Chapter 10 - The Shadow in the Pentagon
The red text on the transceiver screen began to dissolve into a cascade of meaningless garbage characters as an automated remote wipe protocol executed from the other end of the line.
“They’re burning the server logs from Washington,” I muttered, frantically hammering the override keys on the console to intercept the data stream before it vanished entirely.
“Cut the hardline! Pull the cable!” Vance shouted, grabbing my shoulder. “If they’re wiping the remote nodes, they’re going to saturate this local link with a surge payload to fry the hardware!”
I didn't hesitate. I yanked the tactical data cable free from the port just as a violent spark hissed from the van’s central console, melting the plastic housing in a puff of acrid black smoke. The monitor flickered once, flashed a brilliant, blinding white, and then died completely, plunging the interior of the van into dead darkness.
We stood in the quiet pine woods, breathing heavily as the distant sirens of state police backup finally began wailing down the highway toward the farmhouse.
“You got the trace?” Vance asked, his voice low and tense in the dim light.
I popped the side panel of the stolen lockbox and extracted the secure data card, slipping it safely into the inner pocket of my Navy SEAL jacket.
“I got enough,” I said, my jaw set as I looked back toward the burning skeleton of the farmhouse in the distance. “Deputy Director Sterling didn't just authorize the surveillance on my grandfather’s property. He’s the one who signed off on Project Janus twenty-five years ago—the same operation that ruined my family and labeled my father a ghost.”
Vance sighed deeply, running a hand over his face as he looked at the captured operative now being secured in the back of the Marshal’s transport SUV rolling up through the tree line.
“Taking down a local police chief for fraud is one thing, Commander,” Vance warned grimly. “Taking down a sitting Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency inside the Pentagon is a war you won't fight in a courtroom.”
“Good thing I’m not planning on using a courtroom,” I replied, turning my back on the smoldering woods and walking toward the road. “I’m taking this straight to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out. An incoming call from an unrecognized, restricted Washington D.C. area code.
I swiped the screen and brought it to my ear without breaking my stride.
“Commander Merrick,” a cool, unbothered voice spoke through the speaker before I could utter a single word. “You’ve made quite a mess of my local assets today. But before you drive yourself to the Pentagon to deliver that data card, you might want to look at the windshield of your truck parked across the road.”
May you like
I stopped dead in my tracks, my eyes scanning the distant dirt road where my weathered Ford truck sat parked beneath the oak tree.
Tucked neatly beneath the driver’s side wiper blade was a plain, cream-colored envelope—bearing the exact same wax seal as the summons that had started this entire nightmare twelve years ago.
