The Labyrinth Key by Christopher Cartwright

Author:Christopher Cartwright [Cartwright, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashton Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty

Pentagon, Virginia

Sam sat, hunched over his laptop on his desk for the first time in what felt like years. Maybe it had been years, considering all his recent memories were of life-threatening journeys and explorations around the globe. Now it was like he was just another nine-to-five office worker, same as everyone else.

It was weird.

Sam rubbed his temples gingerly. The headache of the situation at Palmyra was wearing him down. He could feel his own exhaustion in his bones, starting with the dull ache at the small of his back and crescendoing to waves of pain spiking his neck and skull. He didn’t know if it was the jet lag, the helicopter, the tension of imminent death, or the potential release of massively classified secrets, but he was in a bad way.

For a moment he stared at the screen, trying to get a grip on himself as the screen wavered before eyes that were on the verge of tears from exhaustion.

Maybe I should stop. I’ve looked at nearly everything, he thought, but he knew that he couldn’t quit. He’d pulled some strings both stateside and in the Middle East and one of his military contacts had gotten Ethan’s helmet footage from the day of the attack. It was likely grasping for straws, but Sam had a hunch and he couldn’t leave any stones unturned. Sure, Ethan hadn’t explicitly given Sam permission to look through the footage; in fact, judging from the depths of which his contact had pulled the reel, the SEAL looked like he was trying to hide it.

Sam tapped some more keys with a little more vigor. No worries. If Ethan thought that his contacts with the military were better than Sam’s, he had another thing coming. Sam could summon the authority and clearance to snatch one of those chaotic helicopter rides, hopping from airport to airport in the Middle East, in his sleep.

Sleep.

Sam rubbed his temples and pushed away the thought, glancing around the sterile space. It was business as usual in the Pentagon: Printers hummed constantly and employees murmured and laughed, except the printed papers were likely top-secret and those workers probably needed a high security clearance to even talk about anything here. He still couldn’t wrap his head around how casual it was.

Better not to think about it. Putting it out of his mind, Sam connected the hard drive into his laptop. The screen with the Pentagon logo faded out into a green background asking for user credentials. He entered the decryption key, then waited as the machine whirred to life. He opened the file and began to watch.

The video started as the team was in the middle of a desert. The camera was faced at two helmet-wearing SEALs in some kind of vehicle, but it was too shaky to identify exactly whom. Sam assumed they were the same ones that escorted him into the caves. Then the camera lurched and there was a confusion of light and dark, followed by an abrupt shift as all of them suddenly piled out of the truck and ran outside.

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