General Struck the “Weak Girl” — Five Seconds Later He Was Crying for Mercy

 

Part 1

The Afghan sun didn’t shine so much as punish.

It hammered down on Forward Operating Base Condor, turning the gravel to glittering shards and the air above the HESCO barriers into a shimmering mirage. Heat wavered off the tangle of antennae, the metal roofs, the armored vehicles baking in their bays.

Captain Emma Rainey blinked sweat out of her eyes and adjusted her scope for the fifth time that morning.

“Wind’s picking up,” Sergeant Luis Rodriguez murmured beside her, his voice a low rumble in her earpiece. “Storm coming in from the east. Two hours, maybe less.”

“I see it,” Emma replied.

Her cheek rested against the stock, the rifle an extension of her body. Through the high-powered glass, the world compressed into a narrow rectangle: an abandoned village half a mile away, every window a dark, potential threat, every alley a line of fire.

She didn’t look like anyone’s idea of death from afar.

At five-foot-four with a runner’s build, dark hair pulled into a tight braid, she could’ve passed for a new intel analyst or a logistics officer on the wrong side of the wire. The only giveaways were the sun-bleached patch on her shoulder—SPECIAL FORCES—and the way she moved: economy over bravado, each motion sharp and precise.

She’d heard all the commentary.

Too small.
Too young.
Too soft-spoken.

And, of course, the one that had haunted her since selection: She’s only here because of her mother.

Lieutenant Barbara Allen Rainey—America’s first female naval aviator—had a name that still echoed in certain halls. She’d been a legend before Emma was born and a photograph in a folded flag triangle long before Emma ever put on a uniform.

People assumed that legacy had opened doors.

They never seemed to notice the way it also painted a target on her back.

“Condor to Raven-One, SITREP,” a voice crackled in her earpiece.

“Raven-One in position,” Emma replied softly. “No movement in the village. We’re still thirty minutes from the projected window.”

“Copy,” came the reply. “Be advised, General Koshenko’s convoy is ten out. Expect comms traffic.”

Rodriguez snorted under his breath.

“Perfect,” he muttered. “Inspection day. Just when I was starting to enjoy the quiet.”

Emma didn’t respond.

Her jaw had already tightened at the mention of the general’s name.

Victor Koshenko was something of a legend himself—a career officer with a chest full of ribbons and a reputation for tactical brilliance. He’d also made it very clear, during his first tour through Condor, exactly what he thought of “experimental personnel policies” and “optics-driven assignments.”

He hadn’t used the words weak girl that first day.

He hadn’t needed to.

His eyes had done it for him.

“Focus,” she told herself.

The abandoned village through her scope sharpened into something almost intimate. A torn curtain hung in a shattered window. A goat skeleton lay half-buried near a crumbling wall. On the rooftop of the tallest building, a rusted satellite dish leaned at a drunken angle.

Somewhere in that maze, if the intel was right, men were preparing to move.

High-value targets.

The architects of the IED network that had killed seventeen Americans last month on Route Phoenix. The men whose bomb had turned an MRAP into a crater and a squad of infantry into names rattled off at a memorial.

Emma had watched that funeral from the back, her hands curled into fists so tight her nails had left half-moon marks on her palms.

Those men had names.

Those men had families.

These targets had coordinates.

“Raven-One, Raven-Two, stand by for update,” the radio crackled. It was the duty officer in the TOC. “Command channel traffic incoming.”

Emma lowered her scope for the first time in twenty minutes.

The world zoomed back out. The heat. The dust. The distant drone of generators.

“Here we go,” Rodriguez said.

A different voice cut in. Clipped. Russian accent smoothed by years in American institutions.

“This is General Koshenko. All Condor elements, break current tasking and prepare for inspection at fourteen hundred. Raven-One and Two, abort mission. Return to base immediately. That is a direct order.”

Rodriguez’s hand tightened on his spotting scope.

“Sir, this is Raven-Two,” he said before Emma could stop him. “We’ve been in position for eighteen hours. Target window opens in thirty. Request permission to maintain overwatch until—”

“Negative,” Koshenko snapped. “Mission aborted. Return to base. We have higher priority operations developing.”

Rodriguez swore under his breath in Spanish, the words sizzling in the hot air.

Emma exhaled through her nose, forcing her heartbeat to slow.

“Copy that, sir,” she said evenly. “Breaking down.”

Rodriguez shot her a look.

“You’re just going to roll over?” he whispered.

“That’s not rolling over,” she said. “That’s obeying a direct order over an unsecured channel while a general’s listening.”

She started dismantling her rifle, each motion methodical, almost meditative. The Barrett broke down into a series of metal components that slotted into the hard case like pieces of a puzzle.

Inside, fury gnawed at her ribs.

They were close. She could feel it in the way her scalp prickled, in the way the air over the village felt coiled instead of empty. Their sources—local informants who’d risked their lives to talk—hadn’t been wrong yet.

Pulling them now, when the targets were about to move, made no operational sense.

Pulling them just so a general could count helmets and polished boots?

That made ugly sense.

“Come on,” she said to Rodriguez, snapping the latches on her rifle case. “If we’re late, he’ll use it as Exhibit A in his ‘why Captain Rainey is not ready for promotion’ file.”

“Pretty sure that file’s already thick enough to stand on,” Rodriguez muttered, slinging his pack. “Guy loves writing memos.”

They slid down from their vantage point, each boot placement chosen to avoid kicking rocks or leaving visible tracks. The trail back to Condor wound between low hills and dry wadis, the base a cluster of angular shadows in the distance.

The closer they got, the more the atmosphere changed.

FOB Condor usually buzzed at a steady hum—laughter from the smoke pit, the clank of weights from the makeshift gym, the constant rotation of trucks through the motor pool.

Today, the hum had spikes in it.

Gunners stood a little straighter in the towers. Officers hustled between tents with clipboards in hand. The motor sergeant was yelling at someone about oil stains “embarrassing us in front of a general.”

General’s coming, the base whispered.

Don’t be the problem.

Inside the command center, the air-conditioning fought bravely against the heat and the tension.

Maps covered the walls. Computer screens glowed with satellite imagery. Radios crackled with reports from outlying patrols. A cluster of senior officers stood around the central table like planets in orbit around a dark star.

The dark star was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore three stars on his collar.

General Victor Koshenko had the kind of presence that bent rooms. His hair was iron gray, his uniform immaculate, his boots polished to a mirror shine. His eyes, a pale, sharp blue, flicked over everything and seemed to file it immediately into useful, useless, or disappointing.

