Chapter 2 - The Phone Stays On
Harlan took two steps toward Eli, then stopped. Several Marines had straightened, watching their commanding officer with the alert attention they normally reserved for a live-fire range.
“Turn it off,” Harlan said.
Eli lowered his wrist. “I'm securing a recording of an incident, sir.”
“You're disobeying a direct order.”
“Then give the order in front of everyone.” Eli's voice shook, but he kept speaking. “And please explain whether you're ordering me to destroy it.”
Nia rose slowly from the sand. Her knee throbbed. She admired his courage and feared what it would cost him.
“Corporal Navarro,” she said, “stop arguing. Preserve the file. We can address the rest through the chain.”
Harlan swung his gaze back to her. “You just made this twice as bad.”
He dismissed the formation and told a gunnery sergeant to keep the two of them outside the lane office. No one was to leave or discuss the incident. The gunnery sergeant, a woman named Renee Holt, wrote the wording in her pocket notebook before acknowledging it.
Inside the office, a desk fan rattled over a map of the installation. Eli set his phone on the desk, screen up, but didn't surrender it. Harlan wanted to know why he had been filming.
“You approved us to record the training demonstration last week,” Eli said. “Public affairs asked for a short recruiting clip. I started before the formation because we were standing in the same lane.”
“The authorization was for training,” Harlan said.
“That's why I started recording. I kept it going when you stopped the exercise.”
Nia could see the trap. The colonel could challenge the circumstances of the filming. He couldn't undo the words captured on it. But the misconduct complaint and the story about the foundation were separate matters; mixing them could discredit both.
“Sir,” Nia said, “I request to submit a written statement and have the recording preserved without editing.”
Harlan leaned on the desk. “Your next assignment is on the line.”
“Then please include that statement in the written record too.”
For a moment his mouth opened as if another insult had been waiting there. Then he looked at Holt's notebook, and the words went unsaid.
Holt escorted them out and murmured in the corridor. “Don't send that video to anybody who doesn't need it. Make a record of where the original stays.”
Eli nodded. Nia reached for the folder he'd carried into the lane.
A faded photograph had been clipped to the front. Three exhausted Marines stood near a scorched fence. Two faces were visible. The third person's face had been cut away when someone enlarged the image for a foundation poster.
Nia recognized the torn sleeve and the bandaged right hand of the cropped-out man.
May you like
“That's Marcus,” she whispered. “My brother.”
On the poster beneath the picture, the caption named Colonel Victor Harlan as the rescuer.
