Chapter 2 - THE MAN I TRUSTED
"Tell me you have an explanation."
Reed stared at the security log as though he had already memorized every line.
"I do."
"Make it good."
Admiral Mercer stayed silent.
That told me he had already heard whatever Reed was about to say and had not decided whether he believed it.
Reed pulled out a chair but did not sit.
"At 0440 I received a text from a number that has contacted me six times in the past year."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"Convenient."
"Very."
He ignored the edge in my voice.
"The message said Sullivan kept a hard-copy watch file in his office safe."
"And you broke into a commander's office based on an anonymous text?"
"I entered with a maintenance override I should not have had."
"That's not better."
"I know."
Mercer finally spoke.
"He called me at 0519."
I looked at him.
"Before or after he found the surveillance photo?"
"After."
Reed pointed at the photograph.
"That wasn't the only thing in the safe."
He reached into his uniform jacket and removed a tiny black memory card sealed inside a transparent evidence sleeve.
Mercer's expression hardened.
"You told me you left everything in place."
"I lied."
The admiral's voice became dangerously calm.
"Sergeant Major."
"Sir, by the time your people reached that office, the rest of the safe was empty."
That changed the room.
Mercer stepped closer.
"What was on the card?"
"I don't know."
"You expect me to believe you stole evidence and didn't look at it?"
"It's hardware encrypted."
Reed placed the sleeve on the table.
"I tried one isolated reader. It demanded a six-part authentication sequence and started a deletion countdown after the first failed key."
I leaned over it.
No manufacturer mark.
No serial number.
Just a hand-scratched symbol in one corner.
Three short lines inside a circle.
I had seen that symbol before.
Not in a report.
On a wall in Somalia.
The memory hit without warning.
Night heat.
Dust.
A courtyard lit by a single generator lamp.
Three dead men near a broken pickup truck.
A fourth man on his knees.
And that symbol sprayed in white paint beside a doorway.
"Avery?"
Reed's voice pulled me back.
I pointed at the card.
"Where exactly was this?"
"Taped under the bottom shelf of Sullivan's safe."
"Did he know you took it?"
"If he checked the hiding place, yes."
I thought of the parade field.
Sullivan's anger had been too immediate.
Too personal.
Maybe he had not slapped me because he thought I was weak.
Maybe he had been provoking me.
Testing what I knew.
Or creating a public incident large enough to cover another move.
Mercer's secure phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
His face changed.
"Sullivan's gone."
Reed and I answered at the same time.
"What?"
"Security was moving him from the field to administrative holding."
Mercer read the message twice.
"Their vehicle was hit at the east service gate by a maintenance truck."
"Casualties?"
"One officer unconscious. Another has a broken arm."
"Sullivan?"
"Missing."
I was already moving toward the door.
Mercer blocked me.
"No."
"He's escaping."
"Or being extracted."
"Either way, I'm not sitting here."
He looked at the blood still drying on my lip.
"You are now a target with a compromised cover."
"I was a target before breakfast."
Reed picked up the memory card.
"We need to move this first."
Mercer's gaze sharpened.
"Where?"
"Not anywhere on this base."
That answer bothered me because I agreed with it.
We left through a lower service corridor that connected Headquarters Two to an older communications building.
Mercer remained behind to manage the lockdown.
Reed carried the card inside his inner pocket.
I carried no weapon.
That lasted forty seconds.
At a security cabinet near the communications tunnel, Reed keyed in an access code and handed me a compact sidearm.
"You still shoot left when you're angry?"
"I still shoot straight."
"Good enough."
We moved down the concrete passage.
Emergency lights glowed along the floor.
Halfway through, my phone lost signal.
Then the overhead lights went out.
Darkness swallowed us.
Reed stopped instantly.
"That wasn't scheduled."
"I guessed."
A metallic click sounded behind us.
Not loud.
A door latch.
I turned toward the sound.
A shadow moved at the far end of the tunnel.
"Down."
Reed shoved me against the wall as something struck the concrete where my head had been.
No gunshot.
Suppressed weapon.
We dropped behind a maintenance cart.
A second round punched through sheet metal.
Reed drew his pistol.
"Two shooters."
"You saw two?"
"Heard two sets of feet."
That was Thomas Reed.
Even in darkness, he counted everything.
I leaned around the cart and fired once toward the muzzle movement.
A grunt answered.
Footsteps retreated.
Then came a sound I hated.
A hiss.
Reed smelled it at the same time.
"Gas."
A pale mist began crawling from a vent near the ceiling.
We ran.
At the far end of the tunnel, Reed slammed his shoulder into the emergency door.
Locked.
"Move."
I fired twice at the latch.
The metal fractured.
He kicked the door open.
We stumbled into daylight behind the communications building as the first gas cloud reached the threshold.
An alarm finally began to scream across the base.
