Chapter 3 - The Ghost Beneath the Base
The control room switched to underground sensors.
For several seconds, every display remained clear.
Then Hannah pointed toward a faint thermal line beneath Hangar Four.
“There.”
A technician enlarged the image.
A maintenance transport moved through a sealed service tunnel.
No identification signal.
No authorized crew.
It carried a heavy cylindrical container.
Calloway looked toward Pike.
“Who authorized tunnel access?”
Pike answered too quickly.
“No one.”
Hannah noticed.
“So you knew the tunnel was sealed.”
“I supervise installation security.”
“Then you know only three command badges can open it.”
Calloway’s gaze sharpened.
“Whose?”
“Mine,” Pike said. “Yours. And the base commander’s.”
Hannah lifted the identification badge taken from her.
“And hers.”
Pike’s jaw tightened.
“This badge was declared destroyed.”
“No,” Hannah said. “Someone used it for three years.”
The transport accelerated beneath the hangar.
Calloway ordered a security lockdown.
Blast doors began sealing across the underground network.
The unidentified vehicle stopped.
Then reversed.
It was reacting to the lockdown in real time.
Someone was monitoring the control room.
Hannah turned toward the personnel behind the glass.
“Kill every internal camera.”
Pike stepped in front of her.
“You don’t give orders here.”
Calloway’s voice cut through the room.
“She does until those six people are safe.”
Hannah looked at the communications station.
“Switch Ellis to analog emergency frequency.”
The controller complied.
The pilot’s voice returned through heavy static.
Hannah instructed him to ignore his navigation display and follow magnetic headings manually.
“You have open ocean beneath you,” she said. “Descend to twelve hundred feet.”
“My system shows mountains.”
“There are no mountains east of this base.”
A long pause followed.
Then Ellis said, “Visual contact with water.”
The control room exhaled.
The aircraft was safe for the moment.
Hannah turned back to the tunnel map.
“The transport is not trying to reach the hangar.”
Calloway followed its projected route.
It led toward the communications vault.
“What is inside the container?” he asked.
Hannah’s expression became grim.
“A mobile signal injector.”
Pike frowned.
“That technology doesn’t exist.”
“It did on Project Nightglass.”
The name silenced Calloway.
Nightglass had been a classified communications program terminated after Hannah’s reported death.
Pike studied the admiral’s face.
“You know what she’s talking about?”
Calloway did not answer.
Hannah did.
“Nightglass could replace every trusted military signal inside a closed network.”
Calloway looked at the false aircraft track.
“The ghost return.”
“Yes.”
“And the guidance failure?”
“Yes.”
Pike folded his arms.
“Convenient that only the dead commander understands the attack.”
Hannah turned toward him.
“Convenient that the man accusing me signed the tunnel-access report.”
She pointed to the red file on the table.
A document protruded from beneath her casualty record.
May you like
Pike’s signature appeared at the bottom.
👉 Pike had approved maintenance inside the sealed tunnel twelve hours before Hannah was captured there.