Captain Emma Rainey walked in, rifle case in hand, and stepped smartly to the side, waiting.

Colonel Eileen Collins caught her eye from across the room.

Collins, commander of the special operations detachment at Condor, was one of the few female senior officers Emma had ever met who never looked like she was apologizing for taking up space. Her hair was cut short to fit under a helmet but still somehow managed to soften her angular face. Her ribbons were neat, not ostentatious. Her gaze was steady.

She gave Emma the smallest nod.

Stand tall.

Koshenko glanced up at the movement.

“Captain Rainey,” he said, pronouncing it like RAIN-ey, even though he’d been corrected before. His voice cut through the low murmur in the TOC. “Step forward.”

Emma set her rifle case against the wall and marched up to the table.

“Sir,” she said, coming to attention.

He circled her slowly, like he was assessing a piece of equipment that had come in with the wrong specs.

“I’ve reviewed your file,” he said. “Special Forces qualification. Top of your class in sniper course. Thirty-seven confirmed long-range kills. Commendations from multiple commands.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Impressive numbers on paper,” he said. “But paper can be deceiving.”

He stopped in front of her.

Up close, the lines around his mouth were deeper. Not from smiling.

“This next operation,” he continued, “will require more than technical proficiency. It will require physical strength. Mental resilience. The ability to endure prolonged hardship under fire. Some soldiers”—his gaze dropped deliberately to take in her smaller frame—“may be less suited.”

The room had gone very quiet.

Emma felt Rodriguez’s eyes on the back of her head. Felt dozens of other glances, some sympathetic, some wary, some curious.

“With respect, sir,” she said, keeping her voice level, “my record in the field speaks for itself.”

He chuckled, but there was no warmth in it.

“Records are what people want you to see,” he said. “I prefer to judge with my own eyes.”

He flicked a glance at a younger officer standing near the far end of the table.

“Lieutenant Parker,” he said.

The lieutenant straightened.

He was probably thirty, tall, with a square jaw and the kind of eager posture that screamed I will run through a wall if you ask. His fatigues were new enough that the fabric still held its factory stiffness.

“Sir,” Parker said.

“You’ll be leading tonight’s strike team,” Koshenko said. “Intelligence indicates a high-level meeting of insurgent leaders in the village designated Objective Falcon. We will insert via helicopter at grid—”

He tapped a point on the map.

Emma’s stomach dropped.

The insertion zone he indicated was a shallow depression on the edge of the village. On paper, it looked like a safe LZ.

In reality, it was a sniper’s dream.

Elevated positions on three sides. Clear lines of fire from the rooftops. A dried canal that could hide an entire platoon.

“Sir,” Colonel Collins said, her tone respectful but firm. “With respect, Captain Rainey’s team has been conducting surveillance on that village for weeks. They know the terrain better than anyone. If a strike team is going in, it makes sense for her to lead or at least advise—”

“I’ve made my decision, Colonel,” Koshenko snapped.

The room flinched.

He looked back at Emma.

“This isn’t a job for a weak girl playing soldier.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

Emma’s face didn’t move.

Inside, something coiled and went very, very still.

She glanced at the map again, at the insertion point, at the planned exfil route Koshenko had outlined in red pen. The route cut straight across an area her team’s intel had flagged as IED-heavy—yard after yard seeded with buried explosives, cobbled together from old shells and fertilizer.

Either the general hadn’t read their reports.

Or he had, and he didn’t care.

As the briefing continued, Emma took a half step back, eyes flicking between the map, Koshenko’s tight mouth, and Lieutenant Parker’s earnest, oblivious expression.

Something tugged at the base of her skull.

This isn’t just recklessness.

This is… wrong.

When the meeting finally broke, officers peeling away in pairs to prep their elements, Colonel Collins caught Emma by the elbow and steered her into a side corridor.

Her jaw was tight, a muscle jumping in her cheek.

“Walk,” she said.

They moved past the comms room, past the supply cage, past a cluster of junior enlisted pretending not to hear anything.

“How bad?” Collins asked, voice low.

“The LZ is a killing ground,” Emma said. “The exfil crosses a field we marked as ‘no-go’ last month. Our source in the village said there might be hostages, but this plan doesn’t account for them at all. It’s like… like it was drawn by someone who wanted a lot of noise, not success.”

Collins nodded once.

“I thought so,” she said. “I’ve been monitoring traffic. Koshenko brought his own intelligence officer with him. Civilian. No one knows him. And there’s been encrypted chatter going out from his system to an external address since he landed.”

“You think he’s dirty,” Emma said.

“I think he’s involved in something he doesn’t want scrutinized,” Collins replied. “Dirty is a big word. But this mission smells wrong.”

She stopped outside her office and turned to face Emma.

“Be ready,” she said quietly. “I have a feeling tonight is going to go sideways. And when it does, I’m going to need someone who actually knows what they’re doing in that village.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emma said.

Back in her hooch, as the sun bled out over the horizon and the heat finally loosened its grip, Emma laid her gear out on her bunk.

She cleaned her rifle. Checked her sidearm. Ran a cloth over the blade of the knife Lieutenant Susan Cuddy had given her at the end of Special Forces training—a custom tactical knife, balanced just right, its handle worn smooth where Emma’s fingers rested.

“People will underestimate you,” Cuddy had said, pressing it into her hand. “Good. Let them. Use it.”

Emma’s fingers traced the steel now.

Out on the airstrip, she could hear the distant thump of rotors spinning up. The strike team was getting ready. Parker’s voice crackled over a handheld radio in the hallway, issuing commands.

She slipped a spare mag into her vest.

“Going somewhere, Captain?” Colonel Collins’ voice came from the doorway.

Emma looked up.

Collins leaned against the frame, arms crossed.

“I thought I’d check my kit,” Emma said. “No harm in being prepared.”

Collins stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

“I’ve been monitoring the encrypted channel,” she said, voice low. “Whoever Koshenko’s intel guy is, he’s talking to someone off-base. Coordinates. Timelines. Payment schedules.”

Emma’s skin crawled.

“Payment,” she repeated.

Collins nodded.

“Parker’s team can’t hear us,” she said. “Koshenko ordered a comms blackout until they’re on the ground. Officially, to prevent leaks. Unofficially, it means we can’t warn them without going around him.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, sand-colored satellite phone. Not standard issue.

