Chapter 9 #3
Bailee dropped into the next low hollow and went to one knee.
She braced the carbine in the fork of a root and listened.
The river whispered nearby, a low rush between stones.
Insects hummed all around, a constant, pulsing math in the dark.
Between the sounds came the faint tread of boots.
She wouldn’t have heard it if every nerve in her body hadn’t been tuned to danger.
Movement, a shape where there shouldn’t be one. Mid-thirties, too clean for this terrain, the glint of steel where locals carried worn wood. She fired once, straight into the notch above his sternum. He dropped fast, like someone had cut his strings.
She pushed to stand and the world tilted. The memory hit her before she could steady herself. Not Rio. Not a hospital. A room from long ago. A low canvas dome in winter. Breath fogging the air. Stones glowing red in the fire pit. Her grandmother’s hands steady, voice soft and sure.
Wó?hekiye, little one. If you must call out, let it be a call home.
Bailee’s throat tightened. “Not a prayer for rescue,” she muttered, half laugh, half choke. “A call home.”
Something inside her answered. Wolakota, again. Balance. A weight settling under her ribs where fear had hollowed her out. She pressed her palm against a tree trunk, letting the bark bite her skin. The tree didn’t bend. It didn’t have to. She did.
When she lifted her head, she heard them, closer now.
She slid down into the river, the cold shocking her lungs. She crossed where the rocks circled like an old prayer, moving quieter now, inside the rhythm instead of against it.
The slope rose ahead. On its shoulder stood a slab of limestone, pale in the dark. She crawled onto it, belly flat, rifle ready. Three silhouettes appeared through the fig trees, weapons high and eager.
Her left shoulder flared white-hot, but her hands stayed steady. She waited. Not counting, listening.
Wolakota, the night whispered back. Not a word, a state of being. Not mine or yours, ours. The ground, the dead, the living, the breath between.
When the first man’s boot touched the rock, she fired into it.
He screamed, dropped, muzzle flashing into the dirt.
His round buried itself harmlessly. She shifted and shot the second man in the elbow.
He folded, chest exposed, and she took the opening.
The third dove, fired wild. Dirt sprayed her cheek.
She rolled right, pain ripping through her bad shoulder, but she came up behind a fallen log. The world narrowed to breath and heartbeat.
Then she heard it, the sound she’d been waiting for.
A snarl. Deep, fast, all business. Raider.
The Malinois hit the fourth man out of the dark, all muscle and precision. Razor followed close, a shadow with purpose.
“Raider, out!” he called. The dog released instantly. The man reached for his weapon and Razor dropped him with two quick shots.
“Thunderhawk!” D-Day’s voice cut through the noise. “Talk to me!”
“I’m up,” she called back. “Contact left and rear.”
“Copy.”
Blitz finished the last shooter. Silence rolled back in, the jungle breathing again.
Zorro’s voice came next. Calm. Steady. “I’ve got you, Lady Thunder.”
She looked up. He was already beside her, one knee down, hands moving, efficient, careful.
“I’m functional,” she said.
“Good.” His tone said he’d decide that himself. “We followed your trail of dead. Nice shooting.” His face went serious. “Track my finger.” She did. “Pupils equal and reactive.” He checked her scalp and jaw, fast and gentle. “Any ringing? Nausea?”
“Later.”
“That’s a yes,” he muttered. He listened to her chest, quick and methodical. “Air’s good. No pneumo.”
He found her left wrist. “Swelling and discoloration. Sprain?”
“Hurts like a bitch.”
He chuckled and wrapped it. “Nice work.” He palpated the joint of her left shoulder, pain sparking under his fingers. “Seated. We’ll immobilize.” He tested her pulse, watched her fingers move. “Still good perfusion.”
He dug into his med kit. “Sling and swathe,” he said, more to Razor than to her. Razor handed him a triangle bandage. Raider sat at her boot, alert but calm. She sent a quick hand over his furry head. He turned and licked her face.
“Pain?” he asked.
“Manageable.”
He cracked a fentanyl lozenge, clipped it to a safety line, and offered it. “Don’t chew. Just let it work.” She took it and set it between cheek and gum. The warmth spread quickly, blurring the sharp edges.
