Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
CHASE SECURITY TRAINING CENTER – DC
It had been a grueling seven months since Shannon left. The forest was black and wet, thick with mist and silence. Bravo Team moved in staggered file. Fourteen bodies, three-klick spacing, full rucks, night vision blinking green across the underbrush.
It wasn’t the gear that made the exercise brutal. It was the map. Land navigation under no stars, minimal light, shifting waypoints. No digital assist. No pace counters. Just the old-school stuff of a compass, gut, and grit.
The point man went down hard at hour four. It was a bad angle on a creek bed jump. He cracked his ankle. He was dead weight they couldn’t and wouldn’t leave behind.
Paulsen called a halt with a short, sharp signal. The team crouched and waited. No one panicked, but no one moved either.
Until Dante stood. He didn’t ask. Didn’t hesitate. He just walked forward, took the nav slate, and checked bearings. “Four klicks to fallback,” he said. “Elevation drop of eighty meters. If we hug this ridge line, we can cut twenty minutes.”
He looked at Paulsen with no challenge in his voice. He was just ready.
Paulsen stared back, unreadable. He gave the smallest of nods. “Bravo, reset. Olivetti leads.”
There was no protest or one grunt of doubt. Even Callow fell in behind Dante without a word.
The rest of the night was hard and fast. Rain started around 0400, just enough to suck heat from skin and grind fatigue into bone.
Dante didn’t slow or talk. He just led. His eyes remained forward, his boots sure, and his pace steady as a metronome.
He got them there ten minutes early. No wasted steps. No errors.
At dawn, Paulsen sat on the tailgate of the lead Humvee, sipping black coffee, watching the team strip gear and collapse on the gravel. Dante crouched to loosen his boot laces, back damp with sweat, arms streaked with mud.
Paulsen didn’t smile as he called across the lot, “Olivetti.”
Dante stood.
Paulsen didn’t raise his voice. “Get cleaned up. You’re sitting in on an ops brief.”
Dante didn’t ask why. He just nodded and walked. The others watched him go. And that was the moment it changed.
MAINTENANCE BAY – HANGAR 2C – PRE-DAWN
The hangar lights were low. The morning crew hadn’t clocked in yet.
Krueger moved through the space like he belonged, his coveralls zipped, clipboard in hand, safety badge clipped to his collar. The base didn’t question confidence. Confidence opened doors.
The Lakota was already staged for the day’s rotation. The crew hadn’t signed off on it yet. He didn’t need long. He made it look like a systems check.
Kneeling beneath the belly of the bird, he pulled the panel fasteners on the secondary hydraulic line right below the cyclic assembly. He didn’t sever anything. That would be sloppy. He did something smarter.
He scored the pressure hose with a razor filament, just enough to guarantee failure under stress.
Not during startup. Not in hover. But later.
Mid-flight. Where it would bleed control slowly.
Where it would mimic a catastrophic system fault.
Where it would never be traced to sabotage. Just a bad break on an old machine.
And then he did something worse.
He slipped a single vial, a narrow ampoule, into the flight seat on the cockpit side.
Unlabeled. Clear. It would enter the skin when the pilot sat.
It was a medium-acting paralytic in a small dose.
It wouldn’t stop a heart. But it would make a copilot black out mid-run.
Like heatstroke or exhaustion. Like a tragic coincidence.
He stood and wiped his hands. He re-clipped the panel. No one saw him leave.
OUTSIDE THE READY ROOM
He passed Shannon in the hall that morning. She didn’t notice the flick of his eyes as he looked at her. It wasn’t like a man seeing a person. It was like someone confirming a variable was in place.
She was whole, strong and focused. Exactly as he needed her to be. Because today wasn’t about injuring her. It was about breaking her.
FORT NOVOSEL TRAINING AIRSPACE – 0613 HOURS
The rotors sliced through the early morning March stillness, cutting the fog like teeth. The sun was barely up, a cold orange smear over the tree line. The tarmac was wet with dew, the kind that clung to boots and didn’t shake off until the sun rose.
Shannon moved through preflight like she always did, with no room for guesswork. She was already strapped in. Gloves tight. Helmet sealed.
Behind her, Warrant Officer Mara Esten slapped the cockpit latch and dropped into her seat with a grunt. “Grady Ridge evac run. Low light, no NAV assist. Can’t wait.”
Shannon flicked through the panel toggles. “You sound thrilled.”
“Had a migraine since 0400. Thought a good death spiral over pine trees might help.”
Shannon gave her a sidelong glance but didn’t joke back. Not this morning. Something about the air felt off.
They lifted off clean and gained altitude over the southeast end of the ridge, trees below. Fog pockets rose from hollows. The flight path was simple on paper. They had to climb, descend, simulate a wounded pickup, extract, and return. It should be easy.
The first tremor came just before Waypoint 3: a hitch in the yaw—slight, almost like a wind push except the skies were still, and nothing on Shannon’s readout suggested cross-drift.
“You feel that?” she asked.
Mara didn't answer immediately. She was looking ahead, jaw tight.
Shannon adjusted trim. “Something’s slipping. Your torque read normal?”
Mara blinked. “Yeah. I…” Her head began to bob, then she slumped forward. Hard.
“Mara!” Shannon reached across, grabbed the front of her vest, and shook hard. “Come on. Stay with me.”
There was no response. Her helmeted head rolled slightly to the side. She was unconscious, breathing, but out cold.
A second later, red lights lit up across the dash.
