Until Dante stood. He didn’t ask. Didn’t hesitate. He just walked forward, took the nav slate, and checked bearings. “Fourklicks 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.
