Chapter 1
The last scream came through the radio at 3:44 a.m.
Then the room went silent.
Not quiet.
Silent.
The kind of silence that makes every officer in a command center afraid to breathe.
Captain Lena Cross stood in front of the glowing mission map with both hands on the table, her eyes locked on a red circle outside a village compound.
Dust still covered her uniform.
Her hair was tied back too tight.
Her eyes were red from thirty-one hours without sleep.
On the main screen, a drone feed showed a cluster of buildings surrounded by dark fields, broken walls, and one narrow road cutting through the hills.
Inside that compound was Staff Sergeant Owen Hale.
Captured.
Wounded.
Still alive.
For now.
Cross pointed at the red circle.
“They moved him here.”
Major Willis slammed his palm onto the table so hard a coffee cup jumped.
Every officer in the room flinched.
“You don’t get to play hero tonight.”
Cross did not move.
The words hit her in front of everyone.
The pilots.
The intel team.
The radio operators.
The young lieutenant who had been crying silently since Hale’s radio went dead.
Major Robert Willis stepped closer, his face hard, his voice loud enough for the whole room to hear.
“You already lost the convoy. You already lost contact. Now you want to throw another team into a village because you can’t accept what happened?”
Cross’s jaw tightened.
She had taken insults before.
She had taken blame before.
But Hale was still breathing somewhere on that screen.
And every second they argued, the enemy was preparing something worse than death.
Cross lifted her eyes.
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“He’ll be dead before sunrise.”
Read Part 2 to see why Major Willis called her emotional in front of the entire command center.