“Vitals stable,” he told D-Day. “Left shoulder reduced, right wrist wrapped. GCS fifteen.”
“Copy,” D-Day said. “Moving in two.”
“Blitz, Buck, curtain to the creek. Razor, you’re on her six.”
Raider pressed against her thigh like a live anchor. Bailee found the dog’s ruff with her fingers. The contact steadied her more than the drug.
Wolakota, something deep inside whispered again. Balance, not stillness.
Zorro rested a hand lightly on her elbow. “You with me?”
“I am.”
“Then we walk.”
He matched her pace, close enough to catch her if she faltered. The team moved around them, quiet, efficient. At the creek, he rechecked her vitals and retied the sling.
“How’s the world?” he asked.
“Less dark,” she said. “Better.”
“Good.” He secured her weapon so it wouldn’t drag her arm. “That’s enough for now.”
A breeze slipped through the leaves, bringing a faint trace of sage. Memory, not air.
Wó?hekiye, her grandmother’s voice said again. If you must call out, let it be a call home.
Bailee didn’t pray. She just breathed. The words settled behind her ribs where Zorro had listened. She stepped into the creek, Raider pacing at her side, men at her back.
“Exfil grid in six,” D-Day called.
Suddenly in the distance, a dark cloud parted, and her cousin moved through it like death itself. You forgot me. Everyone forgot all of us.
Zorro looked over. “Bailee?”
She couldn’t see Zorro anymore, the black edges were claiming all the available light. “No,” she whispered. “Guilt took me. Shame caged me.”
Strong arms caught her as her mind slipped away into a place that only existed in visions, her body just as dead weight as her arm.
Something deeper moved through the ground and the trees and the water.
It didn’t come from a voice. It didn’t need one.
That word that was entwined in sinew and bone, in flesh and in blood, in history and ancestry.
Wolakota rolled through her again, low and steady, balance in motion.
The jungle didn’t stop being hot or dangerous. It didn’t care about the wreck, the dead, or the map still burned into her mind. It just breathed, and for the first time, she realized that breath included her.
Her thoughts reached for logic and hit a wall. Then the wall gave way, opening like a path. Maybe I haven’t been forgotten. Maybe I was listening to the wrong message.
She had spent years searching for a voice that sounded like ceremony and never heard one. But the land spoke differently, slower, patient, sure. Was the silence she’d feared not judgment after all. It had shape. It had presence. It was full.
Her breath caught, a tremor more than a sob.
It wasn’t weakness, just release. The part of her that lived by training tried to pin it down, to label it, to file it away as data she could control.
But the shame was quick, and it reached for her again, the same cold voice whispering, I was chosen, but never enough.
The words felt hollow and far away. They still hurt, but not the same way.
The memory of the dead support officers pressed against the edges of her thoughts, doors she’d have to open later.
Beyond them stood her cousin at the place where the river met shadow, waiting for something…
her? The women behind were swallowed up in that black cloud.
Their voices silenced, their absences ringing with neglect.
Wolakota settled behind her breastbone, in the small place that had always been locked. The lock was still there, but the door had cracked open, by pain, by shame, by a quiet that wasn’t being understood.
She had seen her truth, and it had seen her.
Shame hadn’t vanished. It just sat quietly in the corner, waiting for the day she’d be strong enough to face it.
This isn’t living, Bailee. This isn’t even existence. This is a shade trying to find substance. Search for yours. Find it where you were made. Find it or die. Inside, outside. It doesn’t matter. Death will have the last word. Will you let it speak for you?
The jungle swayed around her, green blurring to gold as the light shifted. Her arm throbbed in sync with her heartbeat, every pulse a reminder of failure. Not of skill, but of control.
She let her body rest in their shielding arms, the smell of loam grounding her. Somewhere in the distance, the thump of helicopter blades grew louder. Relief and exhaustion tangled together.
As her eyes drifted closed, she thought, not of the mission, not of her injuries, but of his voice. That calm, immovable tone that he used to anchor her.
Breathe through it, Bailee. Breathe through it.
The sound of the rotors grew nearer. She exhaled once, long and trembling, and let the dark take her.