Chapter 1 - THE KICKColonel Victor Kane kicked me off the USNS Resolute in front of nearly five hundred sailors and Marines.
I still remember the sound of my body hitting the metal rail.
Not the pain.
The silence.
Five hundred people watched a woman in a navy-blue logistics uniform go overboard, and for one impossible second, nobody moved.
I saw Kane standing above me with his hands on his hips.
His expression wasn't angry anymore.
It was satisfied.
He believed the problem had finally been solved.
He believed the Pacific would erase me, my questions, my records, and every piece of evidence I had gathered aboard the Resolute.
He was wrong.
Because beneath my bunk was a sealed NCIS evidence packet stamped with two words:
DECK FOUR.
The water slammed into me.
Cold swallowed the heat from my body instantly.
I sank.
For several seconds, I couldn't tell which way was up.
My boots dragged at my legs.
My lungs burned.
I twisted beneath the surface and saw the faint gray light above me.
I kicked toward it.
When I finally broke through, I sucked in air so hard it hurt.
The Resolute was already moving away.
The ship towered above the Pacific like a steel wall.
Hundreds of sailors were still lined along the rail.
Some stared.
Some looked away.
A few were shouting.
Nobody threw a life ring.
Nobody launched a rescue boat.
Then Kane's voice carried over the engines.
“Problem taken care of.”
My throat tightened.
Not because I was afraid.
Because Tyler Webb had heard those exact words.
Three hours earlier.
On the flight deck.
The Pacific heat had been brutal that morning.
Three sailors had already collapsed from heat exposure.
Tyler Webb was the fourth.
He was twenty-two.
Too young to understand how quickly dehydration could turn dangerous.
He had been carrying signal equipment when his knees buckled.
The crate hit the deck first.
Then Tyler.
I saw his face.
Dry lips.
Glassy eyes.
Hands trembling.
I ran toward him.
“Get water!”
Nobody moved.
I looked toward the emergency stores.
The compartment was locked.
Then Kane appeared.
He wore sunglasses.
Perfectly pressed uniform.
Not one drop of sweat visible on his face.
“Leave him.”
I thought I had misheard him.
“Sir?”
“He'll recover.”
“He needs water.”
Kane glanced down at Tyler.
“Dead weight doesn't deserve rations.”
That sentence changed everything.
I stepped between them.
“Sir, he needs medical attention.”
Kane slowly removed his sunglasses.
“And who exactly do you think you are, Petty Officer?”
I looked straight at him.
“The only person here still speaking to you as if you're human.”
The flight deck went silent.
Kane smiled.
It wasn't the kind of smile that meant amusement.
It was the kind that meant he'd remembered your name.
By evening, I was dead.
At least according to Kane.
Officially, I had slipped.
Officially, there had been an accident.
Officially, nobody was supposed to ask why the ship had been moving at full speed while I was overboard.
But officially wasn't the same thing as true.
Because I wasn't aboard the Resolute by accident.
NCIS had sent me there eight days earlier.
My assignment was simple.
Find out where the missing supplies were going.
Water purification cartridges.
Trauma kits.
Antibiotics.
Medical oxygen.
Emergency rations.
The inventory system claimed thousands of items had been consumed.
Damaged.
Transferred.
Disposed.
But every number was wrong.
And every time I got close to the truth, somebody vanished.
The first sailor disappeared on Day Three.
The second on Day Five.
The third on Day Seven.
All of them had handled inventory reports.
All of them had asked the same question.
Where were the supplies?
Then there was Deck Four.
According to official schematics, the section behind a heavily secured steel hatch didn't exist.
But ships don't install biometric locks to protect empty rooms.
On my eighth night, I watched two sailors move medical crates through that hatch after midnight.
The next morning, one of them was flown off the ship.
Before leaving, he grabbed my wrist.
His fingers were shaking.
“They're making the shortages on purpose.”
Six words.
Then he was gone.
Hours later, Lieutenant Commander Nathan Briggs slipped a note beneath my door.
MEET ME ON DECK FOUR AT 1:30.
He never showed.
Not at 1:30.
Not at 1:35.
At 1:42, I saw him in a corridor.
He looked like he'd aged ten years.
“Kane knows someone is collecting records,” he whispered.
Then he put something into my hand.
A physical override key.
Kane's key.
My stomach tightened.
“How did you get this?”
Briggs looked over his shoulder.
“Don't ask.”
“What is on Deck Four?”
His eyes hardened.
“Proof.”
“Proof of what?”
He stepped closer.
“Everything.”
Then he whispered:
“Come back at 1:30. If I'm not there by 1:40, leave.”
At 1:27 a.m., I reached Deck Four.
Briggs was waiting.
He unlocked the hatch.
Cold air poured into the corridor.
I stepped inside.
My flashlight swept across the darkness.
One pallet.
Bottled water.
Another.
Emergency rations.
Another.
Medical oxygen.
Pallet after pallet stretched into darkness.
Thousands of containers.
Everything the crew had supposedly run out of.
The Resolute had never been running out of supplies.
Someone had been making it look that way.
And Colonel Victor Kane had the key.
Briggs whispered behind me.
“You wanted to know where the supplies went?”
I turned.
He was staring at the far end of the warehouse.
Something moved there.
A human shadow.
Then every light on Deck Four switched on.
And I heard a voice behind the steel door.
“Close the hatch.”
Briggs froze.
I recognized the voice.
It belonged to the ship's commanding officer.
May you like
Captain Elias Ward.
And he had been reported missing two days earlier.
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