Chapter 6 - TWO HOURS
At 11:58 p.m., Nathan Briggs had one hour, fifty-nine minutes, and twelve seconds left on the clock behind his chair.
At least according to the photograph.
Claire didn’t trust the clock.
She didn’t trust the warehouse.
She didn’t trust that the photograph was live.
She trusted only one fact.
Briggs had disappeared.
His wife said he had left headquarters at 9:20.
His vehicle was found thirteen minutes later in a parking garage two blocks from a coffee shop.
Driver’s door unlocked.
Keys gone.
Phone smashed beneath the car.
One drop of blood on the steering wheel.
Claire stood inside the NCIS operations room while Reeves coordinated agents.
“You’re not part of this investigation anymore,” he reminded her.
“Then stop telling me things.”
He gave her a hard look.
“You’re here because the threat was sent to you.”
“And because Briggs works for me.”
“Worked.”
Brandon turned.
Reeves immediately corrected himself.
“Bad choice of words.”
Claire ignored both.
She enlarged the photograph.
Concrete floor.
Corrugated metal wall.
Industrial shelving.
One hanging fluorescent fixture.
Briggs wore the same uniform he had left in.
No visible restraints around his ankles.
Hands behind chair.
Blood above right eyebrow.
Digital clock.
01:48:33 now.
Brandon pointed.
“Reflection.”
Claire followed his finger.
A polished metal toolbox behind Briggs reflected part of the opposite wall.
Letters.
Reversed.
She rotated the image.
...INE SUP...
Brandon said, “Marine Supply?”
Reeves ordered a search.
San Diego County had dozens.
Claire enlarged again.
Blue paint stripe along the wall.
Yellow safety bollard.
A forklift battery station.
Torres, joining remotely, noticed the electrical outlet.
“Industrial marina?”
Brandon looked at Claire.
“Briggs’s car was near Harbor Drive.”
Reeves dispatched teams to three marine warehouses.
Clock: 01:31:04.
Then Claire’s phone rang.
Rourke.
She answered on speaker.
“You have Briggs?”
“No.”
“Then help.”
“I’m trying.”
“Where?”
A pause.
“National City.”
Reeves began typing.
“What building?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire’s voice sharpened.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I know the network they use. Not every location.”
“You knew they were coming to my hotel.”
“Because I intercepted their dispatch.”
“Then intercept this.”
“I’m locked out.”
“Get back in.”
Brandon almost smiled.
Rourke actually laughed.
“Still giving orders while suspended.”
“Old habit.”
“Look for a defunct ship chandlery near the rail line.”
Reeves searched.
Three results.
One had closed four years earlier.
Pierce Maritime Supply.
National City.
Blue stripe visible in old listing photographs.
Claire pointed.
“That one.”
Reeves sent the address.
Clock on the photograph: 01:17:52.
Agents were sixteen minutes away.
Brandon stood.
“I’m going.”
“No,” Reeves said.
“I know the industrial waterfront.”
“So do my agents.”
Claire looked at Brandon.
“You remain here.”
His expression hardened.
“Ma’am—”
“That’s an order.”
“You’re relieved.”
The room went silent.
Brandon realized what he had said.
Claire tilted her head.
He added, “Respectfully.”
She stared at him.
“You really are committed to that word.”
“I’m committed to Briggs.”
“So am I.”
Reeves cut in.
“Nobody outside NCIS is going anywhere.”
Claire knew he was right.
That didn’t make waiting easier.
At 12:31 a.m., agents reached Pierce Maritime Supply.
Doors locked.
No vehicle.
Thermal scan showed one heat signature.
Then two.
Then three.
Reeves listened through an earpiece.
Claire watched his face.
“Entry team moving.”
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
A muffled voice in Reeves’s headset.
Then:
“Contact!”
Gunfire echoed faintly through the line.
Brandon’s hands tightened on the table.
Claire didn’t move.
Reeves spoke.
“Status?”
Static.
Then:
“Suspect down. One fled rear exit.”
“Hostage?”
Pause.
“Hostage located.”
Claire exhaled.
“Condition?”
“Alive.”
Brandon closed his eyes briefly.
Then Reeves’s face changed.
“What?”
Claire asked.
He held up one finger, listening.
“No.”
“What?”
Reeves slowly removed the earpiece.
“That wasn’t Briggs.”
Silence.
Claire stared at him.
“Who?”
“A security guard reported missing yesterday.”
Brandon looked back at the photograph.
