PART 1 The Ghost of Vanguard

There is a specific kind of silence that exists only at 0400 hours in a Forward Operating Base. It isn’t peace. It’s the heavy, held breath of a predator waiting for the sun.

While FOB Vanguard slept, I was already awake. I am always awake.

The hangar smelled of hydraulic fluid, stale coffee, and the pervasive, metallic tang of the desert. It’s a smell that coats the back of your throat and never really leaves. To most, it’s the scent of war. To me, it’s the scent of cover.

I moved through the shadows of the hangar, my boots silent on the concrete floor. I didn’t walk; I drifted. That’s the first rule of survival I learned a lifetime ago: if you don’t displace air, you don’t draw fire. The AH-64 Apache loomed above me, a prehistoric beast of aluminum and composite, dormant in the gloom. It was a monster capable of raining hellfire from three miles out, but right now, it was just a machine that needed cleaning. And I was just the janitor.

My name is Riley Thorne. But here, to the pilots who strut like gods and the mechanics who are still nursing hangovers from illicit barracks whiskey, I am just “Riley.” Or, more frequently, “General Dust Mop.”

I reached the nose of the aircraft and set down my toolbox. It wasn’t a standard issue kit. I’d organized it myself—every wrench, every rag, every caliber gauge placed with surgical precision. I rolled up my sleeves, exposing my forearms to the cool, pre-dawn air.

My hands went to work on the M230 chain gun.

This weapon is a marvel of destruction. A 30mm cannon that can fire 625 rounds per minute. I know its anatomy better than I know my own body. As I began the field strip, my mind went into that familiar, meditative trance. Bolt carrier. Recoil mechanism. Feed chute.

Disassemble. Clean. Lubricate. Reassemble.

It was the only time my hands stopped shaking. The only time the memories of Samurand—the screaming, the fire, the smell of burning flesh—didn’t claw at the edges of my vision. Here, in the grease and the gears, everything made sense. Machines don’t lie. Machines don’t betray you. Machines don’t leave you behind in a kill box while the command center goes dark.

I worked with the efficiency of a metronome. I didn’t look up. I never looked up. Eye contact is an invitation, and I was trying very hard to be a ghost.

“Yo! Earth to Dust Mop!”

The voice shattered my solitude. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t stiffen. I just kept wiping the carbon buildup from the firing pin.

Two young mechanics, Miller and Davis, were stumbling in through the side door, laughing at a joke that was probably funny three beers ago. Miller, a kid from Ohio with too much mouth and not enough sense, kicked my toolbox.

“Morning, General,” he sneered, snapping a sloppy, exaggerated salute. “Don’t hurt yourself with that rag. We need that chopper to actually fly, not just look pretty.”

Davis snickered, elbowing him. “Leave her alone, man. She’s in the zone. Probably dreaming about scrubbing latrines.”

I said nothing. I didn’t even blink. I was a statue, a fixture of the hangar, no more important than the fire extinguisher on the wall or the yellow hazard tape on the floor.

Invisibility, I reminded myself. Invisibility is the mission.

If they knew who I really was—if they knew that I could dismantle them both with less effort than it took to clean this gun—my cover would be blown. And if my cover was blown, the people I was hunting would vanish into the wind.

So I let them laugh. I let them treat me like background noise. I wiped the gun, my head bowed, my posture deliberately hunched to hide the muscle definition in my shoulders.

“Weirdo,” Miller muttered, finally losing interest. They wandered off toward the break room, leaving me alone with the Apache.

But the solitude didn’t last. The sun began to crest over the dunes, stabbing beams of harsh, gold light through the high windows. The base was waking up. The low hum of the generator grew into the roar of a waking army.

By 0800, the hangar was a hive. Pilots in flight suits walked with the swagger of rock stars, helmets tucked under their arms. Crew chiefs shouted over the whine of power tools. The air grew thick with heat and noise.

I was invisible in the chaos. I moved around the Apache, checking the hydraulics, tightening clamps. I was a ghost in grease-stained coveralls.

