Chapter 5
Emily thought of her father.
Colonel David Hayes.
A-10 pilot.
Call sign Ironhand.
He had flown the same kind of aircraft twenty years earlier.
He used to tell Emily that the Warthog was not built to look pretty.
It was built to stay when everyone else left.
When Emily was seventeen, her father died during a rescue mission in a canyon outside Kandahar.
The official report said he flew too low.
Too reckless.
Too emotional.
But Emily had read the classified transcript years later.
Her father had stayed because American soldiers were trapped below him.
He had saved eight men before his aircraft went down.
For years, people whispered that David Hayes had made the wrong call.
Emily became a pilot anyway.
Not to escape his shadow.
To understand it.
Now, as bullets rose toward her cockpit and twelve men waited below, she finally did.
Her father had not died because he was reckless.
He died because some lives are worth flying into hell for.
Emily touched the old patch sewn inside her glove.
Ironhand.
Then she keyed her mic.
“Overlord, my father once told me the safest pilot in the sky is not always the one who comes home clean.”
There was a pause.
Overlord’s voice changed.
“Emily…”
She did not wait.
She pushed the A-10 deeper into the canyon.
Qadir saw her coming and smiled again.
Not with humor.
With rage.
He ordered his men to fire the launcher.
The missile streaked from the north ridge.
A white line of smoke cut through the canyon straight toward Emily.
“Missile launch!” Overlord shouted.
The SEALs looked up in horror.
The missile was too close.
The canyon was too tight.
May you like
There was nowhere for her to go.
Read Part 6 to see how Emily turned the enemy’s own missile against them.
