“On this thumb drive is a video excerpt from a classified surveillance system at FOB Healy. This particular system was observing the only entrance and exit into the server system room that supported the surveillance stations covering all of the interrogation cells located at the base. Major Wenner is shown entering this room and departing sixty seconds later. Maintenance records show that the camera aimed at Mister Noor’s cell failed at this time, and that he was beaten to death shortly thereafter.”

I refuse to look in Wenner’s direction. I say, “Also on this thumb drive are documents, bank statements, and records of phone conversations between cartel representatives and Major Wenner, who has an anonymous numbered bank account in the Cayman Islands. The major was also receiving payments from banks representing both the El Baja and Veracruz cartels. He was playing both ends against the middle. If you excuse the phrasing, Captain Wenner was making a killing.”

No word from anyone.

I say, “As part of this arrangement, Major Wenner was also giving information he gathered from both cartels to Senior Warrant Officer Fred McCarthy of the CID in Quantico, who in turn was passing it to Warrant Officer Vasquez. If Vasquez had succeeded in her mission to halt me from freeing the older Mister Abboud, Major Wenner was to be handsomely compensated by the El Baja cartel. If not, his additional compensation would have come from the Veracruz cartel. Payment would have been made, no matter what.”

The silence is deathly still.

One of the civilians, the nearest one with the heavy tan, is slowly moving his chair back.

“Finally, I learned yesterday that the body of Lieutenant Preston Baker of my unit was found in a wooded area on this base, an apparent suicide. Lieutenant Baker served with me in Afghanistan and provided me with vital information concerning my prisoner’s connection to Mercador Holdings. I would suggest that the appropriate investigators re-examine the circumstances of his death, with a close look at Captain Wenner’s whereabouts at the time of the shooting.”

Wenner tenses up. The facade he’s carefully built over the years to suffer through his military service and leave with a fat bank account has just been blown away, like a Texas trailer park in the middle of a tornado. No time to think of how temptation came his way, how he gladly seized the temptation with both hands, and how he had planned to leave the Army when his latest term of service was up and then disappear forever.

Again, no time to think.

Just burst out of this chair and haul ass before anyone can react. A good run will take him to his car, and then he can roar out before word gets to the gate to block him from leaving.

A heavy hand is on his shoulder, squeezing hard. Wenner turns. It’s the tanned man that he’s certain is from the CIA, and the man leans into him and says, “Move out of this chair and I’ll snap your neck, son.”