Captain Evan Callaway strode into the hangar like he owned the airspace. He was young, handsome in a magazine-cover sort of way, and absolutely insufferable. He was the hangar commander, a man who had climbed the ranks on connections and paperwork rather than combat drops.

He stopped at the Apache, looking at his reflection in the canopy I had just polished.

“Thorne,” he barked, not turning to look at me.

I stepped forward, keeping my eyes on his boots. “Sir.”

“I need this bird ready by 1400. Colonel’s orders. We’ve got a VIP inspection coming through.” He tapped the clipboard against his leg impatiently. “And try not to screw it up this time. I heard a rumor the cyclic was sticking on the last run.”

It hadn’t been sticking. The pilot had been heavy-handed. But I didn’t argue. “The cyclic is calibrated, Sir. The chain gun is serviced.”

“Just get it done,” he dismissed me with a wave of his hand, already scanning the room for someone more important to talk to. “You’re a tech, Thorne. You fix things. You don’t think. Leave the thinking to the officers.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He walked away without a second glance. It was perfect. It was exactly what I wanted. But god, it burned.

The heat in the hangar was climbing. It was a dry, suffocating heat that turned the air into a physical weight. Sweat trickled down my spine. My uniform stuck to my skin.

I went back to the gun. The 30mm rounds were heavy, cold in my hands. I checked the feed mechanism again.

Focus on the mission.

I had been at FOB Vanguard for seven months. Before that, five months at Condor. Before that, Joint Base Reynolds. Always the tech. Always the background character. I was hunting a ghost network—Obsidian Hand. A shadow organization that had sold my team out five years ago. They thought I was dead. Everyone thought I was dead.

And for all intents and purposes, Lieutenant Colonel Riley Thorne of the Eagle Talon Division was dead.

I reached for a torque wrench on the high shelf. As I stretched my arm up, the heavy fabric of my uniform sleeve caught on the edge of the pylon. It dragged down.

Just three inches.

That was all it took.

The hangar was bustling, loud, chaotic. But in my peripheral vision, I saw the movement stop.

Major Logan Blackwood was walking past. He was different from Callaway. Older. Harder. His flight suit was worn, his face etched with the lines of a man who had seen the elephant and lived to tell the story. He was a decorated pilot, respected universally. He moved with a predator’s grace.

He was rushing toward the briefing room, eyes on a stack of papers in his hand, when he froze.

It wasn’t a casual stop. It was a jarring, full-body halt, as if he’d walked into an invisible wall.

I felt his gaze before I saw it. It burned into the skin of my upper arm.

Time seemed to warp, stretching out into a long, silent tunnel. The noise of the pneumatic drills faded. The laughter of the mechanics dulled.

I didn’t move. I didn’t pull the sleeve down immediately. That would be a sign of guilt. That would be a reaction. Instead, I slowly lowered my arm, the wrench gripped tight in my hand, and turned my head just enough to see him.

Blackwood was staring at my bicep—specifically, at the patch of skin revealed by the slipped sleeve.

There, faded by time and scarred by shrapnel, was a tattoo. It wasn’t ink. It was a brand. But stitched into the underside of my undershirt, which had also ridden up, was the edge of a physical patch I kept pinned there. A talisman.

Black and Gold. A raptor’s claw gripping a lightning bolt.

Eagle Talon.

Blackwood’s face went through a complex gymnastics routine of emotions. Annoyance at the delay, then confusion, then recognition, and finally, a profound, terrifying shock.

His helmet slipped from his fingers. It hit the concrete with a dull thud, rolling in a small circle. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Is that…” his voice was a hoarse whisper, barely audible over the hangar noise.

He took a step toward me, entering my personal space in a way no officer ever did with the help.

“Is that patch real?”

I looked at the gun. I looked at the grease under my fingernails. I could deny it. I could say I bought it at a surplus store. I could play the dumb grunt.

But I was tired. God, I was so tired of the silence.

I looked up. For the first time in seven months, I didn’t look at his boots. I looked him dead in the eye. And I let the mask slip. Just for a fraction of a second, I let the “dumb mechanic” facade drop, revealing the predator beneath.

I gave him a single, imperceptible nod.

Blackwood inhaled sharply, as if he’d been punched in the gut. He looked around, suddenly paranoid, suddenly realizing that the landscape of his reality had just shifted violently.

“Eagle Talon Division,” he breathed, the words tasting like a prayer or a curse. “You were Talon?”

I went back to the gun, my hands moving again. “Hand me the 5/8 wrench, Major,” I said softly. It wasn’t a request.

He blinked, his brain short-circuiting. He reached into my toolbox, his hand trembling slightly, and handed me the tool. He was a Major. I was a Specialist. He was taking orders from a janitor.

“That’s not possible,” he murmured, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “All Talon operatives were reported KIA after Samurand. Every single one. The briefing… I read the classified report.”

I tightened a bolt, the metal squealing in protest. “Don’t believe everything you read in a redacted file, Sir.”

“You’re… you’re her.” He stared at me, his eyes widening. “The Survivor. The Ghost of the Valley.”

I paused. The nickname sent a chill down my spine. I hadn’t heard that name spoken aloud in five years.

“Major,” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “You have a briefing to get to.”

He straightened up, his military discipline fighting against his shock. He looked at me—really looked at me—and saw the scars on my neck, the way I stood, the calluses on my hands that didn’t come from turning wrenches.

“I’ll be discreet,” he whispered. He bent down, retrieved his helmet, and backed away. He didn’t turn his back on me until he was ten feet away.

I watched him go. I knew, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that the clock had just started ticking.

The shift in the hangar was subtle at first, like a change in barometric pressure before a storm.

Blackwood didn’t keep it to himself. He couldn’t.
I saw him in the corner, speaking urgently to a Lieutenant Colonel.
He pointed in my direction. The Lieutenant Colonel laughed, shook his head, and then looked.

He stopped laughing.

By 1100, the whispers had started.

I could feel eyes on me.
Not the dismissive glances of before, but heavy, curious, fearful stares.

When I walked to the tool crib, the conversation died. Soldiers parted to let me through, their movements awkward and unsure.

“Hey, Riley,” Miller called out, but his voice lacked its usual mockery. “Uh, you need a hand with that?”

I didn’t answer. I just took the calibration tool and walked back to the Apache.

“I heard she killed three men with a wrench in Kabul,” someone whispered behind a stack of crates.

“Bullshit. I heard she’s Delta.”

“Delta doesn’t wear that patch. That’s Talon. That’s the boogeyman.”

Captain Evan Callaway noticed it too. He was pacing the flight line, looking annoyed. He hated things he didn’t understand, and he didn’t understand why his “General Dust Mop” was suddenly the center of gravity in his hangar.

He stomped over to the group of pilots where Blackwood was standing.

“What the hell is going on?” Callaway demanded, his voice echoing. “Why is everyone staring at the help?”

Blackwood turned to him. “That woman,” he said, his voice deadly serious. “The one you’ve been treating like furniture? She’s a Tier One operator.”

Callaway scoffed, a loud, ugly sound. “Thorne? Please. She’s a grease monkey. She’s been here for months. If she was special ops, she wouldn’t be scrubbing my chain gun.”

“That’s exactly why she’s doing it,” Blackwood replied quietly. “Because nobody looks at the janitor.”

Callaway turned to look at me. I was thirty yards away, wiping down the fuselage. I felt his gaze, skeptical and angry. He started walking toward me, his stride purposeful. He was going to confront me. He was going to reassert his dominance.

But he never made it.

The main hangar doors rolled open with a mechanical groan that drowned out all conversation.

The sunlight from outside was blinding, silhouetting three figures standing in the opening.

The atmosphere in the hangar snapped from curious to terrified in a heartbeat.
The ambient chatter vanished.

Base Commander Colonel James Mercer walked in.

Mercer was a legend in his own right. A man of iron and granite who ran Vanguard with a terrifying strictness. He never came to the maintenance hangars. Never. Unless someone was being court-martialed or someone had died.

He was flanked by two men in suits. Not dress uniforms. Suits.
Dark, ill-fitting, screaming “CIA” or “Military Intelligence.”

