Chapter 4
The communications officer looked stunned.
“Ma’am, how do you know that valley?”
Linda’s hand tightened at her side.
For one second, she was not in the command room anymore.
She was younger.
Dust in her mouth.
A radio pressed to her ear.
A little girl crying behind a stone wall while gunfire split the morning open.
She blinked, and the memory vanished.
“I’ve been there,” she said.
Ethan crossed his arms.
“You’ve been to an active hostile valley in Kandahar?”
Linda finally looked at him.
“No,” she said. “I survived it.”
Colonel Peterson went very still.
The name came back to him in pieces.
A classified convoy.
A missing interpreter team.
A female field operative listed under a dead file.
A call sign no one had spoken out loud in years.
Peterson took one slow step toward her.
“Linda Carter isn’t your real name, is it?”
The room turned toward her.
Linda’s face did not change.
But her eyes did.
The softness disappeared.
What remained was steel.
“It’s the only name I use now.”
Ethan shook his head.
“This is insane. Sir, we’re wasting time.”
Linda pointed to the screen again.
“No. You’re wasting lives.”
The words cut through the room.
The four SEALs were being moved.
One of the gunmen had dragged Chief Maddox upright.
Another set up a camera on a tripod.
The broadcast equipment was almost ready.
A timer appeared on the enemy feed.
Seven minutes.
Peterson looked at Linda.
May you like
“Tell me the route.”
Read Part 5 to see the moment Linda revealed the secret route no map could show.
