Chapter 4
Inside the cockpit, Captain Riley Shaw’s thumb rested near the trigger.
Her breathing was steady.
She remembered his words.
Any jet can scare men with rifles.
No.
Any jet could miss.
Any jet could panic.
Any jet could turn a rescue into a massacre.
This took patience.
This took math.
This took trust.
And Dayne had never trusted her.
But his soldiers needed her anyway.
“Keep your head down,” Riley said.
Her eyes went cold.
“I’m in hot.”
The radio went silent.
Then the sky opened.
The A-10 dropped so low the outpost seemed to shake before it fired.
Dayne pressed his face into the dirt.
The sergeant threw himself over a wounded private.
Everyone braced for death.
Then the cannon roared.
BRRRRRRT.
The sound was not like gunfire.
It was like the earth ripping open.
Dust exploded beyond the broken southern wall.
The enemy line vanished behind a storm of sand, sparks, and shattered rock.
Dayne screamed without meaning to.
Not because he was hit.
Because he had never felt anything that powerful pass so close and leave him alive.
The firing from the riverbed stopped.
For one breath, there was only ringing.
Then Riley’s voice came back.
“First pass complete. Hostiles suppressed. Friendlies intact.”
No one spoke.
The soldiers looked at each other like they had just been pulled from a grave.
Dayne lifted his face from the dirt.
His mouth hung open.
His eyes were wide.
The smirk he had worn all morning was gone.
May you like
“Impossible,” he whispered.
Read Part 5 to see why the soldiers stopped listening to Dayne and started trusting the voice in the sky.
