Chapter 5
The truth was buried under black ink, classified stamps, and a mission that had gone wrong eighteen months earlier in another canyon just like this one.
Cassidy had been there too.
Back then, she had been part of an overwatch pair assigned to protect a reconnaissance team.
Her spotter, Daniel Hayes, had been her best friend since sniper school.
Maybe more than that, though neither of them had ever said it at the right time.
Command had changed the route without telling them.
Then denied they were ever assigned when the rescue call came in.
Daniel died on a ridge while Cassidy screamed for clearance that never came.
Afterward, the report said there had been no sniper element in the sector.
No friendly assets.
No overwatch.
Just like today.
Cassidy had spent eighteen months carrying those words like a stone in her chest.
No friendly assets.
As if Daniel had never existed.
As if she had imagined the blood on her hands.
Colonel Holt had found her after the hearing.
He had not comforted her.
He had not lied.
He simply handed her the classified transcript and said, “They erased the wrong person.”
That was why she was here.
Not for revenge.
For proof.
For the pattern.
For the name behind the voice at command that kept sending men into traps and calling dead soldiers paperwork errors.
Below her, Lieutenant Mercer’s team reached the broken ravine.
One SEAL was wounded, bleeding from his shoulder, but still moving.
Cassidy scanned the ridgeline.
Too quiet.
Then she saw it.
A signal mirror.
Tiny.
Brief.
Flashing from the western crest.
Her blood went cold.
Someone was communicating with the enemy.
Not from the canyon.
May you like
From the command relay tower three miles behind friendly lines.
Read Part 6 to see what Cassidy saw through her scope that proved the betrayal was real.
