Chapter 6

The review board convened at 1400 hours in a windowless room in the battalion headquarters, a squat brick building across a broad stretch of gravel from the drill yard. The room had a long table, three chairs on one side, one on the other. A recording device. A pitcher of water and four plastic cups. A flag on a stand in the corner.

Dana Whitlock sat alone on the single-chair side. She had put on a clean olive-green tee, unmarked, and her brown boots were polished to a dull shine. Her hair was still in the low bun. Her hands were folded on the table in front of her, loose and easy, and she appeared to be reading the grain of the wood with a mild interest that made the three officers across the table feel several steps behind her.

Colonel Thorne sat at the center of the three. On his left was a lieutenant colonel named Carr, a thin woman with gray-streaked hair pulled tight, a sharp face, and a pair of reading glasses she used to study every document like it was an enemy formation. On his right was a major named Hollis, younger, round-faced, with the anxious look of a man who had prepared a briefing for a very different meeting.

Thorne did not begin with the incident. He began with the manifest.

“At 0900 hours this morning,” he said, “I attempted to access a classified document from the record office. The document — an internal manifest detailing training assignments for a certain category of special operator — was not there. The drawer was empty. The clerk reported it had been removed at 0515 that morning by personnel with code-level clearance.”

He looked at Dana.

“That manifest is the document that placed you in this unit. Its removal means, in official terms, that you are not here. There is no record of your assignment. No one on this base officially knows you exist.”

Dana said nothing.

“At 1015,” Thorne continued, “I received a call from the company office notifying me of the incident in the drill yard. At noon, I received a message from your runner telling me to check the groundskeeper’s shed.”

He reached under the table. He brought up a cardboard box, dusty, labeled NUTS AND BOLTS in faded marker. He set it on the table between them, opened it, and pulled out a single manila folder with a red stripe across the top — the same stripe as the runner’s message.

“The original manifest,” Thorne said. “Sitting in a shed, under a shelf, mixed in with a box of hardware, forty feet from the record office where it was supposed to be.”

He opened the folder. Inside was a single sheet, typed, with a column of names. Dana’s name was at the bottom. Beside her name, a typed entry read: *“Section 6 — Temporary assignment for completion of basic training objectives. Special status applies. Mark verified by authorizing officer on date of entry.”*

Thorne turned the sheet over. On the back, in careful handwriting, in a hand Thorne recognized from a thousand classified briefings: