Ghostwalker 01- Shadow Game

planted." She stood for a moment looking at Ryland. "I know you did it yesterday, Ryland, but if no one minds, I'd like to examine all of the men. I want to be absolutely certain."
    Gator leapt up. "Raoul Fontenot volunteering, ma'am." He grinned at her engagingly.
    "We could use my room, a couple of doors down and to the left."
    "Thank you, but that won't be necessary," Lily answered, running her fingers over his skull while several of the men snickered. "You're fine."
    Ryland took the opportunity to smack Gator on the head. "Your only problem is your skull's too thick."

    One by one, Lily examined the rest of the men. Only Jeff Hollister showed signs of surgery. "Have any of the rest of you had seizures?"
    "I did, ma'am," Sam Johnson, the only other African American besides Tucker Addison in the room, admitted. He was a big man, light on his feet, a man renowned for his hand-to-hand combat. Few could surpass him in a physical fight. He had been an instructor in the Special Forces team. "I was out in the field and had a small seizure during a mission.
    The video and voice feed on my camera and my partner's camera weren't working that day so there was no data on it. That's why it didn't show up in a report."
    Ryland spun around. "You never verbally reported it?"
    "No, sir," Sam said, glancing into the deepest corner where Nicolas sat so silently. "We talked it over and decided we'd better not. The men who went to the hospital all ended up dead within a few weeks. If it happened again, I was going to report it."
    "But it never happened again," Lily finished for him. "Do you recall whether or not you had suffered a migraine prior to the seizure, maybe a day or so before it?"
    "I had a hell of a migraine afterward, ma'am. I thought my head was going to explode, but I didn't dare go to the hospital so I rode it out with a little help from my partner. He knew some mumbo jumbo, cures from the old ones, and damn if they didn't work too."
    Lily knew immediately the partner who knew "mumbo jumbo" was Nicolas. He apparently had an extensive knowledge of healing plants. She glanced at the man but he was staring straight ahead as if he didn't hear a single word.
    "What about before that?"
    "We'd trained for a couple of days and I was separated from Nicolas. He's an anchor, and I couldn't block out all the garbage coming at me. My brain felt like it was on fire. I started vomiting that night and couldn't see so I asked for medication."
    "Who separated you from your anchor?" Lily asked.
    "Orders came down," Sam said. He looked to Nicolas. "From Captain Miller."
    Ryland shook his head. "I never have given an order separating anchors from the men assigned to them. It would defeat the entire mission." His gaze found Nicolas. "You thought it was me."
    "I wasn't certain, Rye, and I wasn't going to take chances with his life. I watched you and waited. If it had been you…" Nicolas shrugged his shoulders casually.
    Lily shivered as the flat, cold eyes moved over Ryland. Nicolas didn't have to voice a threat, it was there in his eyes, in his casual shrug.

    "Russell Cowlings delivered the order," Sam admitted. "There was no reason to think you hadn't given it."
    "The snake," Gator said. "He attacked us and tried to kill the captain."
    "If I'm getting this right, Gator," Tucker said, "Russ did more than that. He set Sam up to die. Isn't that what you think, ma'am?"
    "I think he did, yes. I think Sam had a violent headache after being separated from his anchor and when he asked for medication, he was given something that triggered a seizure. I don't think the seizures are caused by the enhancing process, or if they are, it's a rare side effect. And I don't believe the brain bleeds are caused by severe seizures. I believe the men you lost to those complications were at some time taken to the hospital and, under the pretense of relieving swelling, I think the men underwent surgery and electrodes were planted in specific parts of the brain. Eventually the men were subjected to magnetic fields of extremely high frequency. The heat generated tissue damage and caused hemorrhage.''
    "How could they get away with something like that?" Ryland demanded.
    "They performed the autopsies, didn't they? They determined the cause of death. What better way to sabotage a project than to pick off members of the unit one by one and make it look as if they were dying from complications or side effects?"
    Tucker swore aloud, turned away from her to stomp across