“This bypasses base channels,” she said. “Goes straight to a secure line at Bagram. If we confirm something is wrong, we can get a QRF spun up without going through the general.”

Emma understood the risk immediately.

If they were wrong, they’d just disobeyed a three-star general on suspicion alone.

If they were right, and they did nothing, sixteen men might die in a fireball on a fixer’s promise.

“Captain Rainey,” Collins said softly. “I am officially ordering you to move ahead of the strike team’s planned insertion point. Conduct reconnaissance. Confirm or deny an ambush. Report back on this device. If I’m wrong, I’ll take the fall. If I’m right… you know what’s at stake.”

Emma stared at the sat phone.

“Are we going to tell anyone else?” she asked.

“No,” Collins said. “Every extra person who knows is another potential leak. Move light. No sniper rifle. Just your sidearm and that toothpick Cuddy gave you. You’re recon, not a one-woman raid.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emma said, tucking the sat phone into an inner pocket.

Collins’ hand landed briefly on her shoulder.

“Be careful,” she said.

Emma slung her smaller pack, checked her watch, and slipped into the shadows outside, just another figure moving through the organized chaos.

At the perimeter, she ducked through a gap in the HESCO wall where a local interpreter waited with a battered Toyota pickup.

They didn’t speak on the drive.

The road unspooled under the truck’s bald tires, headlights off, only the faint glow of starlight and the Milky Way overhead. The land around them flattened into scrub and rock, the occasional ruined building jutting up like broken teeth.

Five miles from the target village, the driver pulled over.

“Last safe spot,” he said. “Beyond this, many eyes.”

Emma nodded.

“Wait here,” she said. “Engine off. If I don’t come back by oh-two hundred, you go.”

He nodded once, solemn.

She stepped out, the night enveloping her.

On foot, she moved like a shadow, each breath measured, each step chosen. The terrain rose gently, giving her a vantage point over the low cluster of buildings that made up Objective Falcon.

On her stomach, she crawled the last few yards to a rocky outcropping and brought her binoculars up.

From this vantage, the village did look deserted.

No stray dogs. No cookfires.

But Emma’s eyes, honed by years of overwatch, picked out the lies.

A faint orange glow leaking from behind blacked-out curtains.

Fresh tire tracks in the dust where no one had driven for weeks.

A glint of metal on a rooftop that wasn’t just scrap.

She pulled out a small thermal monocular and scanned.

Her blood ran cold.

On the far side of the village, exactly where the planned LZ sat on the map, heat signatures clustered in straight lines. Long rectangles.

Vehicles.

No—too long. Too narrow.

Artillery.

Anti-aircraft guns. ZU-23s. Old, but lethal.

Around them, colder shapes moved—men with rifles. On adjacent rooftops, clusters of heat she recognized instantly: machine guns. RPG teams.

The insertion point was bracketed on three sides.

And on the near side, in the shadow of a central building, three human heat signatures knelt close together. Smaller frames. Heads bowed.

Hostages.

It wasn’t just a meeting.

It was a staged event.

The helicopters weren’t going to disrupt the insurgents.

They were going to be the main act.

Emma’s thumb hovered over the sat phone’s power button.

She never pressed it.

Because a voice behind her, accented but fluent, said calmly:

“American women should not play at war.”

 

Part 2

The sound of the voice slammed into Emma’s nervous system like a shock.

She froze, every instinct screaming to move, to spin, to fire.

She didn’t.

Slowly, she lifted her hands away from the binoculars and spread her fingers.

“Stand up,” the voice said.

She rose in one smooth motion, turning only when told.

Four men stood in a loose semi-circle behind her, their rifles leveled at her torso.

Their silhouettes were hard to read in the darkness, but she caught flashes of faces in the starlight—dark beards, narrowed eyes, a smirk of satisfaction.

The man in the center stood slightly forward.

He was taller than the others, lean, with close-cropped hair and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. His beard was trimmed, not wild. His clothes were clean—tactical, not tribal. A pistol rode high on his hip, the grip worn in a way that suggested daily use.

Emma recognized him from the briefing photos.

Aziz Rahkman.

High-value target.

“Captain Emma Rainey,” he said in English, rolling the R in her surname like an insult. “I have seen your picture.”

Emma’s spine prickled.

He knew her name.

He stepped closer, eyes flicking over her gear.

“A woman in Special Forces,” he said. “In my country, that is a joke. Here, it seems, they let anyone pretend to be a soldier.”

There it was again—the word that had followed her since selection. Pretend.

“Put your hands behind your back,” one of the men barked.

She complied, feeling the plastic zip-ties bite into her wrists as they cinched them tight. Too tight for most people to slip.

Not for someone who had spent an entire week in Colonel Merrill Tendisto’s Escape and Evasion course learning exactly how far a thumb joint could go before it popped.

“Walk,” Rahkman ordered.

They pushed her ahead, down a slope toward the village.

From this angle, the shapes she’d seen through the thermal monocular resolved into stark, ugly reality.

The anti-aircraft guns squatted in the open like fat metal spiders.

Mortar tubes pointed toward the sky.

Ammo crates stacked behind low walls.

The LZ area she’d marked on her mental map was a lattice of prepared fire.

This wasn’t a hurried ambush.

This was a carefully arranged execution.

“You’ve done a lot of work just to kill sixteen men,” Emma said.

“Oh, captain,” Rahkman replied mildly. “Do not insult me. This is more than a simple killing.”

He gestured around them.

“American helicopters destroyed. Fire falling from the sky, filmed from many angles. My men will claim the victory. Your politics will blame us. News networks will talk about our strength. Donations will flow. Young men will come to our cause.”

He leaned in slightly.

“And somewhere far away, certain people will receive very large bank transfers.”

Her mind snapped pieces into place.

“Certain people,” she said. “Like General Koshenko?”

One of the gunmen struck her across the back with his rifle butt, a sharp, stunning jolt.

“Show respect,” he snarled.

Emma stumbled but stayed on her feet.

Rahkman chuckled.

“Americans and your fantasies,” he said. “Always thinking in terms of bad apples. One traitor. One corrupt official. You never imagine a whole tree full of rot.”

He guided her toward the central building. Its exterior was indistinguishable from the others: mud-brick walls, a sagging doorframe, the faint smell of dust and oil.

Inside, the air was cooler.

Electric lights flickered overhead.

