Chapter 4 - Under the Pool
The smoke made Mara's eyes burn. She crouched beside the maintenance drain, found the emergency release by touch, and hauled open a steel grate. The tunnel beyond barely fit her shoulders.
She crawled through grit and old pipes while alarms shrieked overhead. She couldn't outrun fire in a sealed tunnel, but Daniel had shown her the service schematics when they were teenagers visiting their father's last duty station. Fort Gray had expanded since then. Old bones remained.
After thirty yards she reached a vertical ladder. Its upper hatch was jammed with rust. She kicked it twice. The third blow opened onto the motor pool.
Air never tasted so good.
A young mechanic stared at her from beside a Humvee. “What happened to you?”
“Bad day at the pool.”
Her phone rang. The caller was her mother, Ellen Bennett. Mara almost ignored it, then answered.
“Mara?” Ellen's voice shook. “Two men came to the house asking about Daniel's papers.”
“Are they still there?”
“No. Your dad told them to leave. Then one of them said Daniel was a traitor.”
“Listen carefully. Lock the doors and call Aunt Rose. Go stay with her tonight.”
“Mara, what is happening?”
“I don't know yet.”
She hated the lie, but the truth was worse: she was beginning to understand just enough to be terrified.
Behind her, the motor pool office door opened. Staff Sergeant Naomi Price stepped out, holding Mara's spare jacket. They'd served together in two deployments; Naomi could identify her footsteps from a hallway away.
“Someone filed an arrest order for you,” Naomi said. “Assault, theft of classified material, attempted arson.”
“Attempted arson? They set that fire.”
“I know. The timestamp on the order is nine minutes before the alarm.”
Mara took the jacket. “Can you get me to the gate?”
May you like
Naomi shook her head. “No. The gate's the trap.” She held up a small tablet. “But I found where they're taking Liang.”
The map showed a moving vehicle heading toward the abandoned ammunition depot, where Mara had last seen Daniel alive.
