Chapter 3 #2
"Then I went back to work. The Committee found me three weeks after I finished. Said they understood my grief. Said they could channel my anger toward deserving targets. Said I could spend the rest of my career making sure the people who deserved punishment got it."
I stare at him. "They killed your family and you went back to work for them."
"They promised me targets who deserved what I could do to them.
Terrorists. War criminals. People who'd done worse than what happened to Lisa and Maya.
" Dylan finally looks at me. "And I was good at the work.
Better than I'd been before. Because I didn't care anymore whether they were guilty or innocent.
I just wanted them to hurt the way I was hurting. "
"How many people did you disappear for them?"
Dylan doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away.
"I don't know. Stopped counting after the first year. Some were legitimate targets. Terrorists planning attacks. Insurgents coordinating ambushes. But some were just problems. Journalists asking questions. Whistleblowers trying to expose operations. Witnesses who knew too much."
"Innocents."
"I told myself they were all guilty of something. That anyone the Committee targeted must have done something to deserve it." Dylan's jaw tightens again. "I was wrong."
The questions pile up in my throat. How many? How long? What did you do to them? But those aren't the questions that matter.
"Did you kill innocents?"
"Not directly. But I made witnesses disappear who probably were. Detained them. Interrogated them. Handed them over to people who made sure they never resurfaced. I didn't pull the trigger but I put them in the crosshairs."
My hands are shaking. I press them flat against the desk to make them stop.
"Did you torture for pleasure?"
"No." The single word is flat. Final. "For information and revenge.
The Committee used me as an interrogator because I was effective.
Because I could break people without caring what it cost them.
The revenge was personal. Every target who screamed reminded me that Lisa and Maya didn't get to scream. They just died."
No justification. No excuses. Just the truth laid out bare.
"Did you have a choice when you burned? When you saved Khalid instead of following orders. When you took evidence of Morrison's chemical weapons program instead of burying it. Did you have a choice or were you forced into it?"
"I had a choice." The response is immediate.
"Found Khalid hiding in a well. Saw the files documenting what they'd done to his village.
Saw an eight-year-old girl's body with clinical notes measuring her suffering.
" He pauses. "I could have followed orders.
Left Khalid to die. Destroyed the evidence.
Could have gone back to what I was and pretended none of it happened. "
"But you didn't."
"I chose Khalid over orders. Chose to stop being what they made me after Lisa and Maya died. That was the first real choice I'd made in years. Everything before that was just following the path of least resistance."
I sit back in my chair. Suddenly exhausted.
This man tortured people. Made innocents disappear. Spent years becoming the Committee's monster because the work was easier than facing what he'd lost.
And then he chose to stop.
Horror sits heavy in my chest. But underneath it, something else. Recognition. He made a choice when it mattered. When it would cost him everything.
"Then you chose right." The words surprise me as much as they seem to surprise him. "Everything before led to that choice. Now show me you'll keep choosing right."
Dylan's expression changes. Relief, maybe. Or hope.
"I'm trying."
"Try harder. Because the Committee network goes deeper than just Morrison or Webb.
There's someone above him who authorized Protocol Seven.
Someone with enough power to coordinate across three branches of the military.
Someone who's still running things now that Morrison's dead—probably Webb's superior, if Webb even has one. We need to find them."
"We will."
"And when we do, you don't get to disappear them like the old days. This goes through proper channels. Federal courts. Public testimony. Everything documented and admissible."
"Agreed."
"Even if it means Khalid has to testify?"
Dylan's shoulders tense. "If it comes to that, we'll figure it out. But I won't force him."
"Fair enough. Then let's find enough evidence that we don't need Khalid's testimony. The Committee documented everything. They were arrogant enough to believe nobody would ever see these files. Let's prove them wrong."
For the next hour, we work in silence. Dylan pulls up personnel records. I cross-reference them against authorization signatures. Slowly, the picture emerges.
Morrison didn't act alone. He had support from senior leadership. People with the power to authorize black operations and the paranoia to ensure those operations stayed buried.
"Here." Dylan highlights a name. "Goes way back.
Webb. He was Morrison's second-in-command during the Somalia operation in 1993.
Webb was there when Morrison authorized the elimination of witnesses.
