Chapter 4 - The House Built on Lies
The tactical SUV tore through the perimeter roads of Fort Bragg, its siren screaming a low, warbling wail that cleared traffic before us. Through the tinted, rain-streaked windows, the pine trees blurred into streaks of dark green and charcoal.
Sitting in the passenger seat, I checked the tactical tablet synced to the base's internal surveillance grid. Every camera feed surrounding the airfield was flickering or looped—a classic electronic warfare signature. Aegis Vanguard had brought jammers.
My mind drifted for a fraction of a second to my mother.
Sarah Vance. She had been a brilliant woman, an intelligence analyst who had spent her life serving quietly in the shadows. When she died of cancer five years ago, she had made me promise not to let Richard destroy himself—or her legacy. *“Richard is hollow, Morgan,”* she had whispered from her hospice bed, her fingers weak and paper-thin in mine. *“He craves the spotlight because he has nothing inside. Watch him. Promise me you’ll watch him.”*
I had promised.
When Richard took command at Bragg, he didn't mourn her. Within six months, he had replaced her memory with luxury cars, expensive suits, and a desperate pursuit of his fourth star. But a fourth star required money—the kind of money needed to entertain senators, lobby defense contractors, and buy influence in Washington’s corrupt circles.
A military salary, even a general's, couldn't fund that lifestyle.
So Richard sold out. He didn't sell physical blueprints or meet foreign spies in dark alleys like a Cold War traitor; he did it the modern way. He rubber-stamped logistics requisitions. He created bureaucratic blind spots. He categorized multi-million-dollar experimental weapon systems as "damaged in transit" or "expended in live-fire exercises," while private contractors spirited the hardware out through supply chains he controlled.
And the entire time, he made sure I was kept under his thumb.
He had placed me in Room 404 intentionally. He thought that by burying me in paperwork, he could keep an eye on me. He thought that by humiliating me, he would crush my self-esteem so thoroughly that I would never dare ask questions about the irregularities crossing my desk.
He never realized that the Defense Intelligence Agency had placed me there *first*.
The encrypted radio on Brody’s tactical vest crackled with static. "Sierra One to Command. We have visual on the target aircraft. C-17 is ignoring tower instructions. She's taxiing toward Runway Two-Three-Left. Repeat, bird is moving!"
"Driver, floor it!" Brody barked.
The SUV surged forward, the speedometer climbing past ninety miles per hour as we bypassed the security gates leading to Green Ramp. The striped barrier arm shattered against our reinforced bull-bar in an explosion of fiberglass and sparks.
Up ahead, through the mist of the Carolina drizzle, the massive silhouette of the Boeing C-17 Globemaster III loomed like a leviathan. Its four turbofan engines screamed at high idle, the heat shimmer distorting the gray tarmac behind it.
Surrounding the aircraft were three matte-black Chevy Suburbans, their doors open, with men in sterile combat gear and ballistic helmets setting up a hasty security perimeter around the mobile boarding stairs.
"They're boarding the flight crew!" Brody shouted over the engine roar. "If that ramp closes, we can't stop them without shooting down a fifty-million-dollar airframe!"
"Ram the boarding stairs," I ordered, chambering a round into my sidearm.
May you like
The driver didn't hesitate. "Brace!"
***