Not because someone had detected the attack.
Because the gas had tripped an environmental sensor.
Whoever came after us understood the security systems well enough to avoid everything else.
Reed bent over, coughing.
I grabbed his shoulder.
"Card."
His hand went to his jacket.
Then stopped.
The pocket was cut open.
Empty.
Neither of us spoke.
Someone had taken the memory card during the tunnel attack.
Reed's face went white.
"They weren't trying to kill us."
I looked back at the dark doorway.
"No."
A figure lay motionless near the service road fifty yards away.
One of the attackers.
The person I had hit.
We ran toward him.
He wore maintenance coveralls with no insignia.
A suppressor-equipped pistol lay beside his hand.
Reed rolled him over.
I knew the face.
I had seen it less than an hour earlier in formation.
Lieutenant Mason Cole.
Sullivan's operations officer.
His eyes fluttered open.
Blood darkened his shirt near the ribs.
I crouched beside him.
"Where is Sullivan?"
Cole smiled weakly.
"Sullivan isn't running."
"Then where is he?"
His gaze shifted toward Reed.
"Ask your friend."
Reed grabbed his collar.
"Where is Brock?"
Cole started laughing, then winced from the pain.
"You still don't get it."
He looked directly at me.
"Brock was never the man in charge."
His head rolled back against the pavement.
Before I could ask who was, Cole whispered one final sentence.
"The admiral opened the door."
Then he lost consciousness.
Cole's pulse weakened while we waited for the trauma team.
I pressed gauze against his wound and watched his eyes struggle to stay open.
"Who is in charge?"
I asked.
He tried to speak.
No sound came.
Reed crouched opposite me.
"Mason, look at me."
Cole's gaze moved toward him.
"You know me."
A tiny nod.
"Then you know I don't ask twice."
Cole almost smiled.
"Still... dramatic."
"Who runs Meridian?"
The name made Cole flinch.
That was the first confirmation the word mattered.
"Not... runs."
"What?"
"No one runs it."
His breathing hitched.
"People... use it."
That distinction stayed with me.
A network without a single commander was harder to destroy than a conspiracy built around one person.
"Who gave you the tunnel route?"
I asked.
Cole closed his eyes.
"Packet."
"What packet?"
"Morning orders."
Sullivan's briefing packet.
The same route used to deliver the phrase from my classified cover.
"Who handed it to you?"
"Already... on desk."
Reed and I exchanged a look.
No courier.
No witness.
Just paper appearing where it should not exist.
Cole grabbed my wrist suddenly.
His fingers were colder than they should have been.
"Don't trust... clean records."
"What does that mean?"
"If it looks perfect... it isn't."
Then the medical team arrived.
They pushed us back and loaded Cole onto a stretcher.
As he was carried away, I noticed something on his wrist.
A pale strip where a watch had been removed recently.
No watch lay near him.
I checked the ground.
Nothing.
"Thomas."
He followed my gaze.
"Someone took it."
"During the attack?"
"Maybe."
"Why steal a watch?"
Reed looked toward the gas-filled tunnel.
"Because it wasn't a watch."
Base security arrived in force.
Within minutes the area was sealed and every officer in sight had a different theory.
I listened to none of them.
The attacker who had escaped with the memory card knew exactly when the lights would fail, where the gas vents were, how the emergency door locked, and how to get close enough to cut Reed's pocket without either of us noticing.
That was not improvisation.
It was rehearsal.
Mercer arrived furious.
"I told you to stay in the secure room."
"And someone tried to gas us in your secure transit tunnel."
His anger vanished.
"What?"
Reed explained quickly.
Mercer looked toward the communications building.
"That tunnel isn't listed on current security maps."
"Who has the old maps?"
"Facilities. Command security. Historical engineering."
"And Meridian?"
He stared at me.
"You are using that name like it means something."
"It was on the card."
I drew the symbol on my palm with a pen.
Three lines inside a circle.
Mercer's face stayed neutral.
Too neutral.
I saw Reed notice too.
Mercer called for an ambulance escort for Cole.
Before the vehicles moved, I pulled Reed aside.
"He recognized it."
"Yes."
"You knew he would."
"I suspected."
"Another thing you didn't mention."
"You're building quite a list."
"Don't joke."
"I'm not."
His expression turned serious.
"Avery, if Cole is right about clean records, stop trusting anything because it has the right signature."
"Including yours?"
He held my gaze.
"Especially mine."
The ambulance doors closed around Cole.
Four armed escorts took positions around it.
For a moment it looked like the most protected vehicle on base.
Less than twenty minutes later, Cole would be dead inside a locked military clinic.
At that moment, though, all I knew was that the first living attacker we had captured claimed Sullivan was not in charge.
May you like
And the first admiral whose face changed at the Meridian symbol was Nathaniel Mercer.