HYDRAULIC PRESSURE FAULT
TAIL ROTOR MISALIGN
Shannon’s heart slammed once as she remembered the note left on her bed. Sabotage. Thanks to her mother’s photo albums, she knew what it looked like. She’d seen birds die from real damage. This wasn’t wear and tear. It was targeted.
The tail kicked. The nose dropped.
“Shit.”
She wrestled for control, flipping to backup hydraulics, adjusting collective just enough to keep them level. The trees were rising fast now. She hit the comms. Fast.
“MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY, this is Blue Bird One-Niner, training bird going down, loss of controls, estimated grid five-three-niner by four-eight, copilot incapacitated, repeat—"
Static. The transmission cut off mid-sentence.
The rotors screamed. The left side of the bird clipped a branch, then a pine tree. Then the whole tail snapped clean. The bird spun sideways, struck dirt, and bounced.
Once.
Twice.
And folded.
Metal shrieked. Glass blew inward. The cockpit was crushed in a spray of shattered gauges and snapping steel. Then there was stillness.
Smoke leaked up through a fractured hull panel. One engine wheezed. Popped. Inside the wreckage, Shannon’s fingers twitched once against her harness. Her leg was twisted wrong. Her hip flared with fire. But she was breathing. Mara didn’t move at all.
FORT NOVOSEL – COMMAND OPERATIONS BAY – 0632 HOURS
The alarm was just sharp enough to cut the morning fog. Colonel Prescott walked in fast, flight brief in hand, headset crackling as he keyed in. “We’ve lost contact with Blue Bird One-Niner. Last check-in was three minutes prior to Waypoint 3. MAYDAY received, partial grid only.”
Silence fell across the ops bay.
Rhodes stepped forward, already buckling her vest. “I’ll go.”
Carter followed, shouldering her medpack. “You’re not going without me.”
Prescott gave a curt nod. “SAR Team 1, take Bayridge side. Airlift authorized.”
A third voice joined. “I’ll go.” Krueger. Calm. Casual. Gloves already on.
Prescott looked at him. “You flew with Johnson this week?”
Krueger nodded. “I know her style. If she was flying, she’d try to set it down near the lower slope.”
Rhodes frowned slightly. Prescott didn’t notice.
“Unit 3,” the CO said. “You’re with them. Move.”
Krueger gave a short nod and followed the others out the door. His eyes stayed cold.
CRASH SITE – GRADY RIDGE
Faint and acrid smoke laced the air.
When Shannon coughed, pain flared white-hot in her ribs. She couldn’t move her left leg. Something was wrong with it. Too wrong. But her right hand still worked. Enough to slap the buckle.
She fell hard through the broken window. Dragging herself sideways, she choked out,
“Mara…”
No answer.
Her helmet had come loose. Her vision was blurred. She looked back once. Mara’s head had dropped forward, her helmet cracked down the left. There was blood on the windshield.
Shannon turned away. Pain surged, but she bit it down. Every breath felt like inhaling glass. She dragged herself out of the wreck as far as she could, into wet pine needles and dirt. And then she passed out.
FORT NOVOSEL CO’S OFFICE
Colonel Prescott locked the door before making the call. Ian Chase picked up fast. “Chase.”
“This is Colonel Prescott. I tried to reach Mike Johnson. We have a problem.”
“He’s in a SCIF.” Ian didn’t breathe. “Shannon?”
“Blue Bird One-Niner. Johnson and Esten. MAYDAY came in sixteen minutes ago in a half-transmission, no transponder. No beacon. We’re blind.”
“Do you have a grid?”
“Partial. SAR’s en route. But we don’t know if they’re alive.”
Ian’s silence was worse than shouting. “I’ll notify Mike,” he said finally.
Prescott’s voice dropped. “He already lost his wife.”
“I know.” Ian hung up.
CHASE SCIF – SUBLEVEL
The door opened fast with no knock. Mike turned in his chair, already knowing something was wrong.
Ian crossed the room in two steps and stopped short. “It’s Shannon.”
Mike stood.
“Training flight. Went down about thirty minutes ago. Shannon may have gotten a MAYDAY out. It was clipped.”
Ford Cox looked up. “Location?”
“Grady Ridge. No signal. SAR’s deployed.”
Mike didn’t sit down. “I need the jet. I’ll grab my go-bag.
Ian slowed him down and stepped in close. “I got the message when Meagan’s car was hit.”
Mike’s jaw flexed. “You were the only one who showed up that night.”
“That was because you didn’t let anyone in. I’m not letting you do this alone,” Ian said.
Mike nodded, and they left together.
GRADY RIDGE – 0746 HOURS
The trees opened like a wound with black smoke curling up from the brush line. Carter spotted it first. “There at three o’clock. Smoke. I’ll radio for fire suppression.”
Rhodes pushed forward through underbrush, eyes sweeping for fire, fuel, anything unstable. “We’ve got wreckage.”
The bird was half-buried into the side of a slope, left side crumpled, tail gone.
“Mara!” Rhodes yelled, scrambling up the ridge.
She reached the cockpit first. It was too late. Mara Esten was still strapped in. Her neck was limp in an odd angle, her eyes half shut. Gone.
Rhodes exhaled hard, jaw clenched.
Carter was already checking the other side. “Over here!”
Shannon. She was half out of the wreck, face-down in the mud, bleeding from her side. She was barely breathing.
Carter hit comms. “Command, this is SAR Team 1. We found them. One KIA. One critical. Request medevac immediately.” She gave the position.
Rhodes moved around the wreckage and dropped to her knees. “Shannon—Jesus, hold on.”
Krueger stood ten feet back in the trees. Watching. Silent.