seventeen was already collapsing inward.

Whatever evidence Vance had hidden inside was gone.

At least that was what our enemy wanted us to believe.

At the hospital, surgeons took Vance into an operating room. His wife and teenage son were moved under protective custody. Harker, meanwhile, sat in detention and denied knowing Crowe beyond official business.

"Captain Vance is unstable," Harker told Agent Shaw during questioning. "He panicked after destroying evidence and invented a conspiracy to save himself."

When Shaw mentioned the ledger, Harker's composure cracked for the first time.

"There is no ledger."

"I didn't say it was a ledger," Shaw replied.

Harker asked for counsel and said nothing else.

Near dawn, I returned to the conference room and found Noah asleep in a chair. He had refused to go back to the barracks because someone had entered his room and placed Lucas Bell's broken unit badge on his pillow.

Beside Noah sat Mrs. Brooks, keeping watch with a paper cup of coffee.

"You look worse than yesterday," she told me.

"That is becoming a trend."

She handed me the coffee. "Then change the trend."

Noah woke when I sat down. He reached into his pocket and placed a small brass key on the table.

"Captain Vance gave me this yesterday," he said. "Right before he left the dining hall. He bumped into me and said, 'Locker two-fourteen.' I thought he was threatening me."

Fort Halden no longer used keyed lockers except in one place: the old rail dispatch station behind Warehouse Seventeen.

Shaw and I entered the station at sunrise. Locker 214 stood in a row of rusted metal compartments. The key turned with difficulty.

Inside was a child's red backpack.

It belonged to Vance's son. Beneath a geometry book we found a sealed plastic bag containing an encrypted drive, a handwritten account ledger, and three photographs.

The first showed Grant Harker and his brother outside Halden Tactical Supply.

The second showed Captain Vance handing a folder to General Crowe.

The third showed Crowe shaking hands with a man I recognized immediately.

Major General Adrian Vale, the Inspector General who had personally approved my undercover mission.

The operation had been compromised before I ever arrived.