Callaway froze in his tracks.
He looked from Mercer to me, and back to Mercer.

I didn’t stop working. I knew they were coming. I had known the moment Blackwood saw the patch.
The signal had gone up the chain. The Pentagon computers would have flagged the ID match.
The ghosts were being exorcised.

Colonel Mercer marched straight down the center aisle. He didn’t look at the pilots. He didn’t look at the idle aircraft. He walked with a singular, devastating focus toward the Apache.

Toward me

Behind him, the two suits scanned the perimeter, their hands hovering near concealed weapons. They were hunters.

The entire hangar held its breath. You could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights.

Mercer stopped ten feet from me. He stood there, silent, imposing, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

I slowly placed the rag on the wing. I wiped my hands on my trousers. I turned around.

I didn’t stand at attention. I didn’t salute. I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart, my hands loose at my sides, staring directly into the eyes of the Base Commander.

“Colonel,” I said. My voice was calm, devoid of the deference expected of a Specialist.

Mercer studied me. He looked at the grease on my face, the worn uniform, and then, finally, at the patch that was now fully visible on my arm, thanks to the heat.

He swallowed hard.
I saw the recognition in his eyes.
He had read the files. He knew what I was.

“Lieutenant Colonel Thorne,” Mercer said.

The sound of my real rank—my dead rank—echoed through the cavernous space like a gunshot.

Someone behind me gasped.
Callaway looked like he was going to vomit.

“We received a notification from the Pentagon twenty minutes ago,” Mercer continued, his voice steady but strained. “Identity confirmation on a Priority One asset. Presumed KIA.”

“The reports were exaggerated,” I said dryly.

“Clearly.” Mercer took a half-step closer. “Eagle Talon Division. Operation Midnight Protocol. You’re the only survivor of Samurand.”

“I am.”

“Why are you here, Colonel? Why are you cleaning my helicopters?”

I looked past him, scanning the hangar entrances.
My instincts were screaming.
The exposure was too fast. Too public.
If Mercer knew, they knew.

“Because, Colonel,” I said, my voice carrying to every corner of the silent room,
“Dead women don’t get asked questions. And I needed the quiet.”

“Quiet is over,” one of the suits said, stepping forward. He had the cold, dead eyes of a shark. “You’re coming with us, Thorne. Debriefing. Now.”

I shifted my weight.
“I don’t think so.”

Mercer frowned. “That wasn’t a request, Colonel. You’ve been AWOL for five years. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“I’m not AWOL,” I said. “I’m deep cover. And you just blew it.”

“Cover from who?” Mercer demanded.

I walked over to the Apache’s avionics bay—the panel I wasn’t supposed to have access to. I punched in a code. A code that unlocked the highest level of encryption on the base. The screen flared to life, displaying a red, pulsing map of the surrounding desert.

“From them,” I said, pointing at the screen.

Mercer looked.
Blackwood looked.

The map showed troop movements.
Not ours.

“What is that?” Mercer asked, his voice dropping.

“That,” I said, “is a strike team from the Obsidian Hand. They’ve been tracking your comms for months. They were waiting for a signal. A confirmation that I was here.”

I looked at Blackwood.
“When you called in that patch verification… you rang the dinner bell.”

The hangar floor vibrated.
A low, thumping sound, distant but growing louder.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

Rotors.
Incoming.

“They’re here,” I said, reaching into my “cleaning” toolbox and pulling out the false bottom. Underneath the wrenches lay my Sig Sauer P320 and a combat knife.

I racked the slide.
The sound was sharp and final.

“Colonel Mercer,” I said, looking at the stunned commander. “Get your men to battle stations. This isn’t an inspection. It’s an extermination.”

And then, the first explosion rocked the north wall.

PART 2: THE WAKING DRAGON

The explosion wasn’t just a noise; it was a physical shove. Dust rained down from the hangar rafters, coating the pristine Apache in a fine, grey powder.

For a split second, the base froze—that deadly pause between the event and the realization. Then, the alarms began to wail. A high-pitched, rhythmic scream that tore through the morning air.