Maps covered a table in the center of the room. There was a folding chair on each side. On the far wall, a portable communications rack hummed quietly—satellite dish feed, radio gear, a laptop displaying a familiar terrain map.

She’d seen its twin back in the TOC at Condor.

But it was the man standing over the maps that made everything else fall away.

He wore American desert camouflage.

His shoulders were broad.

His hair was cut high and tight.

Three stars glittered on his chest plate.

“General,” she said.

Victor Koshenko looked up at her voice.

He did not look surprised.

“Captain Rainey,” he said. “I told Colonel Collins you were impulsive. I see she has not corrected that.”

He didn’t bother to hide the contempt in his eyes.

“You’re selling out your own men,” Emma said, stepping forward despite the rifles at her back.

One of the guards jabbed her with his barrel.

“Casualties of war,” Koshenko said, turning back to the map. “Sometimes sacrifices must be made for greater strategic advantages.”

“What advantage?” she demanded. “What possible objective is worth sixteen American lives? Aid workers as bait? Our aircraft destroyed?”

Rahkman smiled.

“You Americans,” he said. “You love your symbols. Helicopters burning in the night? Very symbolic. My friends in certain capitals believe it will… sharpen budgets in their favor. Old weapons, new contracts.”

“And what do you get?” Emma asked Koshenko. “A retirement villa somewhere on the Black Sea? A seat on a board? You want to lecture me about real war while you line your pockets with dead soldiers’ lives?”

The general’s jaw flexed.

“You wouldn’t understand the complexities of real warfare,” he said. “Of geopolitics. Of strategic deterrence. You’ve only ever been a tool.”

He stepped closer, his voice dropping.

“This is why weak girls shouldn’t play soldier.”

The phrase hit harder than the rifle butt had.

It was the way he said it—too casual, too practiced. Like he’d said it before, about others. Like he believed it down to his bones.

Emma recorded every detail: his posture, the way his left hand rested on the table, the faint sheen of sweat on his upper lip. The communications setup in the corner. The clock on the wall reading 23:40.

Twenty minutes until the helicopters reached the LZ.

On the laptop screen, a blinking icon marked the inbound birds.

They were tracking Parker’s team in real time.

“Bind her properly,” Koshenko said. “And put her where she can see the fireworks.”

Rahkman nodded.

One of his men yanked Emma’s hands higher and cinched the zip-ties until her fingers tingled with numbness. Another kicked at the backs of her knees, forcing her to kneel.

“Watch, Captain,” the general said, leaning down until his mouth was near her ear. “Watch what happens when real men decide the fate of the world.”

Her shoulders burned.

Her wrists throbbed.

Her mind whirled.

On the maps, she could see the planned LZ marked with a red X. On satellite feed, she glimpsed the faint, ghostly outlines of two Black Hawks moving low over the terrain, their signatures tiny against the larger heat pool of the desert.

She thought of Lieutenant Parker, excited, nervous, studying his briefing packet. Of Rodriguez, probably pacing in their shared tent, checking his watch, wondering why he hadn’t been called.

She thought of Collins, sitting in the TOC, watching inserts and extracts her whole career. Seeing patterns.

Smelling rot.

You have fifteen minutes, Emma told herself.

Fifteen minutes to break.

Fifteen minutes to turn this.

The guards dragged her across the room and shoved her against one of the support pillars. Another set of zip-ties bit into her ankles. They looped a length of rope around her torso, securing her to the post.

“Comfortable?” one of them sneered.

“Been in worse Airbnbs,” she muttered.

He laughed once, then slapped her.

Lights popped behind her eyes.

“Enough,” Rahkman said. “We need her awake.”

He stepped closer, studying her.

“I have read about you, Captain Rainey,” he said. “Seventy-five percent male environment. Sexual harassment reports never filed. Two combat tours. Many kills.”

He tilted his head.

“Tell me,” he said, “do you ever feel regret?”

“Every time I meet someone like you and realize I only get to kill you once,” she said.

He smiled thinly.

“We will see,” he said.

He turned to Koshenko.

“Your pilots are on schedule,” he said, nodding at the screen. “Three minutes to initial contact. Are we ready with the recording?”

Koshenko nodded at one of the techs in the corner—a man Emma didn’t recognize, wearing civvies with a headset around his neck.

“Multiple angles,” the general said. “High resolution. We’ll edit out anything… inconvenient.”

The tech glanced at Emma.

“And her?” he asked.

“Collateral,” Koshenko said. “No one will miss one captain.”

Her heartbeat slowed.

He’d just told her everything she needed to know.

He didn’t consider her leverage.

He didn’t consider her threat.

He considered her already gone.

The very definition of underestimation.

She flexed her fingers behind her back, testing the give in the plastic.

Too tight to slip.

Not too tight to break.

She shifted her weight, working her thumb joint gently against the restraint. Tendisto’s voice echoed in her head from that brutal week in the woods at Bragg.

Pain is information.
Pain is a threshold.
Pain is not the end.

She’d dislocated her thumb three times in training.

This would be the first time she’d do it with live rifles pointed at her head.

“Bring the hostages,” Rahkman ordered.

Two fighters hauled the three bound aid workers into the room.

Two women. One man. All in dusty NGO vests. Faces gaunt with fear and dehydration. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Blindfolds had left pale lines on their skin where the sun hadn’t touched.

“Sit,” one guard ordered, shoving them to the floor.

They crumpled.

One of the women stifled a sob.

Emma felt something hot and sharp lance through her chest.

She’d seen enough atrocities to know that these three were not the worst the world could offer. But they were the ones in front of her now. The ones whose fates intertwined with a lot of other people’s.

A sudden flurry of movement drew her eye.

On the laptop screen, the icons representing the Black Hawks had split, one peeling off slightly to the north to circle.

Parker was probably getting eyes on.

Probably seeing the guns.

Probably realizing, too late, that this wasn’t a simple meet-and-greet.

“Hold steady,” Koshenko said into the handset from the comms rack, his voice smooth. “You are clear for LZ, Eagle-One.”

The pilot’s reply came back thin and distorted by distance.

“Roger that, Condor Actual. LZ looks hot but manageable. We’ve got movement on the rooftops. Request artillery support—”

“Negative on artillery,” Koshenko said. “Rules of engagement. Proceed as planned.”

Emma felt the zip-tie digging into her skin.

She took a breath.

Bent her thumb hard in the wrong direction.

Pain exploded up her arm, white and blinding.

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.

The joint popped.

Her thumb sagged at an unnatural angle.

