Chapter 12 - THE SECOND SIX
The canteen door log produced six entries between 1:21 and 1:34 a.m.
Not six people.
Six badge swipes.
Same credential.
A contractor access card assigned to:
Fort Merritt Readiness Systems Support
No individual name.
Shared contractor badge.
Another terrible practice.
Vendor:
Helix Training Solutions.
The company maintained Iron Lantern's scoring software and observation systems.
Mason knew them.
Three civilian technicians rotated through exercises.
One of them had administrator access to the training server Jonah copied.
That changed the investigation.
The second six meals had nothing to do with hiding Rachel's squad alive underground.
Basement Two had been used again after the squad left.
By someone else.
For another group.
Grant recovered handwritten labels from the six later trays.
No names.
Only letters:
R1
R2
R3
R4
R5
R6
Mason recognized the format.
“Red Team.”
Grant looked up.
“What?”
Iron Lantern used six-person opposition cells during overnight exercise play.
Red Team observers tested units with controlled disruptions.
Their schedules were normally recorded.
No Red Team was scheduled in Basement Two that night.
Then Mason remembered something Cross said two months earlier:
Keep the Red people off the roster. Units behave differently when they know evaluators are inside the wire.
Mason assumed Cross meant conceal observer identities until after exercise.
Normal enough.
Maybe not.
Grant asked:
“Who selected Red Team personnel?”
“Cross.”
“Vendor involved?”
“Sometimes.”
“Could Helix employees participate?”
“Observers, yes.”
Then Rachel produced something new.
Jonah had sent her a photograph one month earlier.
Six men and women wearing red observer armbands inside an empty motor pool.
Caption:
These people aren't on the exercise book.
Rachel had saved it.
Never understood why it mattered.
One face belonged to a Helix technician.
Another—
Captain Nolan Price.
Price had told CID he only became involved after Cross called him the night Echo Squad disappeared.
The photograph proved Price had already been participating in an off-book observer group.
He corrected his statement.
Again.
“Yes, I worked Red Team.”
“Why omit it?”
“Because I thought you were asking about the disappearance.”
Grant stared.
People loved deciding which truth belonged to which question.
Then Price explained.
Cross ran an unofficial “adversarial validation cell.”
Six people.
They introduced disruptions not shown to normal exercise control.
Purpose:
Test whether units responded naturally.
Problem:
Because the cell was hidden, some disruptions later became indistinguishable from real failures.
Exactly what Echo Squad had discovered.
The six second trays were for Red Team.
They had assembled in Basement Two after midnight.
Why?
To review what Echo Squad found.
Not authorized.
Who led that meeting?
Price looked down.
“Major Cross.”
That placed Cross back in the basement after 1:30 a.m.
Long after he told investigators he had gone home.
And possibly after Jonah vanished.
Then Grant asked:
“Was Jonah there?”
Price hesitated.
“No.”
“Certain?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone ask where he was?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Cross.
“What did he say?”
Price looked uncomfortable.
Cross asked the room:
Which one of you let Vale see the raw file?
One Red Team member answered:
He didn't need us. Somebody inside Helix sent it to him.
May you like
The missing soldier had not discovered the deepest evidence alone.
Someone inside the contractor had been feeding him information.