“North perimeter breach!” the radio on Colonel Mercer’s hip crackled. “Multiple hostiles! Heavy weapons! We are taking effective fire!”

Panic flickered in the eyes of the young mechanics. They looked at the doors, then at their officers, waiting for someone to tell them how not to die.

I didn’t wait. The “tech” was gone. The “janitor” was gone.

“Secure the blast doors!” I yelled, my voice cutting through the siren’s wail. “Miller, Davis—grab the fire suppression units and barricade the east entrance. Move!”

The two mechanics, who had mocked me ten minutes ago, didn’t hesitate. They scrambled, driven by the sheer authority in my voice.

Colonel Mercer was shouting into his radio, trying to get a sitrep, but the comms were jammed with static and screaming.

“They’re jamming us,” I said, moving to his side. “Obsidian doesn’t fight fair. They cut the eyes and ears first.”

Mercer looked at me.
The skepticism was gone, replaced by the desperate clarity of command under fire.

“How many?”

“If they’re coming for me? At least twenty. Alpha team. Former special ops. They know the layout of this base better than you do because they sold the blueprints to the contractors.”

“Obsidian Hand…” Mercer muttered, the name tasting like poison. “They’re our security contractors.”

“They’re also the highest bidder’s private army,” I corrected. “And right now, their contract is to make sure I stay dead.”

I turned to the Apache.
My Apache.

“Major Blackwood,” I called out.

Blackwood was already pulling his helmet on, his face set in grim determination. “I’m here.”

“Can you fly this bird heavy? Full combat load, uneven weight distribution?”

“I can fly a bathtub if it has rotors,” he replied.

“Good. Because we’re not just carrying munitions. We’re carrying the tombstone of the entire Obsidian network.”

I vaulted onto the wing of the Apache. It felt different now. Before, it was a chore, a job. Now, it was a weapon.

I opened the avionics panel again.

“What are you talking about, Thorne?” Mercer shouted over the sound of small arms fire getting closer. “We need to hold the line! Reinforcements are thirty minutes out!”

“You won’t last thirty minutes,” I said, my fingers flying across the keypad. “They’re not here to take the base, Colonel. They’re here to sanitize it. No witnesses.”

I pointed to the black box I had integrated into the targeting system.

“This isn’t just a targeting computer,” I explained rapidly. “The Apache received the prototype ‘Hawkeye’ upgrade two months ago. Obsidian installed it. They built a backdoor into the software to siphon classified data from every mission flown. Troop locations, high-value targets, diplomatic channels.”

Callaway, who had been cowering near the tool crib, stepped forward. His face was pale, but he was listening. “They were spying on us? Using our own birds?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I found the backdoor. And I didn’t close it. I reversed it.”

I locked the panel shut.

“For the last three months, every time this chopper powered up, it’s been sucking data from Obsidian’s network. I have their financial records, their client list, and the order that authorized the ambush on my team in Samurand. It’s all in here.”
I patted the fuselage.
“This helicopter is the most dangerous thing on the planet right now. Not because of the missiles, but because of the hard drive.”

A bullet pinged off the metal siding of the hangar, high up near the windows. Glass shattered, raining down on us.

“They’re at the wire!” a Marine shouted from the doorway.

“We need to get this bird in the air,” I told Mercer. “If I can get this data to CENTCOM, I can shut down their entire operation. If I die here, the proof dies with me.”

Mercer stared at me for a heartbeat.
He was a good soldier.
He knew the difference between a skirmish and a war.

“Go,” Mercer ordered.
He turned to his men.
“Marines! Form a perimeter around the hangar doors! Buy them time!”

“Yes, Sir!”

I climbed into the front seat—the gunner’s seat.
The cockpit smelled of ozone and old sweat.
It was the tightest, most claustrophobic space in the military, and it felt like home.

Blackwood climbed into the pilot’s seat behind me. I could hear his breathing over the intercom as the systems roared to life.

“APU is on,” Blackwood said. “Cranking engines.”

The rotors began to turn. Whump. Whump. Whump.

The slow beat accelerated into a blur. The Apache shook, a living thing waking up.