She exhaled, long, trembling.

The tie had loosened just enough.

She twisted, compressing her hand, forcing the bones to flatten. The plastic scraped against raw skin. She peeled her hand free, inch by inch, until her knuckles slid past the loop.

Her right hand was free.

Her left was still bound.

She kept her shoulders hunched, as if nothing had changed.

No one was looking at her.

All eyes were on the screen.

On the approaching icons.

On the promised spectacle.

“Two minutes,” the tech murmured.

“Positions,” Rahkman ordered his men.

They moved to windows and firing slits, weapons ready.

Koshenko hovered near the comms, headset on, mouth near the mic.

Emma’s free fingers slid slowly down her right thigh, feeling for the familiar seam at the top of her boot.

Her nail found the hidden fold, the tiny strip of duct tape she’d wrapped around the collar just before leaving base.

She peeled it back with a slow, careful motion.

A sliver of matte ceramic slid into her palm.

Cuddy’s knife.

Ceramic so it wouldn’t ping metal detectors.
Flat so it wouldn’t print under pants.
Sharp enough to shave atoms.

Her heart thudded once, hard.

She curled her fingers around the handle, hiding it in her fist.

On the screen, the Black Hawks drew closer.

The room seemed to lean forward.

Koshenko smiled.

He took a step away from the table, toward the comms rack.

For a split second, his back was turned to her. His attention, utterly consumed by the dance of pixels and icons and his own self-importance.

That was the moment.

Five seconds.

That was all she needed.

 

Part 3

Time didn’t slow down the way people always said it did.

It sharpened.

Five seconds became a series of crisp, discrete choices.

One: move.

Emma twisted violently against the rope, using the post for leverage. The fibers bit into her torso, then slipped as her now-free right arm slid clear.

Two: cut.

She brought the ceramic blade up, the motion hidden behind her body, and slashed downward at the zip-tie on her left wrist. The knife parted the plastic with a barely audible snick.

Three: rise.

She surged to her feet, ignoring the flare of pain in her dislocated thumb and the pins and needles in her legs. The rope around her torso slid down to her waist.

Four: close.

She covered the distance between her and General Koshenko in two silent strides, her boots barely whispering against the packed dirt floor.

Five: strike.

Her arm looped around his throat, the ceramic blade pressing hard against the tender skin just above his collarbone. With her other hand, she locked him in a chokehold, dragging his center of gravity back against her own.

It was like watching dominoes fall.

His body jerked, surprise overtaking his features.

Rahkman’s head snapped around, eyes widening.

The nearest guard froze, his rifle halfway to his shoulder.

“Drop it,” Emma said.

Her voice didn’t sound like hers.

It sounded like something carved from stone and steel.

She pressed the tip of the knife just hard enough to break skin.

A thin line of red blossomed on the general’s neck.

He gasped.

“Signal abort,” she hissed into his ear. “Code it, or I open your carotid and let you bleed out on the floor of your new friends’ clubhouse.”

“You wouldn’t—” he began.

“I’ve killed thirty-seven men from a thousand yards,” she said quietly, but loud enough for the room to hear. “Imagine what I can do from three inches.”

She tightened the chokehold fractionally.

His airway constricted.

He clawed at her arm, fingers scrabbling uselessly against the flexed muscle.

The tech at the comms rack gaped, frozen between screens and survival.

“Abort code,” Emma snapped.

The laptop showed the Black Hawks now almost over the village.

She pictured the pilots’ faces, the crew, the men in the back checking their rifles one last time.

“Do it, or we all die,” she added. “Because I promise you, if they go down, so do you.”

There was something in her tone—madness, conviction, the hum of adrenaline—that sliced through his arrogance.

Koshenko’s hand trembled as he reached for the mic.

“Eagle-One, this is Condor Actual,” he rasped, the knife tip pricking his skin. “Abort landing. I say again, abort. Threat matrix has changed. Divert to alternate grid Delta Seven for immediate loiter. Do not approach Objective Falcon.”

A beat of stunned silence.

“Condor Actual, say again?” the pilot’s voice crackled faintly.

“Abort!” Koshenko repeated, voice fraying. “Immediate. This is a general officer order. Abort. Abort. Abort.”

Emma watched the icons on the screen.

The little outlines of the Black Hawks wavered, then curved away from the red X of the LZ.

Relief punched through her so hard she nearly staggered.

One crisis averted.

Several remained.

“Drop your weapons,” she ordered, eyes locked on Rahkman and his men. “Now.”

They hesitated, glancing at each other.

“You shoot me,” she said, “and your Russian friend here dies with me. No more payments. No more contracts. No more scapegoat for the Americans to blame. Just your face on every wanted poster instead of his.”

“My men can kill you before you cut deep,” Rahkman said mildly. “Then we will tell our story. They will believe us.”

Outside, distant but approaching, she heard the faint echo of rotors.

Collins.

She’d gotten the sat phone’s signal.

She’d believed.

“We have friendlies in the air,” Emma said. “Your window is closing. Choose which side of this you want to be on when they come through the door.”

The hostages huddled on the floor, eyes huge.

One of the aid workers, the man in his thirties with a scraggly beard, caught her gaze.

He gave the tiniest nod.

He’d heard the rotors too.

On the laptop, an overlay screen flickered to life—new icons at high altitude.

Fast movers.

The QRF hadn’t just been a ground convoy.

Someone at Bagram had taken the sat phone call seriously.

For the first time, a flicker of uncertainty crossed Rahkman’s features.

He looked at Koshenko.

“You promised me,” he said in Russian.

“I promised you money,” Koshenko snapped back in the same language. “You survived the Russians in ’88. You can survive this if you use your head. Put down your weapons.”

He was gambling on being too valuable to kill.

Emma pressed the knife a hair deeper, just enough to send another trickle of blood down his neck.

“Twelve other officers,” she said softly near his ear. “That’s how many names they’ll get from you when they interrogate you. You think any of them will lift a finger to save you? Traitors are useful right up until they fail. Then they’re loose ends.”

His body shuddered.

She’d guessed the number.

She was close.

“Drop your guns!” he choked, voice cracking in accented Pashto. “All of you. Now!”

That did it.

The men, caught between their warlord and their new corrupt patron, faltered.

One by one, they lowered their rifles, pistols, and carbines to the floor.

The hostages flinched at every clatter.

“Kick them away,” Emma ordered.

The scruffy aid worker scrambled forward at her gesture, dragging the weapons back with shaking hands.

