Chapter 6 - The Missing Manifests
The transit quarters at Area 22 were Spartan—a cinderblock cube containing a single metal bed frame, a thin mattress, a particle-board desk, and a small refrigerator that hummed like an angry hornet.
Bruno was lying on a double-thick fleece blanket I had spread across the floor. His left front leg was encased in royal blue fiberglass, the cast extending from just below his elbow down to his middle paw pads, leaving only his black claws exposed. He was groggy from the mild sedative Doc Miller had administered, his head resting heavily on my field bag, but his tail thumped once—a solid, muffled *thud* against the floor—every time I walked past him.
"Good boy," I murmured, setting a bowl of fresh water beside his muzzle. He lapped at it twice, then let out a heavy sigh, his eyelids drooping. "Sleep it off, partner. We’re on the high ground now."
I sat at the particle-board desk, opening the ruggedized military Panasonic Toughbook that Hayes had delivered thirty minutes earlier via his most trusted staff sergeant.
The screen illuminated my face with cold, blue light.
The system was running on a secure SIPRNet connection routed through a satellite uplink in San Diego. On the left side of the screen was the inventory manifest for the 5th Marine Regiment’s forward logistics cache: three hundred crates of Generation 4 AN/PVS-31A night-vision systems, manufactured by Mercer Defense Technologies and delivered via commercial transport four weeks ago.
On the right side of the screen were the export customs logs from the Port of Long Beach.
I scrolled through the line items, my fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic cadence on the edge of the desk.
It was an old scheme, crude and arrogant, the kind of theft that could only be executed by someone who believed their family name made them invisible to the law.
When the shipment arrived at the Camp Pendleton railhead, three crates had been marked as "Damaged in Transit / Salt-Water Infiltration" and diverted to the secondary armory behind Mercer’s barracks for "salvage and parts harvesting." The diversion had been signed by two people: Corporal Tyler Mercer, as receiving armorer, and Colonel Bradley Briggs, as logistics oversight authority.
Only the crates hadn't been salvaged.
According to the private shipping container manifests I’d pulled from a shell company registered in Carson City, Nevada, three heavy wooden crates with the exact serial ranges of those "damaged" units had been loaded onto a flatbed truck forty-eight hours after arrival and driven directly to an industrial warehouse outside Ensenada, Mexico.
Mercer wasn't just skimming from his dad’s company. He was selling military-grade dual-tube night vision directly to the cartels.
And Colonel Bradley Briggs was either the stupidest regimental commander in the history of the Marine Corps, or he was getting a ten percent cut wired into an offshore account in Grand Cayman to look the other way while he waited for his first star.
A soft knock came at the door. Three raps, followed by a two-second pause, then two more.
*Hayes.*
I rose, unlatched the heavy deadbolt, and pulled the door inward.
Sergeant Major Hayes stepped inside, accompanied by a woman in her late thirties wearing the uniform of a Navy Lieutenant Commander. Her hair was pulled back in a regulation bun so tight it seemed to stretch her temples, and she carried a thick leather portfolio tucked under her arm.
"General," Hayes said, coming to attention.
"Stand easy, Raymond," I said, stepping aside. "Shut the door and throw the bolt."
The female officer stepped forward, her eyes darting first to Bruno—whose ear twitched at the sound of her heels—and then to me. She snapped a sharp, textbook salute.
"Lieutenant Commander Sarah Lin, ma'am. Staff Judge Advocate, assigned to Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Southwest Field Office."
I returned the salute with a nod. "Have you reviewed the customs logs, Commander?"
"I have, General," Lin said, opening her portfolio and laying three sets of red-stamped documents on the particle-board desk beside my laptop. "It’s worse than we thought. The diversion isn't limited to the optics. We cross-referenced the ammunition staging manifests for Range 214. Corporal Mercer’s squad was signed out for forty thousand rounds of 5.56 green-tip penetrator ammunition for last week's night qualification. The range report says all forty thousand rounds were expended."
"And the lead traps behind the targets?" I asked.
Lin’s mouth tightened into a hard, razor-thin line. "The environmental recovery teams went out there yesterday afternoon with metal detectors. They found less than five thousand rounds' worth of lead in the berms. Thirty-five thousand rounds of combat-grade ammunition walked off this base in the back of civilian supply vans over the weekend."
"Mercer’s father?" Hayes asked, his voice thick with suppressed fury.
"We don't think Conrad Mercer knows about the ammo," Lin replied. "Conrad’s a crook, but he’s an institutional crook—he steals through cost-plus contracts and inflated R&D line items. Tyler is running a street-level supply depot for the Sinaloa New Generation network. He’s using his father’s political protection as an umbrella to keep base security from searching his trucks."
I looked down at Bruno. He had shifted onto his belly, his chin resting on his blue cast, his dark eyes watching Commander Lin with calm assessment.
"And Colonel Briggs?" I asked.
"Briggs has called an emergency Article 32 preliminary hearing for zero-nine-hundred tomorrow morning," Lin said. "He thinks he’s getting ahead of this. He’s convening an informal command inquiry to examine what he calls 'The Galley Disturbance' involving Corporal Mercer. He plans to find Mercer innocent of any misconduct, issue a formal reprimand against Denise Alvarez for filing a false official report, and submit an administrative exclusion order against you to the Provost Marshal before noon."
"He doesn't know who she is," Hayes added with a dark grin. "I kept the lid on it, just like you ordered, General. Briggs thinks you’re an old retired handler named Victoria Vance who used to serve under you. He thinks you’re a ghost with no teeth."
I walked over to the bed, reached beneath the thin mattress, and pulled out my service dress blue blouse. The heavy wool fabric was dark as midnight, pristine, without a single wrinkle. On the shoulders sat two wide, five-pointed silver stars, and across the left breast were nine rows of ribbons—the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with two combat 'V's, the Purple Heart with two gold stars, and the Navy Cross.
I ran my fingers across the gold frame of the Navy Cross.
"Let Colonel Briggs convene his hearing," I said softly. "Let him invite Tyler Mercer in his dress blues. Let him invite Tyler’s father. In fact, Commander Lin..."
"Ma'am?"
"Send a priority transmission to Conrad Mercer’s private office in Washington right now. Use the Inspector General’s official clearance code. Tell him his son is facing charges that could result in thirty years at Fort Leavenworth, and if he wants to see him before he’s in shackles, he should be in the courtroom at zero-nine-hundred."
Hayes chuckled—a low, rumbling sound that shook his barrel chest. "The old man will bring his private jet. He’ll be here by sunrise."
May you like
"I know," I said, looking back at the computer screen where the names of Mercer’s accomplices were glowing in the dark. "I want them all in the same room when the walls come down."
***
