Chapter 6
The room exploded into motion.
Peterson shouted orders.
The rescue team was already airborne, waiting for a plan that did not get them killed.
Now they had one.
Linda stood at the center of it all, gray hoodie under red emergency lights, telling trained officers exactly where the sun would hit first, where the shadows would fall, and where the enemy would panic when the drone dropped low over the west road.
Ethan stood behind her, humiliated and furious.
He tried one last time.
“Sir, we still don’t know who she is.”
Peterson looked at him.
“I do.”
Linda closed her eyes for a breath.
Peterson said the name quietly.
“Raven.”
Several officers turned.
Ethan stared.
“That’s not possible.”
But it was.
Years earlier, before Linda cut hair on base, before the gray hoodie and the quiet smile and the little barber shop beside the PX, there had been an operative called Raven.
She was not famous.
Famous people did not survive that kind of work.
She built escape routes where maps said there were none.
She smuggled wounded soldiers out of valleys no helicopter could reach.
She vanished after a mission that officially never happened.
Most people thought Raven had died.
Some thought she was a myth.
Linda opened her eyes.
“Raven died in that valley,” she said softly. “Linda Carter came home.”
No one knew what to say.
On-screen, the enemy broadcast timer hit three minutes.
Peterson leaned over the radio.
May you like
“Assault team, move.”
Read Part 7 to see whether Raven’s hidden route could save four SEALs before the broadcast began.
