Chapter 10 - THE MAN INSIDE JSOC
The name was Major General Stephen Rourke.
Director of Joint Staff Security.
Former special operations officer.
Decorated combat commander.
Frequent television guest.
And according to Richard's ledger, recipient of eleven payments over eight years through Harrow Logistics.
Vance stared at the page.
"I've known him for fifteen years."
I folded the paper again.
"That doesn't make him innocent."
"I know."
His voice made it clear he hated knowing.
Rourke had been one of the three people aware Vance was retrieving me from the auditorium.
He had also participated in the internal review that gave Black Lantern access to Site Echo.
That meant Richard may not have hacked our compartment.
He had someone inside it.
My mother sat at the kitchen table upstairs, silent.
Tyler paced.
I stood at the window watching Cole's vehicles disappear down the road.
"If Rourke knows we found the ledger, he will move," I said.
Vance nodded.
"He may already have."
"Can we contact anyone?"
"Black Lantern channels are frozen."
"Personal channels?"
"Compromised."
Tyler stopped pacing.
"So you're all unemployed now?"
I looked at him.
"You are one sentence away from being handcuffed to the refrigerator."
He raised both hands.
"Just checking morale."
I turned back to Vance.
"We need someone outside Cole's chain."
"Inspector General?"
"Too slow."
"FBI?"
"Cole will frame it as a classified jurisdiction dispute."
"Congressional oversight?"
"Senator Cole sits on the committee."
Every legitimate path ran through someone Richard's network could influence.
That was how systems became corrupt without looking corrupt.
No single lock had to be broken if you owned enough keys.
Tyler stopped near the counter.
"What about the President?"
Vance stared at him.
"What about the moon?"
Tyler shrugged.
"Just thinking outside the chain."
I almost dismissed it.
Then I remembered the mission authority inside the original red folder.
Black Lantern did not report through ordinary Army channels.
Its deepest contingency authority rested with the National Security Advisor and the President's emergency action staff.
But our access had been cut before we could invoke it.
Unless there was an offline route.
"Vance."
He looked at me.
"The red folder."
"What about it?"
"Why steel mesh?"
His expression changed.
The folder was designed to block electronic scanning.
But it also contained a physical authentication strip embedded in the spine.
A fallback used when networks were compromised.
"The continuity seal," he said.
I nodded.
"Can it still authenticate us?"
"If Cole hasn't physically revoked the root key."
Tyler looked between us.
"English?"
"There may be one door they forgot to close," I said.
The problem was that the folder we had carried into the house was a decoy.
The real red folder was hidden at Hangar Six.
Inside a ghost logistics node now controlled by Pentagon security.
Tyler smiled slowly.
"Good thing I know another way in."
I hated the sentence before he finished it.
"No."
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"If it starts with you knowing a secret entrance, the answer is no."
"Dad took me there when I was seventeen."
That got my attention.
"Why?"
"Because he wanted me to feel important."
Of course.
Richard had given Tyler access to secrets as a substitute for earning anything.
"There is a service tunnel from an old fuel control room," Tyler said.
Vance looked skeptical.
"Operational?"
"It was six months ago."
I stared.
"You used it recently."
Tyler looked away.
"Maybe."
"For what?"
"The archive package."
I closed my eyes.
"You stole it through Richard's own tunnel."
"Irony matters."
Vance almost smiled.
Almost.
We left my mother at a safe location under protection from two officers Vance trusted personally.
I did not tell her where we were going.
Trust had to be rebuilt in inches.
The fuel control room had been abandoned since the early 2000s.
The door was hidden behind overgrown fencing near the edge of Pope Field.
Tyler knew exactly which lock to lift.
Inside, a narrow stairwell descended beneath the concrete floor.
The tunnel smelled like rust and damp earth.
Old pipes ran overhead.
We moved with flashlights covered to reduce spill.
Halfway through, Tyler stopped.
"What?" I whispered.
He pointed ahead.
A new cable ran along the wall.
Fiber.
Someone still used the tunnel.
We followed it.
The line entered a junction box beneath Hangar Six.
Vance opened the panel.
Three active network taps were mounted inside.
One carried Pentagon security traffic.
One carried local base security.
The third had no label.
I touched the housing.
"Ghost network."
Vance nodded.
Richard had not merely maintained the old tunnel.
He had wired it into modern command systems.
We reached the service hatch beneath the node.
Voices sounded above.
Two men.
Then a third.
Vance lifted the panel a fraction.
I looked through.
Pentagon security officers were cataloging evidence.
At the far table stood Major General Stephen Rourke.
The leak himself.
He held our real red folder.
Martin Cole stood beside him.
Richard Bradley stood across from them.
Free.
Unrestrained.
Smiling.
Tyler saw him and went rigid.
I gripped his sleeve before he made a sound.
Above us, Richard opened the red folder.
"Where is the continuity strip?" he asked.
Rourke examined the spine.
"Still intact."
Cole looked nervous.
"Destroy it."
Richard shook his head.
"Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because Claire may have triggered the dead-man protocol."
I looked at Vance.
There was no dead-man protocol.
Richard thought there was.
Good.
Rourke lowered his voice.
"We need to find Daniel before midnight."
Richard's expression changed.
"We will."
"And the ship?"
"Already delayed."
Cole folded his arms.
"Your son is missing too."
Richard's face hardened.
"Tyler is irrelevant."
Beside me, Tyler stopped breathing for a second.
I felt his entire body go still.
Richard continued.
"He has always been weak."
Tyler's eyes closed.
Thirty-three years of favoritism collapsed in one sentence.
Richard had never loved him more.
He had only found him easier to control.
Rourke asked, "And Claire?"
Richard smiled.
"Claire is different."
I leaned closer to the gap.
"Different how?" Cole asked.
Richard looked almost proud.
"She has Daniel's brain."
My stomach tightened.
"That's why I spent years keeping her angry at me."
Cole frowned.
"You deliberately antagonized her?"
"Of course."
Richard's smile widened.
"Angry people look at the person hurting them."
He tapped the folder.
"They don't look at what that person is protecting."
I felt something colder than rage.
Richard was saying my childhood abuse had been strategy.
Every insult.
Every comparison.
Every humiliation.
Not merely cruelty.
Camouflage.
He wanted me focused on proving myself to him instead of questioning him.
Rourke looked toward the door.
"We should move."
Richard closed the folder.
"First, we erase Black Lantern."
Vance's hand tightened on the hatch.
Cole asked, "How?"
Richard turned toward a server rack.
"With Claire's biometrics."
My blood went cold.
They had captured more than enough in the auditorium.
Rourke inserted a device into the server.
A screen lit up.
BLACK LANTERN PERSONNEL INDEX.
Tyler mouthed one word.
Run.
But I did not run.
I pulled out the offline recorder Vance carried and pressed record.
May you like
Above us, Richard Bradley began explaining exactly how he planned to make my classified team disappear.
