Chapter 12 - The Person Above Him
The phone number belonged to Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Vance.
Deputy director of the training program.
The man who had approved my assignment.
Captain Ward read the messages twice.
Hayes swore under his breath.
“Why would Vance care whether I reached the final?”
Ward looked at me. “That’s the right question.”
Vance was pulled from an evaluation meeting twenty minutes later.
Then he saw Ward.
Then the investigators.
Then me.
His annoyance disappeared.
“What is this?”
Ward slid a printed message across the table.
Vance did not touch it.
“You recognize the number?”
He stared at the page.
“What context makes ‘if she gets hurt, she gets hurt’ acceptable?”
Vance’s face hardened.
“Then why send it to Briggs privately?”
No answer.
Ward leaned forward.
“Why did you want Petty Officer Mitchell in the final?”
Vance looked at me.
There it was.
Recognition.
Not from this week.
From before.
I searched my memory.
Then I remembered.
Two years earlier.
A failed equipment inspection.
A senior officer who had tried to pressure my team into signing a readiness sheet we knew was inaccurate.
I had refused.
That officer had been Marcus Vance.
“You remember me,” I said.
His jaw tightened.
Ward looked between us.
“What happened?”
I answered.
“He asked my team to certify gear that had not passed inspection.”
Vance snapped, “That is not what happened.”
“I wrote the refusal memo.”
Ward turned toward Vance.
“Is that true?”
He said nothing.
I remembered the investigation that followed. The equipment had been replaced. Nobody had been hurt. I had assumed the matter ended there.
Apparently Vance had not.
He finally looked at me.
Hayes coughed into his fist.
Ward did not smile.
Vance stood.
“This interview is over.”
Two investigators stepped in front of the door.
Ward’s voice became flat.
“No, Colonel.”
“It’s just beginning.”
The new page showed seven names.
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Every one of them had filed safety concerns during the last two years.
Every one had later been removed from elite training assignments.
