Chapter 11 - The Descent at Wiesbaden
The Gulfstream C-37B cut through the dense European cloud bank, its twin Rolls-Royce turbofans whining as the pilots banked hard toward Lucius D. Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden. Outside the reinforced oval window, the Rhine Valley was bathed in a bleak November gray. Inside the pressurized cabin, the glow of four encrypted tactical displays illuminated Colonel Nathan Vance’s weathered face.
I sat across from him at the polished mahogany conference table, my fingertips resting against the matte-black chassis of a ruggedized forensic terminal. On the screen, the data stream from the Defense Logistics Agency server continued to pulse with red flags.
"Arthur Vance," Nathan murmured, his voice low against the hum of the cabin. He reached into his tactical vest, pulling out a battered dog tag on a beaded chain, identical to the set I had worn under my blouse since childhood. "Your father was my uncle, Claire. When his Black Hawk went down in the jungle outside Colón during Operation Just Cause in eighty-nine, they told us the wreckage burned for three days. No dental records. No remains. Just a flag folded three times and handed to your mother."
"And two years later," I said, feeling the familiar chill settle behind my ribs, "Richard Bradley moved into our house, wore my father’s dress uniform cut down to his own tailor’s measurements, and told everyone who would listen that Arthur Vance was a reckless cowboy who got his crew killed."
"Richard lied about a lot of things," Nathan said grimly. "We proved that when we tore off his three stars in front of two hundred officers at Bragg. But this exfiltration hash... Claire, look at the packet headers."
He tapped the screen. The exfiltrated data hadn't been pulled through a standard civilian IP address or a brute-force cyber assault. It had used an ancient 56-bit DES algorithm layered beneath a proprietary JSOC bypass cipher—one developed by Arthur Vance during the height of the Cold War. Even more disturbing was the physical access token: a titanium CAC card encoded with Arthur’s original service number, swiped at a restricted subterranean terminal in Building 1023 in Wiesbaden exactly four hours ago.
"Someone walked past armed gate guards, used biometric verification from thirty-four years ago, and walked out with twenty terabytes of classified Cold War logistics files," Nathan said.
The plane’s wheels slammed onto the tarmac with a sharp jolt, the reverse thrusters roaring. Within minutes, the aircraft rolled directly into a hardened aircraft shelter. The hydraulic door groaned shut behind us before the cabin pressure seal released.
Waiting on the concrete floor was a lone figure in an olive-drab field jacket: Chief Warrant Officer 4 Marcus Reyes, the senior European theater logistics investigator. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, his breath misting in the freezing German air.
As Nathan and I descended the air stairs, Reyes didn't bother saluting. He held out an amber-tinted thumb drive inside a Faraday envelope.
"Director Bradley," Reyes said, his eyes scanning my face with uncomfortable scrutiny. "Or should I say Director Vance? I pulled the terminal footage before the garrison commander could wipe the cache."
"Did you get a face?" I asked, taking the envelope.
"See for yourself," Reyes replied, leading us toward an armored Suburban idling by the hangar wall. "Whoever he is, he knows the layout of Wiesbaden better than the base engineers. And he left something behind on the server console."
"What?" Nathan demanded.
May you like
Reyes stopped at the vehicle's rear door, looking directly into my eyes. "A physical note, handwritten on official Department of the Army letterhead dated December nineteenth, 1989. Addressed to 'Little Bird.'"
My breath hitched in my throat. *Little Bird* was the only name my father had ever called me.