When Morrison was killed, Webb was the natural to take over and he's doing the work of the Committee now. "
Dylan pulls up more files. "He's connected to three defense contractors and sits on the boards of two intelligence think tanks. Morrison built Protocol Seven, but Webb helped him run it. Now Webb's in charge of the whole operation."
"Can we prove it?"
"Maybe. If Tommy can access the archived personnel records from the eighties. Webb was involved in covert operations during the Cold War. If he's been involved in Protocol Seven since the beginning, there will be patterns."
My computer buzzes with a message from an unidentified source.
Stop digging or join the body count. Last warning. - Cipher
My hands go cold on the keyboard. Cipher. The source who fed me the initial intelligence. The one who set me up.
"Dylan." I show him the screen.
His expression hardens. "They know you're still alive. Know you're accessing classified databases. Probably tracking our connection through Echo Base."
"Can they find us?"
"Tommy's running counter-surveillance. If they were tracking us, he'd know." Dylan takes my laptop, forwards the message to Kane. "But it confirms you're a priority target. They're not just hunting you. They're trying to scare you into stopping."
"I'm not stopping."
"I know." His eyebrows raise slightly. "But understand what that means. They'll escalate. Send teams to eliminate you. Target your family, your friends, anyone connected to your investigation."
"I don't have family. Parents died years ago. No siblings." The words come out flatter than I intend. "Friends know better than to ask what I'm working on. Hazard of investigative journalism."
"Then they'll target you directly. Full surveillance. Assassination teams. Whatever it takes to silence you before you can publish."
"Let them try." The Committee network diagram comes up again. "I've spent six months building this case. Six months following money through systems designed to be invisible. I'm not walking away now because someone threatened me."
"They murdered three hundred forty-seven civilians and documented it for scientific research. You think they'll hesitate to add one journalist to the body count?"
"No. But I think they'll hesitate to make me a martyr. Webb thinks I know the coordinates to your location. He thinks I know where Echo Base is. If I die now, that information goes public. Automated dead man's switch. Everything I know gets released to every news outlet simultaneously."
Dylan studies me. "You're bluffing."
"Maybe I was, but they don't know that." I save the files, start downloading the network documentation to an encrypted drive.
"I've been preparing for this possibility since I started investigating black ops corruption.
Everything I've found, every source I've verified, it's all sitting in encrypted storage waiting for a trigger I don't send. "
"And if they find you before you can send the trigger?"
"Then you publish it for me. That's the deal. I help you build a case against Webb and the Committee that's solid enough for federal prosecution. You make sure my investigation sees daylight if something happens to me."
"Deal."
The encrypted drive finishes downloading.
Three hundred gigabytes of classified documents.
Financial records. Operational authorizations.
Medical files documenting Morrison's chemical weapons program and the network he built.
Everything needed to destroy Webb and everyone still connected to Protocol Seven.
"We have what we need. Now we need to make sure it reaches the right people."
"First we need to keep you alive long enough to testify." Dylan checks his phone. "Kane just confirmed Committee teams are in Colorado. Three confirmed deployments. They're systematically eliminating your known contacts."
My stomach drops. "Who?"
"Your editor at the Denver Post. The graduate student who helped with research. The coffee shop barista you used as a message drop. All dead. Made to look like accidents or robberies. Clean work."
Ellen. The grad student. Twenty-three years old. Brilliant researcher who could trace financial networks through systems I couldn't access. And Charlie. The editor who kept my investigation funded even when his publishers demanded he shut it down.
Dead because they knew me.
"How long ago?"
"Ellen died two days ago. Hit and run. Charlie yesterday. House fire."
Two days. Ellen was alive two days ago and now she's gone because she helped me trace Morrison's shell corporations during my investigation. Charlie burned to death in his own home because he believed in exposing the Committee's crimes.
"They're working backwards through your contacts. Anyone who might know where you are or what you found."
"Then we're running out of time."
"We were always running out of time. But now we have evidence. Now we can prove what Morrison did and connect it to Webb. And if we're very lucky, we'll live long enough to make them both answer for it."
The window behind me explodes inward. Glass sprays across the room. Dylan moves fast, tackling me to the floor as gunfire erupts outside.