Chapter 2 - The Briefing Room
Briefing Room B smelled of floor wax, dry-erase markers, and decades of sweat. It was a windowless box dominated by a massive digital tactical display screen at the front and rows of green metal-framed chairs.
Hollis’s squad filed in silently, taking seats near the back. Dylan sat awkwardly in the front row, his hands clasped tightly between his knees. I stood at the front, opposite Hollis, who keyed a sequence into the wall terminal.
The screen flickered to life, illuminating the dark room in a harsh blue glow.
A topographical map of a jagged, unforgiving mountain pass popped up, covered in red and blue digital markers. Across the top, a classified header flashed in amber letters: OPERATION COPPER RIDGE – AFTER-ACTION REVIEW.
“For those of you who weren't in the service eight years ago,” Hollis began, his voice echoing off the concrete walls, “Copper Ridge was an extraction gone sideways in the Helmand province. Jackal Three—my platoon—was pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire in a dry riverbed. We lost our primary satcom. We were out of ordnance. We had forty minutes of daylight left before the ridge fell.”
He paused, looking directly at Dylan before shifting his gaze back to me.
“Standard protocol dictates that when a ground element loses comms and beacon power in a hot zone, aerial support breaks off to avoid friendly fire or capture. The valley was socked in by a severe electrical storm. Visibility was zero.”
Dylan swallowed hard, staring at the map. “So what happened?”
“Nightfall Seven happened,” Hollis said flatly. He tapped the keyboard.
The screen zoomed in on a tiny, pulsing white dot labeled AC-130 / Nightfall Seven.
“Major Carter wasn't flying a desk,” Hollis continued, his voice dropping into a hard, rhythmic cadence. “She was mission commander of an experimental tactical gunship overlay unit operating out of Bagram. While every other pilot in the theater turned back due to zero-vis and severe turbulence, she flew blind into a box canyon using unproven synthetic radar mapping.”
The room went dead silent. You could hear the faint hum of the overhead projector cooling fans.
“She didn't just drop ordnance,” Hollis said, his eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten. “She walked twenty-millimeter high-explosive rounds within fifteen meters of our position through a digital grid overlay she was building in real-time. She saved eleven lives that night. And she did it without a radio beacon, guiding us solely by the sound of our return fire.”
Dylan turned his head slowly, staring at me as if he were seeing a ghost. “You... you flew that?”
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“I led the crew that did,” I corrected quietly. “And I lost two friends when our tail rotor clipped a ridge wall on the egress. It wasn't a heroic movie, Dylan. It was a math problem written in blood.”
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