Chapter 6 - The Inspection of Supply Depot 4
Tears welled in the eyes of several hardened combat veterans seated in the surrounding rows.
They had watched Natalie struggle with her nẹp leg for three weeks, never knowing she was the legendary flight medic who had dragged eight wounded infantrymen out of a burning Chinook under Taliban mortar fire.
General Carter lowered his salute, turning slowly back toward Briggs.
“Sergeant Briggs,” General Carter said, each word dropping like an iron anvil. “You told my daughter that she had no right to take up space in this division.”
Briggs began trembling violently, his knees knocking together beneath his trousers. “Sir… General… I… I was unaware of the Lieutenant’s combat record! I thought she was an administrative transfer from headquarters! I was attempting to enforce discipline—!”
“You enforce discipline by kicking a wounded combat veteran’s crutch?” Colonel Marcus Stone of CID interrupted, stepping forward with an open titanium tablet.
“Captain Vance!” General Carter barked without turning his head.
Captain Julian Vance stumbled forward, coming to attention beside Briggs, his face the color of skim milk. “Sir! Captain Vance, commanding Bravo Company!”
“Captain Vance,” General Carter said coldly. “Why did you sit at your table for six minutes while a non-commissioned officer under your command assaulted and degraded a commissioned officer?”
Vance’s throat worked, but no sound came out.
Colonel Stone turned the screen of his tablet toward Vance and Briggs.
“At 06:00 this morning,” Colonel Stone announced to the entire dining hall, “CID executed an unannounced forensic inventory on Supply Depot 4. We discovered two hundred crates of Class VIII tactical medical trauma kits and forty thousand gallons of JP-8 jet fuel missing from the division manifests.”
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Colonel Stone pulled up digital bank records from an offshore Cayman account registered to Marcus Briggs.
“Sold on the black market through civilian intermediaries in Clarksville, generating four hundred and twenty thousand dollars in illicit cash, split directly between Sergeant Briggs and Captain Vance.”