“That makes no sense.”
Claire did.
“The face.”
She enlarged Briggs.
Something about the shadows.
The proportions.
She zoomed again.
Digital manipulation.
A face replacement.
A convincing one.
The entire hostage photograph was fake.
“Briggs was never there.”
Reeves swore.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
His expression became worse.
“They found Briggs.”
Claire stepped closer.
“Where?”
“In his house.”
Brandon frowned.
“His wife said he left.”
“He came back.”
“Alive?”
Reeves nodded.
“Unconscious.”
They arrived twenty minutes later.
Briggs was being loaded into an ambulance.
His wife stood wrapped in a blanket.
“He just walked in,” she said. “He opened the door and collapsed.”
Claire watched paramedics work.
Injection mark on Briggs’s neck.
No serious wounds.
Whatever happened had been designed to occupy them.
To pull NCIS teams toward National City.
Claire turned to Reeves.
“What did we leave unprotected?”
He immediately called headquarters.
No answer from one security post.
Then another.
Brandon whispered, “Sentinel.”
They raced back to Coronado.
At 1:29 a.m., a base security team entered the operations building.
Nothing stolen from the main server room.
Nothing damaged.
Then Torres called.
“Ma’am.”
“What?”
“I think they accessed the multinational exercise network.”
Claire went cold.
“How?”
“Physical maintenance port.”
“Data removed?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Torres hesitated.
“They uploaded something.”
A malicious package now sat inside the fleet navigation distribution software.
Dormant.
Scheduled to activate when the exercise began.
Claire stared at the code summary.
False positions.
Communication delays.
Conflicting routing instructions.
At minimum, it could disrupt dozens of vessels.
At worst, somebody could deliberately create collision conditions.
“They didn’t need the archive drive,” Claire said.
Brandon understood.
“That theft made us focus backward.”
“Yes.”
“Kunar. Your record. Rourke.”
“All distractions.”
Reeves shook his head.
“Not all. Someone tried to kill you.”
“To make sure I took the threat personally.”
Brandon leaned over the terminal.
“Can we delete the malware?”
Torres looked troubled.
“Not safely yet. It’s tied into redundant distribution nodes. If we start ripping code without mapping it, we could trigger the payload.”
Claire asked, “How long?”
“Maybe twelve hours.”
“The exercise begins in thirty.”
“We can isolate.”
“Do it.”
Torres left.
Brandon looked at Claire.
“Who benefits?”
“From sabotaging the exercise?”
“Yes.”
“Foreign intelligence. Defense competitors. Anyone seeking to embarrass the Navy.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“Why no?”
“Because this is too personal.”
He pointed toward the Kunar memo.
“Somebody spent nine years preparing to destroy you if you came close. That isn’t just espionage.”
Claire stared at the map.
He was right.
Then Briggs’s recovered belongings arrived from the hospital.
Wallet.
Keys.
Watch.
Uniform cover.
One folded paper.
Not his.
A handwritten note.
Claire opened it.
ASK HALE WHAT PROJECT CINDER WAS.
Brandon read over her shoulder.
“You know it?”
“No.”
Reeves searched the unclassified database.
Nothing.
Classified search.
One sealed reference.
PROJECT CINDER.
Terminated nine years earlier.
Lead operational sponsor:
CAPT. WARREN HALE.
Claire felt something inside her settle.
Not certainty.
Direction.
She turned toward Reeves.
“Where is Hale?”
Reeves called.
No answer.
Security checked his assigned quarters.
Empty.
His vehicle remained outside headquarters.
Then Claire remembered something.
The first morning after Hale took control, he had asked for one thing.
Access to the original Sentinel archive.
He said he needed to review the evidence personally.
“Server records.”
Torres pulled them up.
Hale’s credentials had accessed the archive twelve minutes before the staged Briggs kidnapping message.
A file had been opened.
PROJECT CINDER.
Brandon said, “He found out we knew.”
Claire shook her head.
“No.”
“What?”
“Hale already knew what Cinder was.”
“Then why access it?”
“To see what we had.”
Her phone vibrated.
A new message.
From Hale.
Pier 19. Come alone if you want the truth about Kunar.
Brandon read her face.
“No.”
Claire put the phone away.
“You don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m going.”
“Then I’m going.”
“No.”
“Ma’am—”
“You don’t have operational authority.”
“Neither do you.”
She stared at him.
He added, “Respectfully.”
Claire almost laughed despite everything.
Then she became serious.
