Chương 8 - The Counter-Strike
The retaliation was swift and brutal.
Within forty-eight hours of sending the audio logs to Charles and Julian Vance, my bank accounts were hit by a sophisticated distributed denial-of-service and cyber-freezing attack orchestrated through compromised shell corporations in Delaware. Simultaneously, a local tabloid published a fabricated hit piece branding me an "unstable, disgruntled former military officer attempting to extort multi-million dollar defense firms."
My mother called me in a panic from Coronado.
"Rachel! They’re saying horrible things on the news! People are outside the apartment!"
"Mom, listen to me," I said, keeping my voice rock-solid. "Pack a bag. Nathaniel’s security team is outside your door right now. They’re taking you to a safe house in San Francisco. Do not talk to reporters. Do not open the door for anyone except a man holding a laminated card with my fingerprint."
"I’m scared for you, sweetie," she sobbed.
"Don't be. They’re thrashing because they’re drowning."
I hung up and turned to face Nathaniel Brooks and Admiral Hale in Brooks's Georgetown conference room. The atmosphere was thick with tension.
"They’re using federal injunction loopholes to temporarily freeze sixty percent of your liquid assets under suspicion of 'terrorist-adjacent corporate disruption,'" Brooks said, adjusting his glasses furiously. "They’re trying to starve us out before the Boston Globe prints the story on Monday morning."
"They forgot one crucial detail," Admiral Hale said, leaning forward with a grim smile on his weathered face.
"What’s that, Admiral?" I asked.
"Charles is arrogant. He thinks he’s fighting a corporate lawyer and a disgruntled granddaughter," Hale stood up, dropping a thick stack of printed Department of Justice warrants onto the desk. "He forgot that the Inspector General of the Department of Defense has been quietly building a parallel investigation into Whitmore Dynamics for the past six months, waiting for valid, unredacted primary source evidence."
The conference room door swung open.
Marcus Reyes walked in, holding a high-security military satellite phone.
"Commander," Marcus said, grinning ear to ear. "The FBI’s cyber-crime division just raided Julian Vance’s law offices in downtown Boston. They seized three hard drives, seven burner phones, and a paper trail linking Vance directly to the offshore accounts paying off the 1991 cover-up."
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I looked at Brooks. I looked at the Admiral.
The siege was over. The counter-strike had begun.