“Get behind that table,” she said to him and the other two. “Use it as cover. If anyone twitches wrong, hit them with the butt of a rifle.”

His mouth opened, closed.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

The tech in the corner, feeling the tide turn, slowly raised his hands.

“I’m just the IT guy,” he blurted.

“We’ll let the lawyers sort that out,” Emma said.

Outside, the rotors were louder now.

A dull boom shook dust from the ceiling.

Somewhere, a door splintered.

Boots pounded.

“Captain Rainey!” a familiar voice bellowed through the radio clipped to one of the fighters’ vests. “This is Colonel Collins. Sitrep!”

Emma couldn’t reach the radio.

“Colonel,” the aid worker shouted, flicking it on with fumbling fingers. “This is—uh—hostage number three. Captain Rainey has a general at knifepoint and a room full of bad guys lying on the floor. We’re mostly okay.”

There was a stunned pause.

Then a bark of incredulous laughter.

“Copy that,” Collins said. “Hold what you’ve got. We’re thirty seconds out.”

Thirty seconds.

Too long.

Because Rahkman, ever the opportunist, saw the opening.

He moved when everyone else’s shoulders eased a fraction, when people allowed themselves to believe the worst was over.

His hand flashed toward his boot.

Emma felt, rather than saw, the shift.

She shoved Koshenko forward, sending him sprawling away from her, and spun.

Rahkman came up with a small pistol, the barrel already swinging toward her chest.

She’d been in enough close-quarters fights to know she couldn’t outdraw him.

So she didn’t try.

She stepped into him instead, inside the arc of his arm.

Her left hand clamped onto his wrist, forcing the muzzle off-line. Her right, still holding the ceramic blade, hammered up into his jaw in a brutal strike.

His head snapped back.

The pistol fired, the bullet going wild and blowing a chunk of plaster from the ceiling.

She swept his leg in the same motion, driving her shoulder into his torso.

They went down hard.

He was heavier, stronger.

He tried to roll her.

She twisted, letting his momentum carry him past.

Her thumb screamed, the dislocated joint grinding nauseatingly.

He snarled something in a language she didn’t catch.

Their arms tangled, his hand scrabbling for her knife.

She let it go.

He overcommitted.

She slammed her forehead into his nose.

Cartilage crunched.

His grip loosened.

She snaked her arm around his neck, hooking her elbow deep and driving her forearm into his throat. Her legs came up, wrapping around his waist, heels digging into his lower back to keep him pinned.

It was a modified rear naked choke, adapted in training for exactly her situation: smaller operator, larger target.

He clawed at her arms.

She tightened.

Stars danced at the edges of her own vision, but she didn’t let go.

His struggles got weaker.

Then stopped.

His body sagged, consciousness cut off.

She released the pressure but kept him locked in place.

The door blew inward with a crash that made the hostages yelp.

Dust billowed.

Silhouettes filled the frame—night-vision goggles, rifles up, laser dots sweeping.

“U.S. Army! Hands where I can see them!” someone shouted.

“Friendly!” Emma yelled, her voice ragged. “Friendly with one unconscious asshole under her!”

“Captain?” Collins’ voice cut through the chaos.

“Over here!” Emma called.

Through the settling dust, she saw Colonel Eileen Collins stride in, pistol drawn, eyes sweeping the room.

It took her half a second to take it all in.

Hostages huddled behind the table, clutching AK-variants.

Insurgents sprawled on the floor, hands behind their heads.

A civilian tech in the corner, arms still raised.

General Victor Koshenko, zip-tied to a chair by the aid worker, blood on his neck and tear tracks on his cheeks.

And Emma Rainey, five-foot-four and shaking with adrenaline, her legs locked around the unconscious form of Aziz Rahkman.

“Captain Rainey,” Collins said, a slow, fierce satisfaction curling the edges of her mouth. “Situation report.”

Emma took a breath.

“Hostages secure,” she said. “Enemy leadership neutralized. Evidence of treason preserved.”

She jerked her chin toward the comms rack.

“Everything’s recorded, ma’am,” she added. “Every call. Every payment.”

Collins glanced at Koshenko.

His eyes, moments ago blazing with contempt, now brimmed with tears.

“Please,” he rasped. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. There are powerful people—”

“Yeah,” Emma said, pushing herself to her feet at last. “I’ve heard that before.”

She stood over him, ceramic blade still in her hand.

Five seconds ago, he’d written her off as a weak girl playing soldier.

Now he was zip-tied, bleeding, and begging for mercy.

For once, she thought, maybe people would remember who had really been playing.

 

Part 4

Washington, D.C. smelled different.

Less dust. More asphalt. A faint tang of exhaust fumes and hot metal instead of burning trash and diesel.

But the air around the Pentagon still buzzed with that familiar, low-grade tension—the murmur of people who knew that decisions made in these hallways could put men and women into harm’s way halfway around the world.

Emma stood outside the small auditorium, her dress blues pressed, her medals aligned in a neat, modest row.

The clerk had offered to pin the ones she’d earned over years of deployments in a more prominent way, to make them “photogenic.”

She’d declined.

She hadn’t done any of this for photos.

The Distinguished Service Cross pinned just above her heart felt heavier than its actual weight. The silver cross on a blue ribbon didn’t glint as showily as some awards. It was second only to the Medal of Honor in prestige.

The citation, framed inside, was long and full of phrases like extraordinary heroism and risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.

It did not mention the part where a general had called her a weak girl.

It did not mention the sound of his voice cracking as he called abort.

The classified annex—left out of the public version—did.

The investigation that had followed the raid on Objective Falcon had cut through the military like a scalpel.

On paper, it was just one operation gone wrong.

In reality, it had been a rotten tooth that, once tapped, revealed an infection spreading through the jaw.

Financial forensics teams had traced payments from shell corporations in Eastern Europe to private accounts in Doha, Dubai, and beyond. Names had surfaced—colonels, generals, civilian contractors—people who’d been receiving “consulting fees” from companies with interests in extending certain conflicts and destabilizing certain regions.

Koshenko had been one of the linchpins.

Confronted with the recordings from the village—the comms, the maps, the damning words out of his own mouth—and the ledger showing his accounts, he’d folded quickly.

His cooperation had saved him from a firing squad.

It had not saved his reputation.

“Twelve officers,” Rodriguez had said when news of the arrests finally filtered down to Condor. “Twelve. All because you popped your thumb out of its socket and scared a three-star into wetting his pants.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Emma had said, wincing as the physical therapist manipulated her hand. “He only cried a little.”

