Chapter 12 - The Old General's Eyes
The silence that followed my words was heavier than the thunderstorm rattling the corrugated iron roof overhead.
Gordon took a step back, his shoulders sagging beneath his wet woolen jacket. He looked around the room, catching the eyes of the young captains and sergeants who were watching him—not with reverence for his retired four stars, but with the cold, hard detachment of active combatants who had no time for ghosts.
"Colonel Callaway," the radio operator shouted, breaking the tension like glass. "We’ve got a localized ELT signal! Emergency locator beacon activated on forty-six point two megahertz! It's weak, pulsing every four seconds. Grid Echo-Seven-Niner-Four!"
"They’re alive," Staer whispered, leaning over the console.
"Some of them are," I corrected, clicking the radio toggle on my chest rig. "Flight line, this is Valkyrie Actual. Spin up Iron Bird One and Two. Full combat loadout, winter rescue rigging, and maximum suppression ordnance. We have wheels up in ten minutes."
"Copy, Valkyrie Actual," the crew chief's metallic voice crackled back through the comms. "Rotors turning."
I turned toward the equipment lockers at the back of the tactical operations room. Gordon followed me, his footsteps heavy and uneven on the concrete. He didn't speak until we were in the narrow staging alcove, away from the prying eyes of the staff.
"Adele," he started, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "I... I spoke to General Vance outside. Before I came through the doors."
I didn't stop. I pulled a Kevlar plate carrier from the rack, checking the ceramic inserts with quick, practiced raps of my knuckles. "Vance should be halfway home to his country club."
"He told me about the Sar-e Sang valley," Gordon said, his voice dropping to a harsh, ragged whisper that rattled in his chest. "Twelve years ago. The operation where you were awarded the Silver Star in secret."
My hands paused for half a second over the quick-release buckles of the vest. I didn't turn around.
"Vance broke protocol," I said coldly.
"He told me because he couldn't stand watching me make a fool of myself any longer," Gordon said, stepping around the bench until he was directly in front of me, forcing me to look at him. His eyes were red-rimmed, his lower lip quivering with an emotion he had spent half a century suppressing. "He told me that you didn't just coordinate that withdrawal from a bunker. He told me you stayed behind with three wounded Rangers, held an ammunition depot under mortar fire for fourteen hours, and took shrapnel to your spine while dragging an eighteen-year-old private into a drainage culvert."
"It was an operational necessity," I said, hoisting the heavy vest over my head and securing the side straps.
"You hid it from me!" Gordon cried, the pain bursting out of him in a sudden, violent gasp. "For twelve years, you let me sit at family dinners and tell everyone you were an administrative clerk! You let me toast your brother's standard deployments while you sat there in silence! Why didn't you throw the citation in my face? Why didn't you demand the respect you earned?!"
I strapped my sidearm to my right thigh, pulled the retention cord, and looked my father dead in the eye.
"Because if I told you, you would have made it about you," I said plainly.
Gordon recoiled as if I had shot him.
"You would have called your friends on the committee," I continued, voice level, completely devoid of malice, which made the words hurt ten times more. "You would have turned my survival, my trauma, and the lives of those men into another feather in the Staer-Callaway family cap. You would have used my blood to justify your own ego at the officers' club. I didn't serve to be your trophy, Gordon. I served to keep those kids alive. And their lives weren't for sale to buy your approval."
A single tear tracked through the dried rain on Gordon's face. He stood there, stripped bare of his uniform, his rank, and his lifelong illusion of moral superiority, looking at the warrior he had fathered and realized he didn't know her at all.
"Adele..." he whispered, his voice cracking entirely. "I ruined everything, didn't I?"
Before I could answer, the red klaxon outside shrieked twice. The choppers were spun up.
"General Staer," I called out, ignoring Gordon as I grabbed my helmet. "Keep the satellite feed locked on the ravine. If we lose comms on approach, you tell the strike wing to hold the airstrike until they confirm my strobe. I won't have my people killed by friendly fire in the dark."
"Understood, Colonel," Staer's voice boomed from the doorway.
I checked the action on my carbine, slotted a thirty-round magazine into the well with a sharp, echoing *clack*, and slung it across my chest. As I brushed past Gordon to head for the hangar doors, a dry, withered hand suddenly caught the cuff of my sleeve.
I looked down. Gordon wasn't pulling me back. His grip was light, fragile, almost reverent.
"Don't die out there," he whispered, his eyes swimming with terror. "Please, Adele. Don't leave me with only my shame."
I pulled my arm free gently, without anger.
May you like
"Pray for the weather, General," I said. "We're going to need it."
***