Chapter 4 - Ghost File 404
The interrogation annex smelled of floor wax, stale coffee, and cold air conditioning. Adrian sat on a bolted metal chair, his wrists unrestrained on the laminate table, though an MP stood silently by the reinforced door. His aluminum crutches leaned against the far wall, out of arm's reach.
Sitting across from him was First Lieutenant Sarah Chen, a junior legal officer attached to base administrative services. Her dark eyes darted nervously between Adrian’s weathered face and the glowing screen of her ruggedized field laptop.
"Staff Sergeant Adrian Morales," she murmured, her fingers clacking across the keyboard. "Medically retired two years, eight months ago. Silver Star recipient. Purple Heart with two bronze oak leaf clusters. Honorable discharge under medical necessity following catastrophic structural trauma from an improvised explosive device."
She paused, clicking through another security clearance gateway. The glow of the screen reflected in her eyes. Then her brow furrowed.
"What is it, Lieutenant?" Adrian asked quietly. His body was screaming for pain medication, but his mind had never been sharper.
"Your service record... it's locked behind a Compartmented Security Protocol," Chen whispered, leaning closer to the terminal. "The combat log for your deployment in the Sangin and Helmand sectors during the winter of twenty-twenty-two isn't archived in standard personnel records. It returns an administrative system error: Ghost File 404. Redacted under joint task force executive order."
"Try querying the canine manifest for the same operational dates," Adrian suggested, leaning forward, resting his scarred elbows on the cold tabletop. "Search service tattoo Whiskey-Seven-Niner-Four."
Chen hesitated, glancing toward the one-way observation mirror on the north wall. She knew she was operating on dangerous ground. Every instinct told her to shut the laptop and wait for Major Vance to return with the provost marshal’s transport orders. But curiosity—and the look of utter truth in Adrian’s weathered eyes—kept her fingers moving.
She entered the service identifier into the Global Combat Support System.
The screen blinked black. A single line of amber military text populated the center:
ASSET: W-794 (CANINE, COMBAT TRACKER/IED)
STATUS: K.I.A. / COMBAT CASUALTY
DISPOSITION: DESTROYED IN COMBAT INCIDENT - NON-RECOVERABLE
SIGN-OFF: STERLING, M., COLONEL, TASK FORCE VALKYRIE
"He’s dead," Chen murmured, her voice hollow. "According to the official manifest signed off by Colonel Sterling, the dog was blown apart in a secondary blast during the extraction flight from Sector Delta."
"I was on that flight," Adrian said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper that seemed to echo in the small room. "My legs were held together with tourniquets and field bandages. Viper was lying right next to my stretcher, panting, with shrapnel cuts across his ribs, but breathing. Alive. When I woke up three days later in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, an officer from Task Force Valkyrie stood over my hospital bed. He handed me a folded flag and told me my dog had bled out on the tarmac."
Adrian tapped his scarred chest. "They stole him. They marked him as scrap metal on an expenditure report so they could erase his lineage, re-tag his ear with a new microchip, and keep using an elite tracker off the books."
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Before Chen could reply, the heavy metal door swung open with a violent metallic bang. Major Vance walked in, accompanied by a tall, gray-haired man wearing pristine operational fatigues bearing the silver eagle of a full colonel.
Colonel Marcus Sterling had arrived.
