Chapter 4: Księgi Niewidzialnych Zysków

The encrypted files arrived a few days later, late at night. My heart pounded as I downloaded them to a burner laptop, carefully wiping its digital footprint afterward. Valerie Hayes had delivered. This wasn’t just a few veiled threats or casual observations anymore. This was the hard evidence Commander Sharma had demanded.

The files were an intricate web of bank statements, ledgers, and invoices. It took me hours to parse through them, but the picture that emerged was far more sinister than I had imagined.

The first thing I found was the shell company: “Wild Frontier Solutions.” It was registered to a post office box in a neighboring county, with no discernible physical address. Its listed director was a phantom name, clearly a front.

The statements showed massive, regular deposits. These weren’t from the military. These were from dozens of private clients, listed vaguely as “training participants” or “consultancy clients.” The sums were exorbitant, far exceeding anything reasonable for military-style survival training.

Then I found Leonard “Lenny” Croft. His name appeared repeatedly in the ledgers, receiving substantial payments from Wild Frontier Solutions. These were labeled “training consultancy fees” and “equipment procurement services.” I cross-referenced some of the dates and amounts with our exercise schedule. The fees were vastly inflated. For example, a single payment of $50,000 to Croft was listed for “specialized rappelling gear procurement.” I knew, definitively, that our unit’s actual rappelling gear was outdated and fraying, certainly not “specialized” or worth a fraction of that.

It wasn’t just faulty equipment; it was deliberate. Conroy wasn’t just cutting corners to save money. He was funneling money *out* of the system by pretending to upgrade it.

“He uses the illusion of ‘cutting-edge’ private gear to justify the inflated fees,” Valerie had texted in a follow-up. “Then he pockets the difference, or buys cheap, unreliable stuff to replace it, passing it off as new.”

My stomach turned. That explained the fraying ropes, the flimsy harness attachments, the constant “equipment malfunctions” that Conroy simply shrugged off as part of the “challenge.” He was actively sourcing inferior, dangerous equipment and charging premium prices for it, all while enriching himself.

The ledgers also contained smaller, but equally chilling, entries. There were regular payments to a “WFS Morale Fund.” Beneath this, a memo: “Forfeit Pot Contributions.”

The pink crown. The humiliation. It wasn’t just a random act of bullying. It was part of an internal “loser’s pot” among Conroy and his cronies. They were betting on who would break first, who would challenge his authority and suffer the public shame. My humiliation had been a show, a spectacle for his illicit betting pool. The betrayal felt even deeper, more calculating.

I started making a list, meticulously cross-referencing every suspicious transaction with specific training incidents I had observed or heard about.

* **$25,000 for “Advanced Water Crossing Infrastructure” to Lenny Croft:** This correlated with the near-drowning incident of Private Rodriguez last week when a temporary pontoon bridge collapsed. The bridge was hastily repaired with cheap lumber, not “advanced infrastructure.”
* **$18,000 for “High-Altitude Climbing Safety Upgrades” to Lenny Croft:** This linked directly to the rappelling lines I had questioned, the ones Liam Chen nearly fell from. The lines were clearly not upgraded.
* **$30,000 for “Emergency Survival Shelter Materials” to Lenny Croft:** Yet, our troops were consistently made to build makeshift shelters from scavenged materials, sometimes in severe weather, leading to several cases of hypothermia. The “materials” never materialized.

Conroy was systematically defrauding private clients and, far worse, using the proceeds to create a dangerous, unregulated training environment for our soldiers. The “faulty rappelling line” I had raised concerns about, the one that earned me the pink crown, was not just faulty; it was part of a profit-driven scheme.

Valerie’s betrayal by Conroy became clear too. The ledgers showed a dramatic shift in payment distribution. Initially, a larger share went to a different account, presumably hers. Then, abruptly, the bulk of the “consultancy fees” switched entirely to Lenny Croft’s accounts. Conroy had indeed cut her out, likely because she was too cautious, too much of a liability to his insatiable greed.

The more I dug, the angrier I became. This wasn’t just abstract financial fraud. This was direct endangerment. Every inflated invoice, every ghost expenditure, directly corresponded to a moment of risk, a potential injury, a near-tragedy for my troops.

I knew Conroy had warned me about being “targeted for injury” in the upcoming “elimination trial.” I had initially thought it meant a rough, unfair course. Now, with the financial records in hand, a far more sinister possibility emerged. Could he have actually *invested* in sabotaging a specific section, using the funds from Wild Frontier Solutions to make it look like an accident?

The thought sent a shiver down my spine. It was no longer just about exposing fraud; it was about preventing a deliberate act of violence against one of his own. Against *me*.

I needed to act fast. Commander Sharma might have dismissed my concerns as “overactive imagination,” but she couldn’t dismiss this. This was concrete, undeniable proof of a criminal operation.

But I still didn’t have the proof of the *sabotage*. The financial records showed the *motive* and the *means* to procure cheap equipment or even specific components. But it didn’t show the active weaponization of the course.

I closed the laptop, my mind racing. I needed to revisit the “elimination trial” course. I needed to see for myself if Conroy had gone beyond cutting corners and had actively rigged the game.

The sun was beginning to rise, painting the sky in pale shades of orange and pink. Soon, Conroy would be herding the troops into another day of his dangerous games.

I had to find the physical manifestation of his greed. I had to find the specific section, the specific element of the course that had been bought with “Wild Frontier Solutions” money and rigged for disaster. This was no longer just a financial investigation. It was a search for a hidden weapon.

“V.H.,” I typed one last message. “Thank you. This changes everything. Keep an eye out. He’ll be desperate.”

I packed a small kit: my compass, a multi-tool, a compact camera. And a quiet, burning rage. The hunt for the truth had just become a hunt for a bomb.