Outside, the battle was breaching the hangar.

The side door—the one I used to sneak in through every morning—burst open.
Three men in black tactical gear, faces covered by ballistic masks, surged in.
They moved with terrifying speed.

“Contact right!” I yelled over the internal loop.

The Marines at the main door were focused outward. They didn’t see the flank.

“I got ’em!”

It wasn’t a Marine.

It was Captain Evan Callaway.

The “pretty boy” officer had grabbed an M4 from a fallen sentry. He didn’t have operator grace, but he had the desperation of a man protecting his base.

He opened fire.
The noise was deafening.
He dropped the lead intruder. The other two scrambled for cover.

“Get that bird up!” Callaway screamed.
He looked at me through the cockpit glass.
There was no arrogance left in his face. Only duty.

“Go! I’m sorry about the ‘Dust Mop’ crack!”

I allowed myself a grim smile.
“Apology accepted, Captain.”

“Releasing rotor brake,” Blackwood announced. “Torque coming up. We are heavy.”

The Apache lurched. We were carrying a full load of Hellfire missiles, Hydra rockets, and 1,200 rounds of 30mm ammunition.

“Tower, this is Ghost One,” Blackwood radioed, his voice calm. “Taking off immediately. Hangar One.”

There was no response from the tower.
Just static.

“Tower is gone,” I said, checking the weapon systems. “We’re on our own.”

The helicopter lifted. The ground fell away.
The dust swirled into a brownout, blinding us for a second, but Blackwood held it steady.

We rose out of the hangar roof opening, ascending into the chaotic sky.

What I saw below made my blood run cold.

FOB Vanguard was burning.

Thick pillars of black smoke choked the rising sun. Tracers zipped back and forth like angry fireflies. I could see the Obsidian strike team—professional, coordinated, moving in a pincer movement toward the command center.

“I have eyes on the enemy,” I said, my hands gripping the controls of the Target Acquisition and Designation Sight (TADS). The monochrome screen flickered to life.

“Do we engage?” Blackwood asked.

“Negative,” I said. “Prioritize survival. We need to get out of the jammer’s range to upload this data.”

“Warning,” the computer’s voice was a flat, emotionless monotone. “Radar lock. Six o’clock.”

“Break left!” I shouted.

Blackwood yanked the cyclic.
The massive machine groaned as it banked hard.

A streak of white smoke tore past our tail rotor.
A shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.

“That was close,” Blackwood grunted. “They brought MANPADS.”

“They brought everything,” I said. “Look at the horizon.”

To the east, two dark shapes were skimming the desert floor, kicking up trails of sand.
They were moving fast, closing the distance.

Helicopters.

Not standard military issue.
These were black, sleek, and heavily modified.

MD 530 Defenders.
Fast, agile, and armed with miniguns.

“Hunter-killers,” Blackwood identified them. “They’re faster than us.”

“But we’re meaner,” I said.
I armed the 30mm cannon.

“Taking control of the gun.”

“You have the gun,” Blackwood confirmed.

The chase was on.

---

PART 3: THE GHOST AND THE STORM

We were heavy, slow, and flying over a desert that offered no place to hide.
The two Obsidian helicopters split up, flanking us. They were wolves trying to hamstring a bear.

“They’re trying to box us in,” Blackwood said, struggling to keep the airspeed up. “If they get behind us, those miniguns will shred our rotors.”

“Keep us low,” I ordered. “Nap of the earth. Make them work for it.”

Blackwood dropped the Apache down until we were fifty feet off the desert floor.
The ground rushed by in a blur of beige and brown.

My stomach did a slow roll, but my hands were steady.

I tracked the helicopter on the left.
It was jinking, weaving to avoid my lock. The pilot was good.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Hold still.”

I wasn’t Riley the Janitor anymore.
I wasn’t the woman who ate lunch alone.
I was Lt. Col. Riley Thorne, and I was the wrath of God at 140 knots.

The enemy pilot made a mistake.
He pulled up to get a better angle on our tail. For a split second, he was silhouetted against the sky.