“Whoever has been controlling this has anticipated every official move.”
“So?”
“So I’m going unofficial.”
“Alone?”
“That’s what Hale requested.”
“And you trust Hale?”
“No.”
“Great. We agree.”
Claire looked at Reeves.
“You didn’t hear this conversation.”
Reeves folded his arms.
“Absolutely not.”
“Daniel.”
“I’m an NCIS agent. You think I’m letting a suspended captain walk alone into a possible ambush?”
Claire checked the time.
“Then arrest me.”
Reeves stared.
She headed for the door.
He swore and followed.
Brandon did too.
Twenty-seven minutes later, Claire approached Pier 19 alone.
At least Hale was supposed to believe she was alone.
Reeves and his team held back.
Brandon was positioned behind stacked shipping containers farther south.
The pier was mostly dark.
Water slapped against pilings.
A man stood beneath one security light.
Warren Hale.
Claire stopped twenty feet away.
“You wanted me.”
Hale looked exhausted.
“You shouldn’t have brought anyone.”
“I didn’t.”
“You were always a terrible liar.”
Claire’s hand remained near her concealed weapon.
“What was Cinder?”
Hale looked toward the black water.
“A surveillance program.”
“For whom?”
“Originally? Us.”
“What changed?”
“It became something else.”
“Rourke?”
“Yes.”
“Did he betray the Kunar mission?”
Hale’s face tightened.
“No.”
“He admitted giving me compromised coordinates.”
“He did.”
“On whose order?”
Hale looked at her.
“Mine.”
Claire felt as if she had been struck.
Behind the containers, Brandon heard through the transmitter.
His jaw clenched.
Claire’s voice was barely audible.
“You sent us into an ambush.”
“No.”
“You knew the coordinates were compromised.”
“I knew there was a possibility.”
“Seven people died.”
“I know.”
“Mike died.”
Hale closed his eyes.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because Cinder had been infiltrated. We had one chance to identify the leak.”
Claire stared at him.
“You used my team as bait.”
“No.”
“That is exactly what you did.”
“I expected surveillance, not an attack.”
“You gambled with our lives.”
“Yes.”
The admission hung between them.
Claire’s eyes burned.
“All these years you told me it wasn’t my fault.”
“Because it wasn’t.”
“You made sure there was a forged memo saying it was.”
Hale looked confused.
“What memo?”
Claire watched him.
His confusion seemed real.
Then a red laser dot appeared on Hale’s chest.
Claire saw it.
“Hale!”
She tackled him.
A suppressed shot cracked.
Concrete splintered.
Brandon moved.
“Shooter!”
A second shot.
Claire dragged Hale behind a bollard.
Reeves’s team converged.
Brandon chased movement along the warehouse roof.
A dark figure ran toward the far stairwell.
Brandon climbed.
The shooter reached the roof edge.
Turned.
Fired.
Brandon dropped behind an air-conditioning housing.
Returned fire.
The shooter vanished down the opposite stairs.
Reeves’s agents closed both exits.
Too late.
A motorcycle roared somewhere beyond the pier.
Gone.
Claire crouched beside Hale.
“You hit?”
“No.”
Then Hale gasped.
Blood appeared beneath his jacket.
The bullet had grazed his side after all.
Claire pressed her hand against it.
Hale grabbed her wrist.
“You need to understand.”
“Save your strength.”
“Cinder never ended.”
“I know.”
“No.”
His grip tightened.
“You don’t.”
Claire stared.
Hale whispered, “Rourke wasn’t the traitor.”
“Then who?”
Hale’s eyes moved toward something behind her.
Fear entered them.
“The admiral.”
Claire froze.
“Keating?”
Hale shook his head.
“Not Keating.”
Sirens approached.
“Which admiral?”
Hale struggled to speak.
“The one who sent you here.”
Then his eyes rolled back.
Paramedics reached them.
Claire stood covered in Hale’s blood.
Brandon came down from the roof.
“Shooter gone.”
Claire barely heard him.
“The admiral who sent me.”
Brandon looked confused.
“I thought Keating sent you.”
“So did I.”
But Claire suddenly remembered the orders arriving through encrypted personnel channels.
Orders carrying a digital authorization she had never questioned.
Because the signature belonged to one of the most respected officers in Naval Special Warfare.
Vice Admiral Richard Vale.
May you like
A man scheduled to oversee the multinational exercise in thirty hours.
A man who had also served as deputy director of Project Cinder nine years ago.
