Chapter 34
Rachel leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Her hands had clenched into fists without her realizing it. The images on the screen held all of her attention.
"I want to get this out there," she said. "People need to see it. All of it."
The men exchanged glances, weighing what she was saying. She felt every pair of eyes on her.
Ghost. Reaper. Torch. Frost. Predator. Brick. Echo. Rogue. Bear.
Every man here had taken lives and buried friends. Violence didn't shake them. But this betrayal was different.
"But before I publish anything," she continued, "I need confirmation. If I name the wrong officer, if I get even one detail wrong, I won't just be discredited. I'll be hunted."
"You'd be a target again," Ghost said.
Rachel met his eyes. His face gave away nothing but she could see the tension in his jaw. The same man who'd kept her alive wouldn't let her walk back into danger unprepared.
Across the room, Echo's fingers flew over the keyboard. "The video's too low-res," he muttered. "But your high-res stills? That's where we dig. If there's anything identifiable, tats, scars, gear, we'll find it."
Rachel stood and crossed to him. She leaned over his shoulder as they worked through the images frame by frame.
"Shit." Predator's voice cut through the room.
Rachel's stomach dropped. On screen, one of the men turned just slightly. The angle was bad, face obscured by shadow and grain. But there on the back of his hand, clear in the high-contrast freeze:
A skeleton hand rendered in black ink with fine bones and clean lines.
Frost spoke first. "That's Carver's tattoo."
Cold spread through Rachel's chest. "Wait. Wasn't he the lead Ranger on the joint op that rescued Bear?"
Ghost nodded slowly. "Yeah. That's him."
Brick's hands curled into fists. "I trusted him. We all did."
Ghost stared at the screen, his jaw tight. Rachel could see what this meant to them. Carver wasn't just another soldier. He was one of them. A brother. And now he was something else entirely.
Ghost's voice cut through the quiet. "We need confirmation. We don't move until we know exactly who Carver is working with and how deep this goes."
Rachel understood immediately. "You're planning a recon mission."
Ghost nodded once. "We don't go in loud. We watch. We track. We see who shows up and how far up this goes."
Predator leaned back, knuckles cracking. "Then we make our move."
Ghost looked around the room at his team, already shifting into operational mode, then turned back to Rachel. His eyes found hers.
"If Carver's in this," he said quietly, "it runs deeper than we thought."
Rachel's chest tightened. They'd moved past gathering evidence. Now they were planning what to do with it.
The team split into pairs, each man moving without needing direction. Recon routes mapped. Comm protocols synced. Fallback plans outlined. Voices stayed low, hands moved efficiently across keyboards and paper maps.
Beside her, Echo stayed focused on his screen, then straightened slightly. "Got something."
Every head turned.
Echo scanned the readout. "The other two officers in that meeting. Colonel Nathan Hale and Major Victor Langley."
Ghost's jaw tightened. "Both have top-level clearance. They can move hardware without oversight."
Torch exhaled slowly. "Hale. I knew something felt off about that reroute."
Ghost kept his eyes on the screen. "We flagged him back at Kilo. That convoy change wasn't protocol." He paused. "Should've trusted my gut."
Nobody responded. They'd all sensed something was wrong. And they'd all let it slide.
Ghost looked at his team. "We don't move fast. We move right. Strategic, clean, no assumptions."
Digital maps lit up the wall. Routes. Logs. Background intel. The living room filled with quiet voices and coordinated movement. They weren't gearing up for a raid. They were building a long game.
Predator, Rogue, and Bear would track Carver. Eyes only. Build the pattern.
Brick and Reaper took Langley. Surveillance, no contact. Wait for him to make a mistake.
Ghost and Torch had Hale. Follow the logistics, trace the money, find where the records disappeared.
Frost handled field logistics and extraction. Mobile, ready to pull any team out if things went sideways.
Echo would run overwatch from Ghost's truck. Buried in the network, watching for threats, covering their digital tracks.
Rachel would stay here with the files. Cross-reference every report, lock down every timestamp, confirm every source. Because if one detail was wrong, one name unverifiable, everything they'd built would collapse before it ever saw daylight.
Ghost caught her hand before she could turn away. "You sure about this?"
She met his eyes. "Let's take them down."
He squeezed her hand once, then released it.
Echo stood beside the table, closing out the open files. "I'll finish setting up the blackout net tonight. Run a clean digital sweep before we meet back up."
Ghost nodded. "I know we just got back from deployment. Everyone needs downtime. I'll work on gathering assets, you guys focus on intel and rest. Four days off. We meet back here at zero-six-hundred."
One by one, the men filed out. Already in mission mode.
When the front door closed behind the last man, the house went silent.