Chapter 5 - The Numbers That Were Too Perfect
The investigation was larger than intimidation.
Eleanor had discovered that the USS Resolute’s readiness records had been manipulated for nearly two years.
Incomplete repairs were marked finished.
Training failures were changed to passes.
Medical restrictions disappeared from deployment lists.
Overtime records were altered to conceal exhausted crews.
Vance justified each change as necessary for operational confidence.
But several alterations had financial consequences.
Repair contracts were awarded to Meridian Naval Systems, a private contractor managed by Vance’s brother-in-law.
The company billed the Navy for replacement components that never arrived.
Existing components were repainted, relabeled, and entered into inventory as new.
When junior engineers questioned the discrepancies, Vance accused them of lacking command perspective.
Eleanor found duplicate serial numbers.
False delivery confirmations.
Invoices approved during periods when the ship was deployed beyond the contractor’s service range.
The faulty pressure regulator had supposedly been replaced six months earlier.
It was still the original unit.
The replacement money had moved through two subcontractors and disappeared.
Vance had not merely hidden unsafe conditions to protect his career.
He had created some of those conditions through fraud.
The perfect readiness reports protected the contractor.
The contractor’s inflated bills funded accounts connected to Vance’s family.
Every threatened sailor represented another person who had noticed part of the structure.
That was why complaints vanished.
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That was why transfers followed.
And that was why fear had become the most carefully maintained system aboard the ship.
