Dalton
Northern Botswana FOB, South Africa
The air over northern Botswana is thick with heat, even at altitude. It’s bed and shimmering along the edges of the horizon.
I inhale a deep breath, trying to push past the tight knot of regret coiled low in my chest. I never texted Noa back. I actually haven’t texted her except to say we made it here. Not that she knows where here is. Not that she cares. We don’t talk about my job. Not really.
She came to visit once during my training at Tyndall. And I flew out for her graduation in December. Things are good when we’re together, it’s just that we so rarely are.
Sometimes I wish I’d met her when I first got to USAFA.
Maybe then we’d have had a shot at a normal four years before the constant moving and training and deployments started.
Maybe then she would’ve had time to understand what this life demands.
What I demand. As it stands, she’s pretty much always angry at me for it.
Or maybe just angry at the pieces of me she doesn’t get to keep.
I can picture her behind the counter in the little bookstore, half-sitting on a stool with her legs crossed and a thick paperback cracked open in her lap, her glasses sliding down her nose, and a yellow pencil tucked twisted into her long hair.
And I’m here strapped into a metal predator she hates chasing the edge of the sky for reasons I’m not even cleared to say out loud.
I toggle the sensor mode—infrared, thermal. Nothing jumps out. But something about it itches. It’s quiet here, the kind of silence that feels engineered.
Major Aiden Cassidy, “Midas”, our flight commander’s voice crackles in my headset. “Charlie Flight, hold formation. Eyes sharp. We’re over the AO.”
“Copy,” I murmur, adjusting trim with a flick of my fingers. My gloves are slick with sweat. Not from the heat, though it’s hotter than hell up here, but from the gnawing unease sitting like lead in my gut.
To my right, Owen “Titan” Carson levels out with a lazy dip of his wings. “Not seeing much,” he says casually. “Couple goats, a cooking fire. Looks like nothing.”
“It’s never nothing,” Porter “Riot” Fitz mutters.
And it’s not. I zoom in on one of the larger encampments, hardly more than a cluster of tarps and rusted barrels. But there’s something off about it. The spacing. The orientation. Like someone built it to be forgettable. Like it’s hiding in plain sight.
I key the comm again. “Cassidy, I’ve got a visual on grid Sierra-three-niner. Looks...manufactured.”
“Copy that, Ghost,” Cassidy replies, his tone unreadable. “We’ll flag it. Command wants footage, not engagement.”
I grit my teeth. “Understood.”
Still, I circle again. Slower. Lower. Watching the way the smoke curls straight up from the fires. No wind. No panic. Whoever’s down there isn’t worried about being seen. And that concerns me.
I allow my mind to drift to Noa one last time, to her pretty green eyes and soft smile.
I imagine her surrounded by the smell of old pages and sunlight, a world filled with soft voices and slow afternoons.
It’s such a sharp contrast to me flying at Mach speeds carrying weapons capable of tearing apart anything that threatens the ground she walks on.
“Alright, boys, we got what we needed. RTB,” Cassidy orders over comms. “Sensor suite and FDRs are hot. Intel wants every second of data from this run.”
I want to object. I want five more minutes. Another pass. A second set of eyes on that northern ridge. But I keep my mouth shut.
There’s been chatter about trafficking routes threading through this region. Nothing solid. No names, no confirmed cargo. Just whispers. Just enough to send us up here. I think this recon flight was supposed to ease concerns, check a box, confirm command’s hunch that this sector’s quiet.
But quiet can be deceiving. Something’s wrong down there. And it's the kind of wrong that isn’t going to show up clean on a sensor grid.
The engines wind down as we taxi across the rough tarmac, dust kicking up across the cracked runway. FOB Thorne’s not much to look at, just a cluster of sand-colored buildings, rust-streaked shipping containers, and a few parked armored vehicles simmering in the sun. But it’s home for now.
I pop the canopy and climb down, helmet tucked under my arm, flight suit damp with sweat. Porter and Owen are already headed toward the hangar, debrief tablets in hand. Cassidy walks beside me, silent for a minute.
“You sticking with what you said up there?” He exhales roughly, like he’s dreading what’s coming.
“Yeah,” I answer. “The pattern of movement, the hardware...something didn’t feel right.”
Cassidy nods slowly, jaw tight. “You’re not wrong about the hardware. I zoomed on that front vehicle, it had welded armor panels. Not something you see in a border skirmish.”
“So why the hell are we calling it low threat?”
He doesn’t answer right away. We reach the briefing room.
It’s just a metal shack with a long table, a few laptops, and a battered map of northern South Africa that hangs off-center on the wall.
It’s hotter in here than it is outside, which doesn’t seem possible, but the AC unit gave up sometime last year and no one has prioritized a replacement.
Owen’s already typing. Porter’s leaning against the table, arms crossed.
“They don’t want to spook anyone,” Cassidy says eventually. “Command thinks if we draw attention to an uptick in paramilitary activity here, it’ll escalate. Too many eyes on the Horn and Red Sea routes right now. They don’t want to redirect assets.”
“They’ll wish they had,” I mutter, pulling up a satellite image on the monitor. “Look. See this trail of heat blooms?”
Porter whistles low. “That’s a lot of movement for an area marked ‘low activity.’”
“Exactly. And these convoys? They’re converging. Slowly. Like a ring closing in.”
Cassidy looks at the screen, brow furrowing. “You think this is staging.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
I tap the screen, the route blinking back at me like it knows something I don’t.
“There’s a village out here,” I continue. “Kalima. Remote. No comms. Small airstrip nearby, barely maintained but viable for drop-ins. If I were running an op—if I wanted to move people or weapons or God knows what—I’d use it.”
No one says anything for a second.
Then Porter breaks the silence. “So what are we doing?”
“What we always do,” Cassidy says. “We flag it. We document it. We pass it up the chain.”
“And hope they listen?” Owen asks.
Cassidy doesn’t answer. And we don’t say anything else as people begin to file into the small room. There are more people than usual.
Not just intel and flight ops.
Operators.
I clock them immediately, unmistakable in their bearing. Four of them. Their gear’s stripped down but intentional. They’re in all black, no patches other than a single American flag, with weapons slung loose and hands never far from the grip. Quiet, watchful, still.
Delta.
They stay clustered to one side of the room, near the tactical displays, not drawing attention but also not trying to blend. Which means they don’t have to. These guys are ghosts and blades and eyes that never stop moving.
I keep my eyes on the screen as Cassidy gives our summary.
He’s clipped, professional, presenting the sat data, thermal trails, and the route overlays I flagged.
Owen adds a few details. I answer a direct question.
We’re careful not to speculate too far, just give them the shape of it, the possibility.
But I can feel doubt in the room.
A few nods from intel.
A few dismissive faces from the logistics guys who don’t want a complication in their sector.
But the operators?
They’re still watching.
Especially one.
He’s leaning against the far wall, arms crossed over a black long-sleeve tee, sleeves pushed up to reveal one forearm lined with tattoos and scars that don’t look accidental.
He’s tall, maybe 6’3", built like someone who lives at the edge of exhaustion, but wears it like armor. His jaw is set, the line of it sharp. Eyes like cold steel, dark and unreadable. And he hasn’t looked away from the satellite image since the moment it came on-screen.
He doesn’t say a word during the briefing.
But when it ends and the room starts to shuffle with rustling papers and hushed side convos, he peels off the wall and walks toward me. Not hurried. Just direct. The kind of movement that doesn’t waste time second-guessing itself.
“Where’d you get the heat bloom data?” he asks. Voice low. Steady. American.
“ISR sweep,” I say. “My flight ran recon early this morning. We flew the valley just east of Kalima.”
He nods once. “You got timestamps?”
“In the report. Why?”
“Because they match something we clocked four days ago,” he says, almost to himself. “Too far inland for a smuggling run. Too slow to be militia.”
I study him now. The way he scans the terrain map again.
The tension in his jaw. The scar at his temple leading into his dark hair, thin and clean like a line drawn by wire.
The way he shifts his weight slightly, not toward me, but toward the exit, like he’s already moving through the next ten steps in his head.
“You think they’re staging,” he says, not a question.
“I don’t think they’re passing through,” I answer.
Another beat.
He gives me a final look. Something behind his eyes flickers—recognition, maybe, or resolve—but he doesn’t offer his name.
“Good work,” he says. Then he’s gone. Back through the heat-drenched hallway and out of sight. But the quiet weight of him lingers. It should be comforting that I’m not the only one watching the horizon for something everyone else insists isn’t coming. But it’s not.