I squeezed the trigger.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

The Apache shuddered as the chain gun roared.
Every round was high-explosive incendiary.

I didn’t need the computer to tell me I hit.
I saw the canopy of the enemy chopper disintegrate.
The machine lost control, spinning wildly before slamming into a dune in a blossom of orange fire.

“One down!” I shouted.

“The other one is on our six!” Blackwood yelled. “I can’t shake him!”

Bullets hammered the fuselage.
Ping—ping—ping—CRACK.

“We’re losing hydraulic pressure in the secondary system!” Blackwood warned. “I’m losing tail rotor authority!”

If we lost the tail rotor, we would spin into the ground.

“Give me a hard brake!” I ordered. “Stop the bird!”

“What? We’ll drop like a rock!”

“Do it! He’ll overshoot!”

It was a maneuver that bordered on suicide.

But Blackwood trusted me.

He hauled back on the stick.

The Apache reared up violently.
The G-force slammed me into my seat.
The horizon disappeared.

The Obsidian helicopter, expecting a chase, roared past beneath us.

“Now!” I yelled. “Drop the nose!”

Blackwood slammed the stick forward.
We leveled out.

Now we were behind him.

“Fox Two!” I selected a Hellfire missile.

I fired before the tone.

The missile streaked across the sky.
A heartbeat later, the helicopter exploded into a boiling cloud of fire.

“Splash two,” Blackwood breathed. “Jesus, Thorne… where did you learn that move?”

“Flight simulator,” I lied.

“Get us to altitude. I need a signal.”

We climbed. The smoke of Vanguard was a smudge behind us now.
The desert stretched in all directions.

As we passed 5,000 feet, the jamming faded.
The comms sputtered back to life.

“Ghost One to CENTCOM,” I transmitted. “Priority Alpha. Authentication code: Tango-Seven-Zulu-Samurand.”

A long silence.
Then:

“Ghost One, this is CENTCOM. Authentication confirmed. Lieutenant Colonel Thorne… you’re listed as deceased.”

“Reports of my death have been… inconvenient,” I said. “I’m transmitting a data packet containing evidence of high treason by the Obsidian Hand corporation and compromised intelligence assets.”

“Stand by for upload.”

The progress bar crawled.
20%… 40%…

“We’re leaking fuel,” Blackwood warned. “We’re venting from the main tank.”

“We have enough to loiter,” I said.
60%…

“Thorne,” Blackwood said quietly, “why didn’t you run? You could’ve stayed dead.”

I touched the patch on my shoulder.
The raptor and the lightning bolt.

“I had a team,” I said.
“Corporal Alex Ramirez. Sergeant Tyler King. Captain Parker Vane. They were good men. Obsidian sold them out. They died thinking it was bad luck.”

I looked out at the desert.

“I couldn’t let them be the only ghosts.”

90%…

“Upload complete.”

“CENTCOM acknowledges receipt,” the radio replied. “Lieutenant Colonel, QRF is inbound. Carrier strike group is mobilized. Obsidian assets are being frozen as we speak.”

“Copy,” I said. “Tell Colonel Mercer help is coming.”

“Welcome back, Colonel.”

We limped home.

Vanguard was still smoking when we landed.

Marines were cheering. Mechanics were high-fiving.
I could feel the shift in the air—fear had turned into awe.

Colonel Mercer met us at the tarmac.
He saluted, a long, respectful motion.

Then he gripped my hand.

“Good flying, Colonel.”

“Good shooting, Austin.”

Captain Callaway jogged over, bandaged and breathless.

“We did it!” he shouted. “Did you see that!? We held them off!”

He looked at me, sheepish.

“So… does this mean you’re not cleaning the gun tomorrow?”

“I think I’m due for some leave,” I said.

Major Blackwood approached, resting a hand on my shoulder.

“You know,” he said, “Eagle Talon may be inactive… but we could start something new.”

I gazed at him, then at the rising sun.

“I need a shower first. And someone else can clean this mess.”

I walked away from the Apache.
For five years, I had been a ghost haunting a machine.

Today, I was just a soldier walking home.

And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t look down.

I looked straight ahead.