Chapter 4 - The Drive in the Maintenance Corridor
At 2300 hours, Mara entered the service corridor beneath the western training complex.
A red maintenance light pulsed above a locked steel door.
Colonel Nathan Drake stepped from the darkness.
A fresh cut marked the skin beneath his eye.
“You were followed?” he asked.
“No. Were you?”
Drake ignored the question.
He removed a small encrypted drive from inside his jacket.
“I pulled this from Mercer’s private communications room.”
Mara took it.
“What’s on it?”
“Payment records. Deployment files. Operational routes.”
“That’s enough to open an investigation.”
“Not if Mercer controls the first report.”
Drake looked toward the corridor entrance.
“He’s preparing another transfer.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
The next day’s live-fire urban exercise would involve hundreds of personnel, encrypted radios, simulated infrastructure, ammunition movement, and multiple command channels.
Controlled chaos.
The perfect environment to hide a data exchange.
Or a death.
“Where will the transfer happen?” Mara asked.
“Inside the exercise network.”
Drake’s voice lowered.
“He plans to upload the file as tactical telemetry. A foreign receiver will extract it before the system archives.”
“Who else knows?”
“Holt knows enough to be dangerous.”
Mara looked down at the drive.
“Holt searched my locker.”
“Then Mercer believes you already have this.”
May you like
Drake stepped backward into the darkness.
“Decode it tonight. Tomorrow may be too late.”
