Ford didn’t smile. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t.” It wasn’t bravado or a promise. It was something harder. “I’m not leaving her.”
“No one said you had to.” Mike continued, “I ever tell you Meagan came home once with a broken wrist and didn’t tell me until she landed after a training rotation in Italy?”
Dante shook his head.
“She said, ‘If I’m going to crash and burn, I’d rather do it midair.’” His voice dropped. “Shannon’s just like her.”
FORT NOVOSEL – TRAINING ADMIN OFFICE
The SAR operation was officially closed on paper. Unofficially, the wreckage was still being logged, and the debris field was locked down under a Chase Security seal. The bird hadn’t just failed—it had been made to fail.
But no one had said that aloud yet.
Krueger sat alone at the back of the admin office, hands folded, posture loose. He still wore his flight vest, unzipped, the Velcro name patch curling at the corners. His boots were clean. Too clean. They didn’t show a speck of dirt or pine needles.
The flat-screen above the desk still showed the medevac bird’s departure timestamp. 0804. No further updates were posted since then.
Until now.
Rhodes walked in and dropped her gear in the corner. Her face was tight. Eyes rimmed with fatigue and something else, maybe guilt, or fear.
She passed behind him on her way out and almost didn’t say it. “She made it.”
Krueger didn’t turn. Didn’t move. “What?”
“Johnson,” Rhodes said, voice clipped. “She’s out of surgery. Barely, but… she’s alive.”
Krueger blinked once. Slowly.
Rhodes was already gone.
He stared straight ahead for a long time. Then he leaned back and smiled, enough to show teeth.
BASE TARMAC – 1132 HOURS
The Chase Security Gulfstream cut through the sky like a scalpel, its landing gear hitting asphalt with the kind of smooth, decisive touch only veteran pilots pulled off. The brakes whispered. The ramp dropped.
Mike Johnson was already on his feet before they came to a full stop. He moved down the steps onto the tarmac like he’d done a thousand times before in every goddamn country on Earth. But this was different. This was his daughter.
Ford followed, coat in hand, expression tight with years of grief he thought he'd buried alongside a flag-draped casket.
Dante stepped off last. No jacket. Just rolled sleeves, jaw locked, eyes already scanning the perimeter like there was a threat he could get his hands around. There wasn’t. That was worse.
A Chase transport SUV waited ten feet from the stairs, engine idling, doors open. A young airman stood by with his cap in hand. “Sir, the hospital’s ready. She’s stable.”
No one asked him what stable meant. Mike got in first. Ford climbed in beside him.
Dante took the front passenger seat, both hands pressed against his knees. The wheels spun gravel. The SUV pulled off the tarmac and onto the access road, engines humming like something hunted.
They didn’t speak the entire ride. The next time they saw her, really saw her, none of them would leave the same.
ICU ROOM 4 – 1216 HOURS
The monitors beeped, slow and steady. Oxygen hissed softly from the ventilator. The IV pump ticked like a metronome. And Shannon lay still.
A bandage ran from the left side of her throat down beneath the sheet. Her leg was rigged in gentle traction, hip slightly elevated. Bruises bloomed across her collarbone and temple, turning deep purple-blue under the sterile lights. Her lips were cracked from the breathing tube.
