Captain Kate’s Tracker Kept Moving After the Fall

He stood in the doorway with his rifle slung low, his chest rising and falling as if he had been running. When he saw me, his face went through three expressions in half a second, and the last one was fear.

I did not hang up the phone. I pressed it harder against my ear, so that Colonel Whitaker would hear everything.

“Voss,” I said. “You’re early.”

“You’re supposed to be dead.” He said it like a complaint.

“I disappointed you.”

He raised the rifle halfway. His hands were shaking, and that told me more than the weapon did. Eric Voss was twenty-four and had a baby daughter in Tacoma. He liked to show photographs of her to anyone who stood still long enough. He was not a killer. He was a frightened man who had made one terrible decision and kept making smaller ones to avoid facing it.

“Put the phone down,” he said.

“No.”

“Ma’am, please.”

“Is that the word you used before you pushed me?”

His mouth tightened. Behind him, boots crunched on gravel, and two more silhouettes appeared near the gate. Caleb Reed came first, a lean man who never looked directly at anyone, and behind him strode Sergeant Nolan Price, broad and unhurried, with the easy gait of someone who believed the ground belonged to him.

Price stopped at the threshold and took in the room. He saw the open crate. He saw Harlan. He saw the receiver in my hand.

“Well,” he said. “That complicates the afternoon.”

“Sergeant.” I kept my voice level, which required more discipline than the swim had. “You are going to lower your weapons, and you are going to wait for the military police.”

He laughed softly. “You have been in uniform what, five years? I have been in for nineteen.” He stepped inside, and Reed and Voss followed like a pair of shadows. “I know exactly how this goes. You make a call, somebody sends a vehicle, and in the meantime you accuse three decorated soldiers of a crime you can’t prove.”

“I have the crates.”

“Which are military supplies in a military facility.” He shrugged. “We were securing them. You’re the one who went into the water.”

“You pushed me.”

“Did we?” He looked at Reed. “Specialist, did you see me push the lieutenant?”

Reed stared at the floor. “No, Sergeant.”

“Voss?”

Voss’s voice cracked. “No, Sergeant.”

Price turned back to me, almost kindly. “You see how it is. Three witnesses. You hit your head on the way down. Your memory is confused.”

I understood then why he had not simply let me drown. A drowned lieutenant meant an investigation into an accident aboard his aircraft. A missing lieutenant, whose body was never found, meant an inquiry that would run for months, and months were exactly what a man needed to move twelve crates of encrypted radios across a border.

But I had not drowned, and now he had to decide what to do about me.

“Who is the buyer?” I asked.

His smile thinned. “Nobody you will ever meet.”

“Someone paid enough to turn three soldiers against their own commander.”

“Somebody paid enough to turn soldiers into civilians.” He walked to the nearest crate, tapped the lid with one knuckle. “Do you know what a sergeant earns after nineteen years, Lieutenant? Do you know what the Army says thank you with? A pension that doesn’t cover a mortgage.”

“So you sell radios.”

“I sell what the Army was going to lose anyway. Those units were scheduled for write-off.”

“They were not scheduled for write-off. I checked.”

That landed. His eyes narrowed for the first time.

“I flagged the discrepancy six weeks ago,” I said. “I attached serial numbers to my report. You told me it was a clerical error, and I believed you, until I noticed the report never reached the battalion. Someone had deleted it from the system.”

Price said nothing.

“Then I noticed that the access log showed your credentials.”

Reed’s head jerked up. He stared at Price, and for a moment the silence had a texture.

“You told us the report was handled,” Reed said quietly.

“It was handled.”

“You told us she knew nothing.”

“She knew nothing useful.”

“She knew enough to get killed over.” Reed’s voice rose. “That was never the plan. You said we would scare her, that she’d file a complaint about the flight and transfer out. You never said anything about the reservoir.”

“Caleb,” Price said, very evenly, “stop talking.”

Voss lowered his rifle an inch. “Sergeant, the lieutenant is alive. Maybe we should call it.”

“We are not calling anything.”

Harlan, forgotten in the corner, cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, the phone line has been open this whole time.”

Every head turned toward me.