Chapter 9 - The Candidates Who Vanished
Ward contacted several former candidates.
Some refused to speak.
Others had left the Army in shame.
Caleb Dunn, the sniper named in Thomas Cole’s notebook, was still alive.
He ran a small hunting supply store in New Mexico.
When Ward reached him by secure video, he stared at Avery’s notebook for a long time.
“Thomas kept it.”
Avery leaned toward the screen.
“You knew my grandfather?”
“He tried to defend me.”
Dunn explained that after his disqualification, Thomas requested an independent target inspection.
Raines blocked it.
Then ammunition disappeared from the evidence locker.
Thomas filed another complaint.
His promotion was delayed.
Dunn was discharged after a disciplinary hearing built on claims that he threatened an instructor.
He had not.
Years later, Sentinel Meridian contacted him.
They offered employment if he withdrew his complaint.
He refused.
Dunn then revealed something no record showed.
Another candidate accepted the offer.
That man became one of Sentinel’s first employees.
He later died during an overseas operation that was never officially acknowledged.
The company paid his family under a secrecy agreement.
Raines had not merely redirected careers.
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He had supplied highly trained soldiers to dangerous private missions hidden from military oversight.
👉 Avery’s false score was part of a pipeline that turned Army snipers into disposable private assets.
