Chapter 3
The RPG gunner leaned forward.
Cassidy’s breathing slowed.
Her world narrowed.
Wind from the left.
Dust rising in waves.
Heat bending the target.
She adjusted.
Before she could fire, a new voice entered the radio.
Older.
Calm.
Powerful enough to silence everyone without shouting.
“Overwatch, cleared to engage.”
The SEAL commander froze.
Command went dead quiet.
Cassidy’s eye did not leave the scope.
She knew that voice.
Colonel Ethan Holt.
The only man in the command chain who knew why she was there.
The only man who had not erased her name from memory.
The RPG gunner’s finger moved.
Cassidy exhaled.
“Copy.”
She squeezed the trigger.
The shot cracked across the canyon.
The RPG gunner dropped before he ever fired.
His weapon slipped from his shoulder and clattered down the rocks.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then the mountain erupted.
Enemy fighters rose from behind boulders and ledges, firing down into the canyon exactly where the SEALs had been standing seconds earlier.
The machine gun opened up.
Rounds shredded stone.
Dust blasted over the SEALs’ heads.
The commander shouted, “Contact high left! Move!”
Cassidy was already on the second target.
She fired.
The machine gunner fell back from the weapon.
The assistant gunner lunged forward to grab it.
Cassidy fired again.
He disappeared behind the ridge.
The SEALs moved like shadows, fast and brutal, breaking from the exposed canyon floor into a deeper crack in the rocks.
But the ambush had been built well.
Too well.
There were more men than the mission brief had promised.
More weapons.
More angles.
Someone had known exactly where the SEALs would enter.
Cassidy felt the old cold weight settle in her chest.
This wasn’t bad intel.
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This was a setup.
Read Part 4 to see why Cassidy realized command itself might be part of the trap.
