Chapter 6 - The Red Truck
Luke hadn't mentioned the red truck to me. At least, not in words.
I replayed the message five times while Nora watched my face. Behind Luke's voice was a faint double beep—a vehicle reversing signal with an uneven pitch. I remembered hearing it across the valley just before the first shots.
“That's not a cargo truck,” I said. “It's the mobile signal station.”
Nora frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means someone brought equipment capable of imitating our team radio. They didn't stumble onto us. They were listening.”
Calder brought in Commander Leah Brooks, a communications officer who had spent years tracing compromised military networks. Leah didn't pretend a beep alone proved anything. She asked for the original file, checked its date, and isolated the background sound.
“There are two transmissions under his voice,” she said after an hour. “One matches a standard evacuation channel. The other uses a contractor frequency.”
“Which contractor?” Calder asked.
Leah tapped her screen. “Meridian Field Systems. They supported the mission with communications gear. Their contract was renewed six months after Ridge Four.”
I remembered the man in the tan jacket. The hard case. Thorne's empty helicopter seats.
“Show me their project managers,” I said.
Leah opened an old personnel directory. I pointed at a man with gray eyes and an ordinary smile. Daniel Rusk. The man who had met Thorne beneath the rotor blades.
Calder stared at the photograph. “Rusk briefed me after the operation.”
“What did he say?”
“That our team had been ambushed by a local patrol.”
“He lied to you.”
Calder's face hardened. “Or I accepted what was easiest to believe.”
Leah received an alert before she could open the next file. Someone had just used an administrator credential to delete the Ridge Four equipment logs. The deletion originated inside the same naval facility where the hearing was underway.
“Can you stop it?” I asked.
“Maybe. But the credential belongs to a person who's supposed to be dead.”
May you like
She turned the laptop toward us.
The account owner was Owen Park.
