PART 6
“I tried to talk to Webb,” Hurley said. “He told me you were under investigation.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No.”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
He exhaled shakily.
“The ledger.”
There it was.
Three weeks earlier, I found a hidden payment chain inside a logistics server.
Fuel deliveries billed twice.
Ghost patrols logged in dead sectors.
Drone parts ordered for drones that never existed.
Millions moving through shell vendors tied to Kestrel Ridge.
At the center of it sat Webb.
Not alone.
Men like him never stole small.
They built systems.
Webb didn’t command an operation.
He managed an empire.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Back at forward staging,” Hurley said. “Webb said you went missing during movement. He’s already filing the report.”
Of course he was.
“What does the report say?”
His voice cracked.
“That you broke from formation, refused orders, and may have defected with classified equipment.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The grave.
Not in the desert.
On paper.
Webb wasn’t just trying to kill me.
He was trying to destroy my name before my body cooled.
“Hurley,” I said, “can you access the staging uplink?”
“Yes.”
“Good. In ninety seconds, you’re going to receive a file. Forward it to Colonel Ostroski, Inspector General, CID, and every command address I marked priority red.”
Hurley went quiet.
May you like
“If I do that, Webb will ruin me.”
“No, Sergeant,” I said. “If you don’t, he’ll own you.”
