The newspaper headline hit Catherine like a physical blow.
KASSERINE PASS: AMERICA'S DARKEST HOUR6,000 Casualties in North African Disaster
She'd been Marie Chevalier for so long that the morning routine had become automatic—French press coffee, careful movements, the small gestures of a woman who'd fled one war only to find herself in another. But this morning, reading about equipment failures buried in the fourth paragraph, something clicked.
"Preliminary reports suggest unusually high rates of equipment malfunction, particularly among artillery units..."
Forty percent dud rate, if the whispered rumors were true.
Catherine set down her coffee and pulled out her hidden files. Three folders spread across the kitchen table: Rick's shipping manifests from Detroit, David's procurement records from Washington, Webb's surveillance notes from Philadelphia.
She'd been collecting pieces for months. Now, with Kasserine burning in her mind, she finally saw the pattern.
January 20: Artillery shells ordered from Picatinny Arsenal. Standard specifications.
January 28: Meridian Holdings "quality inspection."
February 2: Modified shells shipped to Morocco.
February 14-25: Battle of Kasserine Pass. 6,000 casualties. 40% artillery failure rate.
Her hands shook as she pulled out more files. Dieppe. Guadalcanal. Every major Allied disaster correlated with Meridian Holdings touching the supply chain two to three weeks before.
This wasn't incompetence. This wasn't the fog of war.
This was deliberate sabotage. Equipment failures engineered to prolong battles, maximize casualties, extend contracts.
For profit.
Catherine made it to the bathroom before she vomited.
The Metropolitan Club luncheon that afternoon was the usual performance—wealthy women supporting the war effort over champagne and canapés. Catherine wore Marie's smile and made polite conversation, but her mind was calculating murder.
She met a widow whose husband had died at Kasserine. The woman mentioned his last letter: "The guns didn't work. The shells wouldn't fire. He thought it was bad luck."
Not bad luck. Two hundred dollars per casualty, by Catherine's calculation. That's what Prometheus Protocol had decided each American life was worth.
Catherine excused herself before her shaking hands could betray her.
That evening, Sarah Brennan appeared at her apartment door.
"I need to talk to you," Sarah said, looking at the evidence wall Catherine had been too distracted to hide. "Jesus Christ. It's real."
Catherine covered the most sensitive documents. "What do you want?"
"To help." Sarah pulled out an envelope. "My father is Harold Brennan. Chairman of Chase Bank. He's been processing transactions for this... network. Money moving through shell companies, payments to Meridian Holdings. He kept records. And after I showed him the Kasserine casualty lists, made him calculate how much Chase earned processing those blood-money payments—" She stopped. "He wants to meet. Wants to testify."
"Why should I trust him?"
"Because he's drowning in guilt. Chase earned two hundred thousand dollars in fees processing the contracts that got 2,400 soldiers killed." Sarah's voice was hard. "My brother died at Guadalcanal. If his death was because of sabotaged supplies, I want everyone responsible to burn."
After Sarah left, Catherine found a second envelope that hadn't been there before. Someone had entered her apartment while she was distracted.
Inside: a photograph of a classified War Production Board memo and a note.
"You're not the only one who sees the pattern. Tomorrow, 2 PM, Union Station Track 16. Come alone. Soldiers keep dying while we gather evidence. —A friend who knew Morrison"
Morrison. Douglas Morrison, killed at the Lincoln Memorial in December 1941 trying to expose Prometheus Protocol.
Someone who'd known him. Someone with access to classified documents. Someone investigating the same conspiracy.
Catherine had two meetings tomorrow at 2 PM: Brennan at Chase Bank and this mysterious contact at Union Station.
Same time. Deliberate test? Or coordinated trap?
She made her decision and encoded messages. David would provide backup at Union Station. Webb would watch the Chase Bank meeting from a distance. If this was a trap, at least they'd know.
Union Station's Track 16 platform was crowded enough to blend in but open enough to spot surveillance. Catherine arrived early and found David positioned near the stairs, pretending to read a newspaper.
At exactly 2 PM, a man in an Army Air Forces uniform walked onto the platform. Early thirties, slight limp, carrying himself like a pilot who'd rather be flying than grounded.
Captain Reeves.
Catherine approached. "Captain Reeves?"
He looked up with exhausted eyes. "Miss Chevalier. Or should I say, Miss Dupré?"
Her hand moved toward her purse, but Reeves raised his hands. "I'm not here to arrest you. I'm here because Morrison sent me a letter two days before he died. Said if anything happened to him, I should look for four people who'd go underground. Gave me your real names. Told me you'd be continuing his work."
Catherine's breath caught. "Morrison knew?"
