Sloane took one step closer.
“Yes, I do.”
That stopped him.
Origi saw it.
So did Pike, crouched behind a maintenance cart twenty yards away.
Cacau had expected ignorance. He had expected to be the man with the secret. He had expected the grenade to freeze everyone long enough for him to shape the story: he stopped a dangerous flight, he prevented a disaster, he forced command to listen. But General Sloane’s answer stripped him of the only advantage he believed he had.
Yes, I do.
Cacau’s hand tightened around the grenade.
“Then you know why it can’t leave.”
Sloane’s face did not change.
“I know why you were told to stop it.”
He swallowed again.
That small movement mattered.
A guilty man defending a cause looks angry. A cornered man abandoned by his handlers looks around.
Cacau looked around.
At the security team.
At the aircraft.
At the service lane.
At the operations corridor behind Sloane.
As if someone else was supposed to step forward.
No one did.
Sloane lifted the black folder in her hand.
“I have your access logs, Cacau. I have the false maintenance note. I have the weather delay request. I have the message you sent at 06:44 saying the aircraft was still staged. And I have the camera from Hangar Three showing you taking the jar from a supply cabinet that was locked until your badge opened it.”
Cacau’s face lost color.
Origi turned slightly toward Sloane.
He had known parts of it.
Not all.
Cacau tried to speak, but his first attempt came out dry.
“I was ordered to stop an unsafe launch.”
“By whom?” Sloane asked.
He did not answer.
“Say the name,” she said.
Still nothing.
Sloane’s voice sharpened.
“You walked onto my flight line with paint and a live grenade. If there is a lawful order behind that, this is the moment to name it.”
Cacau looked at the grenade, then back at her.
“I’m not the one you should be arresting.”
That sentence moved across the runway like a fuse.
Sloane’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“No,” she said. “You’re the one standing in front of me.”
At that moment, one of the MPs behind Sloane shifted his weight. It was barely visible. Cacau noticed it anyway, and his fingers twitched near the grenade. Origi saw the movement and felt the entire field tighten again.
Sloane raised her hand without looking back.
The MP stopped.
“Easy,” she said.
The word seemed directed at everyone.
Cacau breathed harder.
“I drop it, I’m dead.”
“No,” Sloane said. “You drop it, you get arrested. If you keep holding it, you become the reason someone else dies.”
That was the cleanest truth spoken on the runway that morning.
Cacau closed his eyes.
Only for a second.
Then he bent slowly and set the grenade on the concrete.
The nearest explosive ordnance specialist moved in from the side with careful, practiced steps. No one cheered. No one exhaled loudly. No one treated it like the danger had ended. Because it had not ended. The grenade was only one object. The reason he brought it was still loose on the base.
Once the grenade was secured, two MPs moved toward Cacau.
He did not fight them.
That, too, told Sloane something.
Cacau had been brave when he believed he controlled the scene. Once the scene changed, he became obedient very quickly. He allowed them to force him to his knees. He allowed them to cuff him. He stared at the paint on the windshield, not at Origi, not at Sloane.
When they lifted him, he finally spoke again.
“You don’t understand how high this goes.”
Sloane stepped closer.
“I understand higher than you do.”
Cacau looked at her then.
Whatever he saw in her face made him stop talking.