Chapter 4 - The Name Behind the Broadcast
The impossible signal came from Nevada.
Mara, Mercer, and a federal security team reached the abandoned installation before dawn.
Officially, the base had been empty for six years.
Someone had been maintaining it.
Fresh tire tracks crossed the dust.
Power ran through underground systems.
Security cameras tracked them.
Mara used Rourke's key.
A hidden elevator opened beneath Hangar Four.
They descended.
At the bottom waited a sealed chamber.
Inside stood an aircraft beneath a gray cover.
Mara pulled it away.
Raven Six.
Her Raven Six.
She touched the fuselage.
"How?"
Mercer looked equally stunned.
"The records said it was dismantled."
A monitor activated.
General Conrad Hale appeared.
Seventy years old.
Silver-haired.
Calm.
"Mara."
She stepped toward the screen.
"Where's Rourke?"
"Alive, last I checked."
"You tried to kill him."
"I tried to protect a program."
"You sacrificed an officer."
"I made a decision."
Mara's hands curled into fists.
Hale continued.
"The world is full of decisions nobody wants printed in newspapers."
"You stole classified technology."
His smile vanished.
"Be careful what you think you understand."
Hale claimed the procurement network had begun as an unofficial method of moving equipment rapidly to units that bureaucracy had failed.
Then money entered.
Private contractors entered.
Politicians entered.
Eventually nobody could stop it without exposing everyone.
Rourke tried.
"So you left him behind."
"I ordered Mercer to leave him."
Mara looked at Mercer.
Hale smiled faintly.
"And Nathan obeyed."
Mercer stepped toward the monitor.
"I've regretted it every day."
"Regret is a luxury of survivors."
The screen changed.
Bank records appeared.
Flight logs.
Names.
Enough evidence to destroy careers.
Maybe governments.
Mara understood.
"Rourke hid the evidence in Raven Six."
"Part of it."
"Where's the rest?"
Hale smiled.
"Ask your bartender."
The screen went dark.
Mara called Frank.
No answer.
Security footage at The Rusty Anchor showed Frank leaving voluntarily with a man in a baseball cap.
The man's face was never visible.
But Frank left something behind.
A message written beneath the bar.
11 + 1 = HOME.
Mara understood before Mercer did.
The eleven men she'd rescued.
Plus Rourke.
Home.
"He's telling us where Rourke is."
"Where?"
Mara remembered something from the mission.
The eleven soldiers had called their extraction point Home Plate.
Coordinates had been encoded under that designation.
Mercer searched the recovered logs.
There.
HOME.
But the coordinates weren't Afghanistan.
They pointed to Colorado.
A remote cabin.
They flew immediately.
The cabin looked abandoned.
Inside, dust covered everything except one table.
On it sat twelve coffee mugs.
Eleven arranged in a line.
One opposite them.
Mara heard movement upstairs.
She drew her weapon.
"Rourke?"
A floorboard creaked.
A man appeared.
Older.
Scarred.
Thin.
But unmistakable.
Elias Rourke.
Mara lowered the weapon.
Neither spoke.
Then Rourke smiled weakly.
"Took you long enough, Raven Six."
Mara crossed the room and embraced him.
Seven years of guilt collapsed in seconds.
"You were alive."
"Barely."
"Why didn't you contact me?"
"Because Hale watched everyone you loved."
Mercer entered.
Rourke's expression changed.
The warmth disappeared.
"Nathan."
Mercer lowered his eyes.
"I'm sorry."
Rourke studied him.
"You should be."
But there was no time for reconciliation.
Rourke had spent years building a case.
Hale knew.
The livestream had forced everything into motion.
"Why expose Mara?" Mercer asked.
"I didn't."
Rourke looked confused.
"The livestream wasn't me."
Silence.
Mara thought of Kane's payment.
$50.11.
"Then who arranged it?"
Rourke opened a laptop.
"The eleven men you rescued weren't random."
He displayed their names.
One stood out.
Lieutenant Aaron Kane.
Mara looked up.
"Kane?"
"Tyler's father."
The room went silent.
Aaron Kane had been one of the eleven.
Tyler had no idea.
His father had died three years after the mission without ever telling his son what happened.
Rourke explained that Aaron had secretly copied part of the evidence.
After his death, somebody found it.
That person had manipulated Tyler into confronting Mara.
"Who?"
Rourke typed.
A photograph appeared.
Mara recognized the man.
He had been the second figure in the recovered extraction footage.
The American standing behind Rourke.
"Who is he?"
Rourke stared at the screen.
"Daniel Cross."
Mercer went still.
Mara noticed.
"You know him."
Mercer didn't answer.
Rourke did.
"Everyone knows him."
He enlarged the photograph.
"Daniel Cross was officially listed as the twelfth casualty of Raven Flight."
Mara shook her head.
"There were only eleven men."
Rourke looked directly at her.
"That's the lie."
His laptop suddenly beeped.
A security camera outside showed headlights approaching the cabin.
One vehicle.
Then another.
Then six more.
Rourke closed the laptop.
"Hale found us."
Mara reached for her weapon.
Rourke shook his head.
"No."
He looked toward a steel door beneath the staircase.
"There's something downstairs you need to see first."
Heavy footsteps sounded outside.
May you like
The front door handle began turning.
And from beneath the house, somebody knocked three times.
