"Are you on the access roster, sir?"
"I doubt it," Gant said, giving the man his NSA ID card.
Noting the designation, the guard checked his computer. His eyes widened as the result came up. He grabbed an access badge. “You have complete clearance, sir.”
Gant knew the guard was surprised at that, particularly since he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He doubted few people not assigned to the building could walk through the door and be given complete, un-supervised access to the building. Gant took the badge and went through the turnstile toward the elevator.
“Tony Gant? How the hell are you? Haven’t seen you in a long time.”
Gant turned as a grizzled, old Sergeant Major came limping down the hallway toward him, hand outstretched. “That’s my brother. I’m Jack.”
The Sergeant Major nodded, shaking his hand anyway. “I remember Tony said he had a twin. I haven’t seen him in years. How’s he doing?”
“He’s dead.”
The Sergeant Major nodded once more, as if he expected that answer. “Sorry to hear that. Who was he working with? Still with Delta? He sort of disappeared.”
That was a question that Gant couldn’t answer. Because at the end, his brother had been working for no one. “He was retired.”
The Sergeant Major frowned. “What happened?”
I don’t know, Gant thought. I don’t even know how my brother really died unless I believe Bailey. “Natural causes. Cancer.”
“Shit. I knew him when we were both in Delta Force. I’ve been here in the puzzle palace ever since my leg got shot up in the ‘Stan.”
Gant shifted his feet. He’d known coming back to Bragg was going to be a tricky proposition. “I’ve got business upstairs.”
The Sergeant Major eyed Gant’s civilian clothes, highest level visitor clearance pass, but didn’t ask any questions. “Sorry to hear about your brother.”
“Thanks.” The elevator arrived and Gant got on board. He was glad when the doors slid shut. He got off on the floor housing the G-1 section and walked down the hallway to the records center. He tried the door, but it was locked and he didn’t have a code key to open it. He knocked on the door and waited. After several moments, a Major opened it. “Yes?”
“Doctor Golden here?”
The Major nodded, glanced at Gant’s access badge and let him. He waited for an introduction but Gant went right past him when he saw Golden seated with her laptop. “What do you have?”
Golden looked past him to the Major. “Could you excuse us, Major Taggart?”
Taggart looked none too pleased about that, but he went out the door, shutting it behind him. Golden kept her head pointed at her computer. “Some interesting material here.”
“You have some names?” Gant asked as he took a chair from across her.
“This is your military record. Quite impressive."
Gant felt the stirrings of anger, which he repressed. “That wasn’t what you were supposed to be doing.”
“The records end six years ago,” Golden said. “I assume that is when you entered the Cellar.”
“You’re supposed to be—“
“Grew up in New York. Military Academy. Had a twin brother who also went to the Military Academy and served in the military and whose records also abruptly ends, several years before yours though. Just like him, you served in the Rangers and then Special Forces. And then you disappear.” She looked up. “Did they show you my file?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Good question, Gant thought. “Mister Nero probably didn’t feel it was necessary.”
“It appeared to me that Ms. Masterson was the one in charge at the Cellar.”
To that, Gant had no reply. His brother’s death, the letter from his mother, Nero lying to the side of his desk and the woman behind it, this mission teaming with another non-Cellar person— there were just too many strange things going on that he had yet to process — could not process, because the priority was the mission. And there was a clock ticking. Not just Emily Cranston cached somewhere, but other possible killings the targets might have planned.
“So what should I know about you?” Gant wearily asked.
“Nothing,” she said bitterly.
“You felt it was important to know about me,” Gant noted. “Shouldn’t it be important for me to know about you?”
“I’m the psychologist,” Golden said. “You don’t need to know how your target thinks, you just need to be able to see it, right? So you can shoot it?”
“I’m your target?”
“No.”
“And I do need to know how my target thinks,” Gant said. He spread his hands, taking in the building. “I worked for SOCOM for years. I was trained like our targets. I did live missions like our targets did. So I think like them.”
“Not quite,” Golden said. “There’s tens of thousands of people in Special Operations. Very few of them turn rogue. So they have something else in their psyche that you don’t understand.” Golden typed something into her keyboard. “I’ve come up with sixteen probables. I cross-checked them based on assignments and that widens the fields of possible to one hundred and six if one of those sixteen is the leader and suborned his team-mates.”
“Check for Lutz, Payne, and Forten.”
“Did Sam give you that?”
“Colonel Cranston said he lost a team in a helicopter crash. They were the team.”
“If they’re dead—“ Golden began as she looked at her screen and then she fell silent for a second. “Forten is one of the sixteen.”
“He’s the leader.”
“I don’t understand. If Sam—“
“It’s Colonel Cranston, Doctor Golden. I don’t know what your relationship in the past was with him, but let’s act professional.”
Gant was surprised to see Golden’s face flush and he knew he had hit her somewhere deep, but he was tired of sparring.
“If Colonel Cranston says those men died, then why do you believe they could be our targets?”
“Because helicopter crash is almost a Special Operations euphemism for getting killed somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. That’s something I know.”
“But if they were killed—“
“Let’s pretend for a moment they weren’t.”
Golden frowned. “How did you get those names?”
“They’re on the plaque right outside this building commemorating Special Operations soldiers who died in the line of duty.”
“Oh.”
“Also, there’s no pilot listed as killed on that date. Kind of strange to have a helicopter crash with no pilot especially when Cranston says there were no survivors.” Gant hammered home his point. “Cranston’s bullshitting us. Something happened to that team. Something so bad he’s willing to put his daughter’s life on the line to cover it up.”
“Sa — Colonel Cranston wouldn’t do that.”
Gant stared at her. “He’s already done it. I believe he thought those guys were dead. I think now he wishes they truly were. But I don’t think they are. I think they survived whatever happened to them and they’re back and they’re pissed.”
Golden’s fingers flew over her keyboard. “Sergeant Joseph Lutz. Staff Sergeant Michael Payne. Sergeant First Class Lewis Forten. All assigned to Seventh Special Forces Group. All listed as killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of Panama. Their bodies were never recovered.”
“Of course not,” Gant said. “Because there were no bodies. You had Forten as one of your sixteen probables. Why?”