Now, months later, the ache in her thumb flared when the weather changed, a quiet, persistent reminder.

Pain is information.

“Captain Rainey?” a voice said.

She turned.

Lieutenant General Janet Wolfenbarger—sharp-featured, composed, one of the highest-ranking women in the Air Force—stood in the doorway.

Her own ribbon rack was formidable.

“Ma’am,” Emma said, snapping to attention.

“At ease,” Wolfenbarger said. Her gaze flicked over Emma’s uniform, lingering for a moment on the new silver cross. “You did well in there.”

Emma thought of the ceremony. The applause. The carefully worded speech about courage under fire and quick thinking. The omission of words like traitor and conspiracy.

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said.

Wolfenbarger gestured for her to walk.

They moved down a quieter corridor, away from the echo of applause and the clicking of cameras.

“Your mother flew with a friend of mine,” Wolfenbarger said. “Back when the Navy was still figuring out what to do with women who weren’t just nurses.”

Emma’s throat tightened.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “She died when I was eight. I don’t remember much. Just that she smelled like jet fuel and coffee.”

Wolfenbarger smiled faintly.

“That sounds about right,” she said. “She was stubborn. Brilliant. And very, very tired of explaining herself.”

They paused near a window overlooking the Potomac.

“Her legacy opened doors,” Wolfenbarger said. “But it also put you under a microscope. I know that. I also know that you earned everything you’ve got on that chest the hard way.”

Emma shifted.

“Ma’am,” she said slowly, “if this is about promotion boards, I can—”

“This is about something bigger than a promotion board,” Wolfenbarger said, cutting her off gently. “Sit.”

They sat on a bench overlooking the river.

“After the Falcon incident,” the general said, “we realized we had a gap. We’ve been focused on external threats—insurgents, terrorists, near-peer adversaries. We have entire commands dedicated to hunting them. But what we don’t have, not yet, is a joint, special-operations-capable unit focused on what almost killed Parker’s team.”

“Traitor generals?” Emma asked.

“Infiltration,” Wolfenbarger said. “Corruption. Networks of influence that run through multiple militaries. We have NCIS. CID. OSI. Good people. But we need something that can move where they can’t. Someone who understands both the special operations world and the way people like Koshenko think.”

She gave Emma a sideways look.

“We’re creating a new task force,” she said. “Joint. Small. Focused on counterintelligence in active combat zones. We need someone to lead it.”

Emma blinked.

“Lead it, ma’am?” she repeated.

“Did you think we hauled you back here just for a medal and a handshake?” Wolfenbarger asked dryly. “You exposed a network that had eluded investigators for years. You saw through a decorated general’s operational plan and trusted your instincts under pressure. You convinced hardened insurgents to disarm without firing a shot. And you managed to do it all while half the people around you underestimated you.”

She paused.

“That last part,” she said, “is your greatest asset.”

“My… greatest asset,” Emma repeated.

“People look at you and see what they want to see,” Wolfenbarger said. “A small woman. A junior officer. A ‘weak girl,’ to use Koshenko’s words. They lower their guard. They talk freely. They make sloppy mistakes. You’ve been using that since selection. Don’t deny it.”

Emma thought of all the times instructors had glanced over her in the lineup and then walked right past, assuming she’d ring the bell soon. Of all the tests where she’d been relegated to the “light duty” station until she’d quietly outshot, outmaneuvered, or outlasted the bigger guys.

“I use what I have,” she said.

“Exactly,” Wolfenbarger said. “We want you to build a team that does the same. Operators who don’t fit the classic mold. People with language skills, hacking skills, human senses tuned to corruption, not just gunfire. You’d have authority across branches. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines. Direct report to a joint command, not to some base commander who’s worried about his promotion stats.”

Emma swallowed.

“Why me?” she asked. “There are other officers—”

Wolfenbarger’s brow lifted.

“Because you’ve already done the job,” she said. “You just didn’t have the title. And because every general who sat on your promotion board and marked ‘not ready’ was doing us a favor without knowing it.”

She smiled, and for the first time since Emma had met her, it wasn’t the careful, political kind.

“People underestimating you is your greatest weapon,” she said. “We’d like to… formalize its use.”

Emma stared out at the river.

On the far bank, tourists milled near the monuments, tiny and oblivious.

“What would the billet be?” she asked.

“Commanding Officer, Joint Special Operations Counterintelligence Task Force,” Wolfenbarger said. “O-4 slot upgrading to O-5 within a year if the pilot program proves effective.”

A new title.

A new weight.

She thought of her team at Condor. Of Rodriguez’s jokes, Collins’ calm.

“We’ll pull you from Condor after a proper handoff,” Wolfenbarger said, reading her expression. “Collins is already grooming a replacement. She’s the one who recommended you for this, by the way.”

Of course she was.

“Will I still… go forward?” Emma asked. “Or is this… a desk?”

Wolfenbarger snorted.

“If we wanted a desk officer, we’d pick someone with fewer scars and more PowerPoint experience,” she said. “You’ll deploy with your team. You’ll live in the same forward operating bases, stink of the same diesel. We just expect you to come back with fewer traitors and more intel.”

Emma looked down at her hands.

Her thumb ached.

She flexed it.

“Will they… call me weak?” she asked, surprised at herself.

Wolfenbarger’s gaze softened.

“Probably,” she said. “But it won’t matter. You’ll be a major, Captain.”

Emma blinked.

“Major?” she echoed.

Wolfenbarger stood.

“You think we’d give something like this to a captain?” she asked. “We can push your promotion through with the latest board results. Congratulations, Major Rainey.”

The word settled on Emma’s shoulders like a strange, new piece of gear.

Heavier than captain.

Fitting, in a way she hadn’t expected.

“Unique perspective, ma’am?” she said.

Wolfenbarger laughed.

“That’s one way to put it,” she said. “Welcome to the next war, Major. It looks a little different than the last one.”

Emma stood and saluted.

As Wolfenbarger returned it, Emma felt, for the first time since the village, something like genuine anticipation.

Not for medals.

Not for revenge.

For the chance to shape the battlefield in a way that didn’t always involve pulling a trigger.

Six months later, she’d be in a very different loading bay, about to find out exactly what she’d signed up for.

 

Part 5

Six months went faster than any deployment Emma had ever done.

