PART 6
The line went silent.
Then another voice cut in.
Captain Nolan Price.
Operations commander.
A man famous for polished briefings and letting other people take the risk.
“Harper,” he snapped, “you abandoned your assigned observation post.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You compromised a compartmentalized mission.”
“No, sir.”
“You are relieved from tasking. Pull back now.”
Riley watched two fighters crawl behind a ridge spur, thinking they had vanished from her view.
They had not.
“If I pull back now,” she said, “six Americans die.”
Price’s voice rose.
“You do not decide priorities in the field.”
Riley fired.
Another fighter fell.
“Somebody has to.”
At the TOC, nobody spoke for two seconds.
Then Price said the thing that made every hair on my neck rise, even through the radio static.
“Romeo Two-Zero was already assessed as combat ineffective. Your objective was the cache.”
Assessed.
Not rescued.
Not supported.
Assessed.
Beckett heard it too.
His face went blank.
Hayes lowered the radio slightly.
“Chief,” he whispered, “they wrote us off.”
Beckett looked at Danvers.
Then at the ridge.
Then at the radio.
“Not everybody did.”
Riley heard Price breathing on the line.
“Harper,” he said, lower now, “if you continue, you will face charges.”
She shifted her aim to the next climber.
“My record can wait.”
She fired.
The climber vanished behind the rocks.
“My people can’t.”
That was when the valley truly turned.
Not because Riley killed all fifty men.
No sniper does that.
May you like
Not alone.
But she killed the ambush.
