Chapter 5 - The Termination Roster
Mara locked herself inside an isolated analysis room.
The first folders contained financial records.
Payments moved through maritime insurers, security consultants, and logistics vendors. The companies appeared unrelated until she mapped their owners.
They all led back to a foreign procurement broker.
The second folder contained classified submarine routes.
Some were historical.
Others were current.
Then Mara found a directory dated seven years earlier.
Her father’s final mission.
She opened it.
Names filled the screen.
Personnel killed after compromised operations.
Beside each name was a payment amount.
Daniel Keene appeared halfway down the list.
Mara touched the screen before she could stop herself.
For years, her father’s death had been described as an operational tragedy.
Mercer had reduced it to a transaction.
Another file opened automatically.
CURRENT TERMINATIONS.
Colonel Nathan Drake’s name appeared first.
He had accessed Mercer’s private room.
He was no longer useful.
Corporal Travis Holt appeared beneath him.
Mara stared.
Holt had searched her locker because Mercer ordered him to.
But Mercer also intended to eliminate him.
Holt had become a disposable witness.
At the bottom of the roster was Mara’s name.
Beside it was the start time of the live-fire exercise.
The plan became clear.
Mercer would stage three deaths during controlled weapons activity.
A civilian analyst caught in the wrong zone.
A colonel killed by a training malfunction.
A corporal blamed for breaching safety procedures.
The dead aggressor.
The dead witness.
May you like
The dead investigator.
Then the locked door handle slowly began to turn.
