Lieutenant Colonel Marina Locke had been invisible for almost two years—by design, not by defeat. At Forward Operating Base Sentinel, she was simply “Locke,” the quiet armory technician who kept weapons immaculate, calibrated avionics with steady hands, and spoke only when necessary. No one pressed her for details. No one bothered to ask what kind of life produced that level of calm.

She liked it that way.

On a blistering afternoon, heat shimmering off the concrete like a mirage, Marina knelt beneath an AH-64 Apache, wiping carbon residue from the 30mm M230 chain gun. Every movement was precise, practiced—almost surgical. Her hands didn’t fumble. Her focus didn’t drift. The kind of skill that came from repetition under consequences, not from manuals.

But around Sentinel, people took competence and filed it under “quirks.”

Then Major Rowan Hale, the Apache’s pilot, stepped into the hangar.

At first his expression was casual, almost friendly—until his gaze snagged on the small, worn patch on Marina’s sleeve: a black talon gripping a lightning bolt.

The insignia of a unit that officially no longer existed.

Rowan’s posture changed instantly. His voice tightened as if he’d swallowed a sharp edge. “Where did you get that?”

For the first time in months, Marina went still.

She had worn the patch on purpose today. Not out of nostalgia. Not out of grief. As a deliberate signal—like setting a match beside fuel and waiting to see who flinched.

Slowly, she lifted her eyes.

“This patch?” she asked softly. “It’s mine.”

Rowan stepped closer, disbelief washing over him. “No. That can’t be.” His eyes didn’t blink. “The Eagle Talon Division was wiped out in Samurand. Five years ago. There were no survivors.”

Marina held his stare without a hint of apology. “There was one.”

By evening, the base felt like it had a pulse again—fast, uneasy. Word moved the way it always moved in places like Sentinel: through corridors, mess halls, and whispered conversations that stopped when someone turned a corner. Senior officers traded guarded looks. Veterans stared at Marina as if they’d seen a ghost step out of a locked file cabinet.

A survivor of Eagle Talon—one of the most classified special operations formations ever assembled—had been living among them like a shadow.

That night Rowan found her again, not in the hangar, but in a quieter stretch of the base where the air smelled of jet fuel and dust. His voice wasn’t casual anymore.

“I need the truth,” he said. “All of it.”

So Marina gave it to him.

Her team hadn’t been killed by insurgents.

They had been betrayed.

Sold out by someone inside the U.S. military—someone with access, clearance, and the kind of authority that didn’t leave fingerprints. Their location had been leaked to a private military corporation called Iron Dominion, a shadow contractor with tendrils deep in procurement channels and intelligence circles. The strike hadn’t been chaotic. It had been surgical. Overwhelming. Designed to erase everyone and leave no narrative behind.

Marina had survived by inches.

And then she’d vanished—not to heal, not to hide, but to hunt.

For two years she had worked undercover, quietly gathering proof while everyone around her assumed she was nothing more than a meticulous technician. At Sentinel, she had turned the Apache’s Hawkeye targeting suite into something else entirely: a covert SIGINT interceptor capable of grabbing Iron Dominion’s encrypted transmissions and cracking them open piece by piece.

And she had finally captured what she needed.

Hard proof.

Links.

Names.

Rowan’s breath left him slow. “If what you’ve got is real… someone will kill to bury it.”

“They already tried,” Marina replied, her voice flat with certainty. “And they’ll try again.”

As if the world wanted to punctuate her words, an explosion punched through the base—tight, controlled, unmistakably tactical. The ground trembled. The hangar lights flickered. Sirens rose into the night as Marines sprinted across the tarmac, boots hammering the concrete.

Rowan grabbed her arm. “They’re here. Iron Dominion—they’re hitting Sentinel.”

Marina turned toward the hangar doors as moving shadows flickered beyond the fence line, cutting across floodlights like smoke.

Her voice didn’t rise.

It didn’t shake.

“They came for the intel,” she said evenly. “But they forgot what happens when you corner a Talon.”

And in the chaos, one question burned hotter than the fires now spreading across the base:

How had Iron Dominion found her… and who inside Sentinel had sold her location?

PART 2

The first blast had targeted Sentinel’s communications array—a precision strike meant to blind the base and sever it from outside help. The alarms were still echoing when Rowan pulled Marina behind a row of tool cabinets, his face tight with urgency.

“Locke—Marina—what do they hit next?” he demanded.

