Chapter 4 - The Cache
Six years earlier, Rex had saved six men.
That was the story everybody knew.
It wasn’t the whole story.
Our team had been operating in a narrow valley against a network moving explosives across the mountains.
We found a hidden cache beneath an abandoned stone house.
Rifles.
Detonators.
Explosives.
Nothing unusual.
Then Rex alerted on a steel container buried beneath the floor.
Inside were American components.
Restricted components.
Optical systems.
Encrypted radios.
Hardware that should never have been outside a secure facility.
Someone was selling our equipment to the people trying to kill us.
We transmitted the discovery.
Two hours later, our position was attacked.
Not randomly.
Precisely.
Machine-gun fire from one ridge.
Mortars from another.
The enemy knew every approach.
Every exit.
They knew where our medic was positioned.
They knew where we would move if the east wall collapsed.
My closest friend, Staff Sergeant Michael Larkin, died in my arms.
Rex was hit protecting the rest of us.
The cache burned during the fighting.
The investigation went nowhere.
The official explanation was simple.
Enemy forces had captured American material from other battlefields.
Bad luck.
Coincidence.
Case closed.
I never believed it.
Neither did Larkin.
Thirty minutes before he died, he had told me something.
“Jack, this didn’t come from outside.”
“What?”
“The equipment.”
Gunfire cracked above us.
He leaned closer.
“Somebody brought it from home.”
Then the attack began.
I had buried those words with him.
Now, standing in a sheriff’s department parking lot six years later, Rex was smelling the same chemical residue on a tracker attached to my truck.
Cross handed the device back to me.
“We need federal authorities.”
Emily laughed bitterly.
“That’s what people around here always say.”
I looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
She stared toward the darkened road.
“People have disappeared in this county for four years.”
Cross frowned.
“People?”
“Drifters. Truckers. A mechanic who worked near the old quarry. A deputy who started asking questions.”
“Where’s the quarry?”
Her eyes met mine.
May you like
“Seven miles east.”
Rex looked east too.
