“Break Her Nose!” The Major Ordered — Seconds Later She Showed What A Real Delta Operator Can Do
Part 2
The training yard went quiet in a strange, complete way. Not silence like peace. Silence like a room after somebody drops a plate and everyone is waiting for the second sound.
I could hear a distant generator humming behind the motor pool. I could hear fabric rubbing as somebody at the edge shifted his stance. I could hear one of the men on the ground breathing through his mouth, stunned more than hurt.
I looked at Reddick.
He had lowered his arms.
That was the first honest thing I’d seen on his face.
He took off his sunglasses slowly, and his eyes were not the eyes of a man embarrassed in public. They were the eyes of a man adding up numbers that no longer fit. His gaze went from the men on the ground to me and settled there.
“Where did you learn that?” somebody whispered behind the circle.
I didn’t answer because it wasn’t for him.
Reddick stepped forward one pace, boots grinding in the dust. “Medical check on the men,” he said without taking his eyes off me.
A medic team that had definitely been waiting nearby moved in. That told me plenty. So did the fact that nobody laughed now.
I turned to leave.
“Captain Quinn.”
I stopped.
Nobody on base should have known to call me captain. My transfer orders had me coming in as a civilian readiness contractor for exactly one reason: to bury the name people in my old world knew. I turned back slowly.
Reddick held my stare. “My office. Ten minutes.”
“Am I being invited?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll bring my own coffee.”
That got the faintest twitch at one corner of his mouth. Not a smile. More like a crack in plaster. I walked off the yard with red dust sticking to my boots and fifty sets of eyes on my back.
In the women’s locker room, the air smelled like bleach and wet canvas. Somebody had left a hair tie on the sink and a broken compact on the bench. I opened the temporary locker assigned to me and found a folded note tucked inside my spare shirt.
No name. No greeting. Just one line in block print.
Don’t sleep in your room. They know what really happened in Rasheed Valley.
For the first time all day, my skin went cold.
I read it twice, then turned the paper over.
On the back was a number written so faintly it nearly disappeared into the fibers.
Room 214. Hangar Annex. Midnight.
I folded the note back along its original crease, and my hands were steady. That was the part people always got wrong about fear. It didn’t make me shake. It made me exact.
Because somebody here knew my past.
And somebody here was either about to help me… or finish what Rasheed Valley started.
I didn’t go to my assigned room.
That was the first smart decision I made after the note, which meant I was due for a dumb one eventually.
Fort Bannon after dark had a different personality. In the daytime it was loud and performative, trucks rattling past, radios clipping out call signs, men trying on authority like it came off a shelf. At night the place went thin and electrical. Sodium lights buzzed over empty walkways. Moths battered themselves against glass. Somewhere near the flight line, a helicopter engine spun up and died with a tired metallic whine that made the whole base feel temporary.
I cut behind the admin building and headed for transient barracks instead. My duffel strap dug into my shoulder. The Georgia air was thick enough to drink, warm and damp and full of cut grass. Sweat gathered under my collar before I got halfway there.
I didn’t make it to the door.
“Quinn.”
The voice came from shadow to my right, low and calm. I shifted my weight before I even saw the man attached to it.
He stepped under a yellow security light: mid-thirties, rangy, dark hair cut close, sleeves rolled, warrant officer bars on his chest. Not polished like staff. More like somebody who worked for a living. He held a ring of keys in one hand and a Styrofoam cup in the other.
“Chief Warrant Officer Lucas Reyes,” he said. “Base aviation support. Also the guy who got voluntold to show you where things are.”
“I’m already where things are.”
He glanced at my duffel. “You’re standing in the dark behind admin like you’re about to rob it.”
“Depends what’s in the safe.”
That earned me a quick look, measuring but not offended. “Reddick asked me to walk you to housing.”
“Did he.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not going.”
He took a sip of coffee, considered that. “Good.”
I watched him over the parking lot stripe of light. “You say that to all the women the major sends after midnight?”
“You’re the first one he’s sent me to with a busted knuckle and half the base pretending they weren’t impressed.”
I looked down. The skin across my right hand had split a little when I drove somebody into the dirt. Dust had dried in the crease. I hadn’t noticed.
Reyes set his coffee on the hood of a Humvee and reached into his back pocket. “Here.”
He handed me a key card with a handwritten room number taped to it.
“Transient officers’ quarters?” I asked.
“Old aircrew room over maintenance. Nobody checks it. Mattress is terrible. Lock works.”
“You hand out secret rooms a lot?”
“Only to people who find notes in their lockers.”
I went still.
He saw it and lifted one hand. “Easy. I didn’t write it. But I did see Sergeant Phelps from supply hovering where he didn’t belong about twenty minutes before you got there. Then he clocked me looking and suddenly remembered he had a whole different place to be.”
“Phelps.”
“Already checked. He’s on leave as of an hour ago.”
That turned over in my head with a small hard click. “Convenient.”
“Yeah.”
A cricket started up somewhere in the scrub by the fence. Another answered it. Reyes didn’t crowd me with questions. I liked him a little for that and distrusted him for making it easy.