She didn’t pause to think. “They’ll come for my drive. The intercept logs. They can’t let that data leave this base.”

Another explosion rolled near the vehicle depot, sending a pulse through the air. This wasn’t random destruction. Iron Dominion moved with professional intent—trained former specialists who understood how U.S. bases reacted under pressure and how to cut the right arteries first.

Marina reached beneath a workbench and pulled free a compact tactical bag she’d kept hidden for months. Inside were items no armory technician should ever possess: a suppressed sidearm, encrypted data keys, and a hardened drive containing everything she’d decrypted over two years of quiet work.

Rowan stared at the contents, then at her. “You really were undercover.”

“Still am,” she said, zipping the bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “But tonight it ends.”

Gunfire crackled near the outer perimeter as Marines returned fire. Sentinel’s quick reaction force surged toward the breach, but Iron Dominion had already punched through the northern gate. Their timing was clean. Their spacing disciplined. They weren’t here to fight a war.

They were here to erase evidence.

“We move,” Marina said. “If they reach the hangars—”

“They’ll destroy the Apache,” Rowan finished, grim understanding locking into place. “And your modifications with it.”

They sprinted through the hangar as Dominion fighters advanced. Marina slapped a concealed panel on the Apache’s fuselage. A hidden compartment opened, revealing a custom processing board wired into the Hawkeye system—her secret weapon.

“If they take this,” she said, “Iron Dominion wipes everything. The logs. The links. The insiders.”

Rowan climbed into the cockpit. “Then we don’t let them take it.”

Marina swung into the gunner’s seat. She hadn’t planned to fly again. Not after Samurand. Not after the sound of her team’s last comms. But the controls felt familiar—like muscle memory waking from a long, disciplined sleep.

Rowan powered up. “You sure you still remember how to do this?”

Marina’s eyes didn’t leave the instrument panel. “I didn’t survive Samurand by forgetting.”

The rotors began to thunder. Dominion fighters spotted movement and opened fire, rounds pinging off metal, chewing sparks from the hangar frame. Rowan lifted the Apache as the doors slid open and floodlights revealed a squad of mercenaries rushing forward with shoulder-launched weapons.

“Hard right!” Marina barked.

Rowan banked sharply as Marina unleashed a burst from the 30mm gun—controlled, terrifyingly accurate. The rounds tore into the ground near the attackers, forcing them to scatter, disoriented and suddenly aware they’d miscalculated.

Rowan climbed for altitude, gaining visibility.

Below them, Sentinel had become a battlefield. Vehicles burned near the fuel depot. Barracks were under siege. Dominion teams moved like knives, carving toward their objective.

“They’re not trying to overrun the base,” Rowan said, voice tight. “They’re isolating us.”

“And that means someone inside marked our position,” Marina replied, scanning thermal signatures. “Someone fed them timing.”

“Any idea who?”

“Not yet,” she said. “But I’m going to find out.”

A thermal bloom lit up on a far ridge—an enemy helicopter preparing to engage.

Rowan exhaled a curse. “They brought air.”

Marina locked the target. “Then we end it before it ends us.”

The Apache surged across the valley, rotors slicing the night. The enemy craft pivoted toward them, ready to fire.

“On my mark,” Marina said, voice steady as steel.

The air between the two aircraft tightened into a lethal corridor.

“Mark.”

Rowan slewed the Apache sideways as Marina fired. The missile streaked, hit, and the night sky flashed bright—violent, decisive. The enemy helicopter spiraled downward and exploded into the terrain, smoke boiling upward like a dark flag.

But Marina didn’t relax.

Iron Dominion didn’t deploy aircraft lightly. This wasn’t a simple retrieval mission.

It was a decapitation strike.

Rowan glanced toward the burning base behind them. “They’ll regroup. What’s next?”

Marina tightened her grip on the controls.

“We take the intel straight to command,” she said. “Tonight. Before the infiltrator gets another chance.”

Yet one question gnawed at her harder than the noise of battle:

Who inside Sentinel knew she was Eagle Talon… and who had sold her out to Iron Dominion?

PART 3

Dawn bled slowly over the mountains as the Apache flew low across the terrain, skimming ridgelines to avoid radar. Sentinel smoldered behind them, battered but standing—its defenders had held just long enough for Rowan and Marina to escape with what Iron Dominion feared most.

Proof.

Rowan checked the fuel gauge, grim focus in his eyes. “We’ve got maybe ninety minutes. After that, we land wherever gravity decides.”

Marina didn’t answer right away. She was staring at the hardened drive in her lap—the culmination of two years of surveillance, decoding, and relentless restraint. The weight of it wasn’t physical.

It was personal.

Rowan glanced at her. “You okay?”

Marina exhaled slowly. “The last time I flew like this, my team died. I’m making sure this flight doesn’t end the same way.”

“You’re not alone this time,” Rowan said quietly.

Marina opened the drive and displayed fragments of intercepted transmissions—coordinates, payment logs, shipment manifests, procurement routing. Names. Flags. Chains of approval.

One name appeared again and again—someone inside the Pentagon with procurement authority, funneling advanced targeting modules into shell companies linked to Iron Dominion.

“This isn’t corruption,” Marina said, voice low. “It’s orchestration.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “And you’ve got enough to collapse careers.”

“Enough to collapse governments,” Marina replied.

A cockpit alert chimed.

Rowan scanned the terrain ahead. “Unmarked vehicles east. Moving fast.”

Marina’s eyes narrowed. “How did they track us this quickly?”

Rowan didn’t need to answer.

There was still a leak.

Still a traitor.

Someone with access to flight data in real time.

The vehicles opened fire, mounted weapons flashing.

Rowan banked hard. “We can’t outrun them!”

“We’re not going to,” Marina said. “We’re going to end it.”

She activated the Hawkeye system—now functioning as something far beyond standard targeting. It mapped structural weaknesses, angles, and collapse points along the ridge.

“Rowan,” she said, “bring us down to fifty feet.”

He hesitated. “That’s insane.”

“So is trying to kill me twice,” Marina replied without emotion.

Rowan dropped the Apache low, dangerously close to the mountainside. Marina fired a controlled burst at a fracture point in the outcropping. The ridge collapsed, throwing debris down like an avalanche, cutting off the pursuing vehicles in a choking cloud of dust and rock.

Rowan blew out a disbelieving breath. “Remind me never to underestimate you.”

“Most people do,” Marina said simply.

With the pursuit stopped, they pushed forward toward Forward Command Delta, a secure intelligence hub. But Marina’s mind stayed sharp, circling the truth she could no longer avoid.

Someone had betrayed Eagle Talon.
Someone had tried to erase her twice.
And someone inside the highest levels of power was feeding Iron Dominion.

When they landed at Delta, security swarmed the Apache immediately. An intelligence general approached with an expression caught between awe and caution.

“Lieutenant Colonel Locke,” he said slowly, “or should I say… Eagle Talon One?”

Marina stiffened. “That designation no longer exists.”

“It does now,” the general replied, voice quiet but absolute. “And we need you.”

In a sealed briefing room, Marina laid out the decrypted data. The faces around the table hardened as the scope of the infiltration became undeniable.

Iron Dominion wasn’t just a rogue contractor.

It was a parallel military apparatus—funded through insider channels, shielded by officials, and testing stolen U.S. technologies in real conflict zones.

“You’ve exposed the largest internal breach we’ve seen in modern military history,” the general said.

Rowan looked at Marina with something new in his eyes—respect that had finally found its full weight. “So what happens now?”

The general’s answer was blunt. “Now we fight back. But we can’t do it through normal channels. Too much is compromised.”

He slid a folder across the table.

Inside was a new assignment.

No unit name.
No insignia.
No rank.

Only a codename:

Nightwarden.

Marina looked down at it, then up. “You want me to lead this?”

The general’s gaze didn’t waver. “You already are.”

Rowan’s mouth curved into a tight, almost amused grin. “Guess cleaning the Apache wasn’t your final job.”

Marina glanced at her sleeve—at the worn Eagle Talon patch she’d hidden for years, as if it could burn her. Slowly, deliberately, she straightened it.

For a long time, her mission had been survival.

Now it was something else.

Expose the infiltrator.
Dismantle Iron Dominion.
Reclaim the honor of the team they tried to erase.

She stepped onto the tarmac as the sun climbed higher, throwing long shadows across the concrete. Behind her, Delta buzzed with sealed urgency. Ahead of her waited a war the public would never see—fought in darkness, won with proof, and decided by who stayed standing when institutions tried to look away.

Marina Locke had spent two years being invisible.

Now she was the one person Iron Dominion feared most.

And the question that remained—cold and relentless—was the one that would shape everything next:

Who inside the Pentagon was orchestrating the betrayal… and how far would they go to silence her this time?