SEAL Admiral Asked Her Rank As A Joke — Until He Noticed Her Sniper Tattoo And Froze
Chapter 7
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Jensen just shakes his head, pulling out his phone. "Whatever, man. Let me know when you find out she's just a really talented enlisted with a chip on her shoulder. I'll laugh at you then."Brooks leaves without responding.The hallway is empty, fluorescent lights humming overhead. He takes the stairs two at a time, heading down to the ground floor where the admin offices are: personnel records, security clearances, service histories. Everything's digitized now, stored in databases that cross-reference with every branch of the military. If she's legit, she'll be in there. And if she's not, well, that's a different problem entirely.He swipes his ID card at the door to the personnel office. It's after hours, but his clearance gets him in. The room is dark except for the glow of a single monitor left on standby. He sits down at the nearest terminal, logs in with his credentials, and pulls up the range access logs from today.Scrolls through until he finds lane seven, timestamp 15:45 to 16:00. The entry is there, but the name field is blank. Just a notation:Walk-on cleared by Range Master Ellis.Brooks frowns. Walk-ons are supposed to show ID. That's protocol. How did she get on the range without logging a name?He switches to the security camera feeds, finds the angle covering the sign-in desk at the range entrance, rewinds to 15:30. There: she's walking up to the desk, handing something to the clerk. The clerk looks at it, types something into the computer, then waves her through. The whole interaction takes less than 30 seconds.He zooms in on her hand. She's holding some kind of card, but the resolution isn't good enough to make out details. Could be a standard military ID, could be something else. The clerk's screen is angled away from the camera, so there's no way to see what was entered into the system. Dead end.Brooks sits back, frustrated. He's missing something. Some piece of information that would explain who she is and why she's here.He thinks about the way Range Master Ellis reacted. The way the old man went quiet after seeing her shoot. The way he called something in on the encrypted channel. Brooks saw him do it. Saw the way Ellis moved away from everyone else before keying his radio, like he didn't want anyone overhearing.Ellis knows something. Brooks is sure of it. And tomorrow, before that test starts, he's going to find out what.Range Master's office, 5:45 p.m.Ellis sits at his desk, hands folded, staring at the phone. It rang 20 minutes ago. The conversation lasted less than five minutes—five minutes that changed everything.The voice on the other end had been calm, professional, the kind of voice that doesn't waste words:"Range Master Ellis, this is Colonel Vance, G2. We've processed the inquiry you sent up this afternoon. The individual in question is cleared to be on your range. Beyond that, I can't tell you anything else. Do you understand?""Sir, I need to know—"