The Joint Special Operations Counterintelligence Task Force—JSOCITF, because the military would never pass up a chance for a tortured acronym—started as a line item in a budget spreadsheet and a half-joking pitch in a secure conference room.

It became a team.

Her team.

She recruited from everywhere.

An Air Force OSI agent who’d run informant networks in Eastern Europe and could read body language like a second language.

A Navy cryptologist with a knack for cracking “unbreakable” comms systems and a side hobby of lockpicking.

An Army Ranger who’d grown up in a border town and spoke five dialects like a chameleon.

A Marine intel officer who’d turned down a promotion to stay in the field.

None of them fit the recruitment posters.

All of them had been underestimated at some point.

“You’re our misfit toys,” she told them during their first group brief. “Congratulations. The island is now funded by Congress.”

They laughed.

Then they got to work.

Their first mission took them away from sand and scrub and into a colder theater.

A former Soviet republic, drunk on its own corruption.

On paper, they were there to advise on “election security.”

In reality, they were there to track a network of officers who’d been selling troop locations to hostile paramilitaries.

The operation had all the hallmarks of the Falcon mess—bad intel, strange accidents, missions gone wrong. Only this time, Emma wasn’t stumbling into it by chance.

She was hunting it on purpose.

They set up in a drafty annex of a NATO base, computers humming, whiteboards covered in photos and arrows and red string. Her team embedded with different units, listening, watching, following money and orders and patterns.

It didn’t take long to find the hub.

General Marek Zoric.

Decorated veteran. Beloved by his troops. Charismatic. Folksy when he needed to be for cameras.

He also had a cousin on the board of a logistics company that kept getting mysteriously favorable contracts.

Emma watched him during a joint briefing one morning.

He was big, loud, with the kind of booming laugh that made weak men feel included and strong men feel challenged.

When he spotted her in the back, his laugh dimmed.

“And who’s this?” he asked, gesturing with his coffee mug. “Is NATO sending us Girl Scouts now?”

The room chuckled.

Her team went very still.

“Major Emma Rainey,” she said, stepping forward. “JSOCITF.”

He squinted.

“Counter… what?” he said.

“Counterintelligence Task Force,” she replied. “We’re here to help you not get killed by your own people’s bad habits.”

Laughter, more honest this time, rolled around the room.

Zoric didn’t like being laughed at when he wasn’t the one making the joke.

His eyes narrowed.

“You think you can teach me anything about war, little major?” he said. “I have been fighting since before you were born.”

He thrust his fist into his palm for emphasis.

She remembered Koshenko’s words.

Weak girl.

She thought of him zip-tied, begging.

“I don’t doubt your experience, sir,” she said calmly. “I’m just here to make sure it doesn’t get sold to the highest bidder.”

A few officers choked on their coffee.

Zoric’s face flushed.

Later, in a more private setting, he struck her in words rather than hands, but the impact was the same.

“This is men’s work,” he growled, jabbing a thick finger at a map. “You play with computers and paperwork. Leave the fighting to those of us with… how do you say… real strength.”

It was almost nostalgic.

“Of course, sir,” she said.

She didn’t argue.

She watched.

She listened.

She documented.

Within two weeks, they had him.

Not with a knife at his throat, but with bank records, intercepted calls, and a video of him in a supposedly “off-the-record” meeting with a representative of the same shell company that had funneled money to Koshenko.

He hadn’t bothered to check the conference room for bugs.

Why would he?

It was just a weak girl’s team handling AV that day.

When military police came for him, he roared, threatened, blustered.

Then he saw Emma step out from behind them.

For a moment, his face did the same thing Koshenko’s had.

That little collapse of certainty.

That flicker of bewildered fear.

“Mercy,” he said, the word slipping out before he could stop it. “You don’t know what they’ll do to me.”

“Traitors don’t get protection,” she said, echoing her own words in the village. “But you might get a plea deal if you start naming names.”

His shoulders sagged.

In his eyes, she saw not just guilt, but the realization that the world had moved on without him. That the game he thought he’d been playing with impunity now had new referees.

Her team moved in, efficient and calm.

Paperwork, not throat-cutting.

Some battles were won with pens and recordings.

Some, with knives and dislocated thumbs.

All of them required the same thing in the end: courage to act when everyone else hoped someone else would.

Back in the hangar bay, hours later, her team gathered around the back of their transport aircraft.

“We good?” the Ranger, Torres, asked.

“For now,” Emma said.

“What’s next?” the cryptologist, Jin, asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.

“Next,” Emma said, “we write the report. We brief the people who will pretend to be shocked. And then we start looking for the next rot spot.”

“Fun,” OSI Agent Harper said dryly.

“Did you think this was going to be glamorous?” Emma asked.

Harper shrugged.

“You did knife a general,” he said. “Kind of hard to top that.”

She snorted.

“That was self-defense,” she said. “And poor planning on his part.”

The engines spun up with a rising whine.

She called them closer for a moment, forming a loose circle.

“Remember what I told you on day one,” she said. “Our enemies—and some of our supposed friends—believe strength comes in one form: big muscles, loud voices, lots of medals. They will dismiss you. They will laugh at you. They will ignore your questions. Let them.”

She looked each of them in the eye.

“That’s when you listen harder,” she said. “That’s when you gather facts. That’s when you get the real work done. And when the moment comes, that’s when you strike. Fast. Precise. No mercy for the people who thought you were harmless.”

Torres grinned.

“Should get that printed on a poster,” he said.

“Or a coffee mug,” Jin added.

Emma thought of her mother then.

Of the worn photograph she still carried tucked into the inner pocket of her uniform. Barbara Rainey in her flight suit, helmet under one arm, grin sharp enough to cut steel.

She reached into her pocket and brushed her thumb against the creased edge.

“I’m not interested in posters,” she said. “I’m interested in fewer dead good guys and fewer rich bad ones.”

The crew chief waved them up the ramp.

As the aircraft lifted off, the base shrinking beneath them, Emma looked out the small window at the patchwork of land below.

Different country.

Different war.

Same story.

People who thought power made them untouchable.

People who thought “weak” was a permanent label instead of a miscalculation.

She smiled to herself, just a little.

Let them keep thinking that, she thought.

Let them keep striking first with words like girl and weak and small.

Because five seconds later, they’d be the ones crying for mercy.

And this time, she wouldn’t be alone when she made them.

END!

Disclaimer: Our stories are inspired by real-life events but are carefully rewritten for entertainment. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidental.