Chapter 1
Iraq
“Attention on the JOC floor. The time is now zero two hundred hours. This is the current operations briefing.”
Major Addison Foster clicked on the chat window blinking a new message from her friend Elise.
JOC23 (Elise): Do you have to pay attention to this brief?
HUM04 (Addison): Yes. One of my targets.
JOC23: Boo. Who am I going to kill time w/now?
HUM04: lol. I can still chat. Just need to pay attention to the other windows.
JOC23: Cool.
While the briefing droned on through the mission timeline, communications channels, and weather, Addison checked in to the four chat rooms she monitored during operations—Search and Rescue, Reconnaissance, Current Operations, and the team chat. The last group tended to be the most amusing. She didn’t know any of them personally since they were located at a different Forward Operating Base, but she interacted with the analysts enough that she felt like she knew them.
HUM04: Checking in
SOF69 (Team Liaison Officer): Hey. How’s it hanging?
HUM04: It doesn’t.
SOF69: lol. Never gets old.
“Ten minutes to target.”
JOC23: Did you ever hook up w/Petrov?
HUM04: Ew. No. Where did that come from?
JOC23: He just asked me if I wanted to go get coffee at Green Bean. Why ew?
HUM04: He’s a man whore, that’s why.
JOC23: Maybe that means he can get me to the big Oh
HUM04: Doubtful. Guys like that aren’t in it for your gratification. Only theirs.
HUM04: Besides, do you really want his petri dish near your incubator?
JOC23: Ew. And cynical much?
“Five minutes to target.”
Addison’s stomach fluttered, and she glanced up from her computer screen to the floor-to-ceiling bank of monitors. The close-up black-and-white IR image of the Special Forces team fast-roping from Black Hawks greeted her. The image flickered to the panned-out view to include the compound and all three helicopters.
Her pulse kicked up a notch. Shit. Braedon was on one of the teams. She knew he was in theater, but she hadn’t known where since their locations and movements were classified. Even with her top secret clearance, she never knew where her brother was until after the fact.
HUM04: Is Braedon Foster on one of the teams?
SOF69: You know I can’t tell you names.
Shit. Shit. Shit.Something was wrong. Her stomach somersaulted the same way it had when he’d fallen off the slide behind their house and broken his arm.
“Three minutes to target.”
