"Who was in the ditch, Toby?" I knelt in front of him, keeping my hands flat and visible so he wouldn't shy away.
"Sergeant Harlan and two corporals from perimeter security," he said, breathing through a raw, rattling cough. "They had two five-gallon cans of solvent. Harlan told me to take off my coat and dog tags. He said the major ordered a scrub before the division inspection tomorrow morning. When I wouldn't drop the collar, Harlan pulled his service weapon."
Cole stepped back from the locked door, his face pale under the fluorescent tube. He kept his service pistol low, indexed along his thigh. "Colonel, if Harlan is down in the ditch with perimeter details, Sterling didn't just falsify an administrative drop. He's actively erasing base property chains."
"It's worse than property," I said.
I reached out and hooked two fingers under the brass key dangling against Miller’s chest. The metal was stamped with a die-cut number: INC-04. Beneath it, printed on the white linen inspection patch sewn directly into the boy's field blouse, was the purple chemical stencil: SEALED BIO-HAZARD DISPOSAL / AUTHORIZED BY MAJ. R. STERLING / CONTENTS CONSUMED.
The stamp bore yesterday's date, 2200 hours. Twelve hours before Sterling ever claimed the county police picked Miller up at the reservoir, he had already filed an official destruction certificate stating that everything associated with Toby Miller’s service record—and whatever gear had been issued to his custody—had been incinerated as hazardous waste.
"The key opens the secondary disposal vault behind the incinerator," Miller whispered. His eyes darted toward the window slats as the low, guttural vibration of diesel engines rattled the trailer's tin siding. "The medical manifests... they aren't about contaminated dressings, ma'am. There are four wooden logistics crates locked in the vault pit. No depot stencils. No serial tags. Just green shipping tape from the private airfield up north."
"What did you see inside them?" Cole demanded, stepping closer.
"I didn't open the crates," Miller said, his voice dropping to a harsh rasp. "I was on night watch at the boiler room. Sterling brought them in on a flatbed tractor at midnight two weeks ago. He told me to log the delivery as civilian boiler slag. But when they hauled the second box off the bed, the seam cracked. It wasn't slag. It was commercial electronic guidance packages. Raytheon contractor seals. The kind that went missing from the depot rail yard in July."
The realization settled over the small office like lead.
Sterling wasn't running a disciplinary purge. He was running a ghost funnel through the perimeter marsh, using the remote isolation of Camp Vora to fence stolen avionics into civilian cargo streams. And every soldier whose name had been circled in that ledger—the eight names already struck through with black ink—had been men assigned to the night inventory shift who noticed crates entering the base that never appeared on the depot register.
"The other eight soldiers," Cole said, his voice flat with horror. "The transfer codes in the ledger..."
"They didn't get transferred," I said, looking back at the desk.
The ledger lay open under the desk lamp. I flipped the page back to the first circled name from four months ago: Private First Class Daniel Vance. My nephew. The boy whose sudden 'administrative relocation' to an overseas holding company had prompted me to request this temporary CID attachment in the first place. Sterling had signed Daniel’s transfer voucher himself, swearing under oath to the regional board that Daniel had volunteered for an off-book assignment in theater.
Outside, the heavy thrum of an engine died.
A metal door clanged shut in the gravel yard. Heavy boots crunched slowly across the limestone path leading up to Trailer Four.
"Colonel Vance?" Major Sterling’s voice carried through the thin aluminum skin of the trailer, smooth, steady, and entirely devoid of hurry. "I see your lights are still burning. Base security reported an intruder breached the perimeter fence near the south marsh ten minutes ago. We have reason to believe a hostile subject may be attempting to access administrative files."
Cole raised his weapon, leveling it squarely at the center seam of the locked door. He looked at me, a silent question tightening the corners of his mouth.
I shook my head once. A tactical standoff inside a locked government trailer was precisely the trap Sterling wanted. With perimeter security outside under his direct command, any shot fired from this room would be logged as an engagement with an armed intruder, justifying an immediate sweep and burn.
"Major Sterling," I called out, my voice crisp and authoritative, giving away nothing. "Special Agent Cole and I are concluding our audit of the supply division. We have not observed any perimeter breach from this station."