"He suspected Hartley would make a move. Took me months to find you, but I did." Reeves pulled out a folder. "I've been continuing his investigation. Tracking equipment failures, procurement irregularities, fuel diversions. Everything leads back to Meridian Holdings and Hartley's network."
He opened the folder. Inside: battle reports, casualty statistics, procurement records. The same patterns Catherine had found.
"Kasserine Pass," Reeves said quietly. "Artillery shells ordered from Picatinny, diverted through Meridian, substituted with inferior fusing mechanisms. Forty percent dud rate. I've calculated the profit margin: $480,000. I've also calculated casualties per shell: 1.2 American soldiers dead or wounded per faulty munition."
"Two hundred dollars per casualty."
"Give or take." His voice was hard. "But there's something bigger. I found this in a file I wasn't supposed to see."
He handed her a classified memo: "POST-WAR PLANNING COMMITTEE - PRELIMINARY RECOMMENDATIONS."
Catherine scanned it. Plans for permanent intelligence apparatus, minimal Congressional oversight, peacetime budgets in the hundreds of millions. Infrastructure being built now, under cover of wartime emergency, that would become embedded in the government forever.
"They're not just profiteering from this war," Reeves said. "They're engineering the next one. Building permanent structures that will outlast all of us."
"Why tell me this now?"
"Because I'm being transferred to the Pentagon next week. Once I'm there, I'll be watched, constrained. And because I saw something else in Hartley's calendar: October 15th. Designation: 'Protocol Summit.' High-level meeting, no location listed."
"Prometheus Protocol's leadership. All in one place."
"If you could surveil it, record it, get proof of what they're planning—" Reeves stood. "Morrison gave his life trying to expose this through official channels. It didn't work. Maybe you can do it differently."
He handed her the folder. "Everything I've found. Combine it with what your team has, and you'll have the complete picture. Use it however you think best. Just stop them."
Reeves limped away, disappearing into the crowd.
Catherine stood holding the folder, feeling its weight. David appeared beside her.
"That was Reeves?"
"Yes. And he just gave us everything Morrison died trying to expose." She opened the folder enough for David to see the post-war planning memo. "They're building it now, David. While everyone's focused on defeating the Axis, they're constructing permanent warfare, permanent surveillance, permanent fear."
"What do we do?"
"We meet. All four of us. This weekend. Pool everything and plan for October 15th." Catherine's voice was steady. "If there's a summit meeting, we need to be there. Recording it. Getting proof we can't get any other way."
"That's insane."
"So is everything else we've done." She looked at him. "Morrison died trying to do this the right way. It didn't work. So we'll do it wrong. We'll break every rule. But we'll get the truth out there."
That evening, Catherine returned to her apartment and found a reply from Sarah Brennan:
"My father wants to know: are you serious about stopping this, or just protecting yourself? There's a difference."
Catherine wrote back:
"Tell him I'm serious. I'll meet next week if his evidence matches ours. But I'm not interested in immunity deals. We're stopping the conspiracy, not redistributing guilt."
Then she encoded a longer message for the team:
"ALL FOUR MEET. BALTIMORE SAFE HOUSE, THIS WEEKEND. REEVES PROVIDED CRITICAL EVIDENCE. POST-WAR PLANNING CONFIRMED. SUMMIT MEETING OCTOBER 15TH. SIX MONTHS TO BUILD CASE AND EXPOSE EVERYTHING. THIS IS ENDGAME."
She sealed the message and sat back, looking at her evidence wall.
Tomorrow she'd add Reeves's documents. She'd see how everything fit together. She'd start planning the impossible.
But tonight, she pulled out her journal and wrote:
"April 15, 1943. Morrison died trying to expose Prometheus Protocol through proper channels. It failed. Now we have six months to do it differently—to gather undeniable proof and release it so publicly they can't suppress it.
Reeves gave us everything he found. Brennan might testify. We have allies now. Cracks in the conspiracy's armor. People with guilty consciences who've seen the casualty lists and can't justify the profit margins.
2,400 men died at Kasserine because someone decided shells with 40% failure rates were acceptable if they generated invoices. How many more will die if we don't stop this?
Six months until the summit. Six months to prepare. And then we expose everything.
For Morrison. For the soldiers. For the truth.
This ends in October."
Catherine locked the journal away and stood at her window, looking out at New York's darkened streets. Blackout curtains drawn. Air raid wardens patrolling. A nation at war.
And beneath it all, hidden in plain sight, Prometheus Protocol was building an empire.
She had six months to burn it down.
The war against Germany and Japan would be won eventually. But this war—the one for America's soul—was just beginning.
And Catherine intended to win it.
Or die trying.