Page 17 of My Forbidden Commander

I face front and run.

No more nine-minute pace for me. I fly up the track after the file with my blood roaring in my ears and a grin wide enough to hurt on my face, because I wasn’t imagining it. I was never imagining any of it.

Colonel of the Mountain, sir.

I’ve got your number now.

9

GABRIEL

The voice on the other end of the crackling satellite phone belongs to a lieutenant colonel named Brandt who has never set foot east of a desk.

“Your report on the range card got attention, Wolfe. That’s why they want a full bird sitting on that wire,” he says without inflection.

I shake my head even though he can’t see me. “Then send me a drone rotation and better signals coverage.”

“I’m sending you people.”

I look at Okafor across the map table. He narrows his eyes. Kestrel runs the kind of operations that keep the access roster short—it’s why I haven’t had an XO in months. Every officer they clear for this base is one more name that can end up in front of a committee. If command is suddenly willing to add more bodies, something upstairs has changed.

“How many people?” I ask.

“Eight. Two elements. Convoy arrives tomorrow, 1400 window.” Paper shuffles on his end. “Files are already in your inbox. Command wants Kestrel reinforced before the Wolves finish whatever they’re building toward. And before you ask, I’m instructed to tell you that no, you don’t get a vote.”

“Wasn’t going to ask,” I mutter.

“This is why they like you.” The line hisses. “Read the files, Colonel. The four-man team comes as a package. Don’t split them up.”

The call drops before I can ask why.

Okafor pulls the printouts off the field printer, squares the pages with two taps against the table, and deals them out like a hand of cards. We read.

First file. Staff Sergeant Ryan Callahan, thirty-one, three combat tours, a hostage recovery citation with half the paragraph blacked out. His last commander’s evaluation reads Does not quit, does not know how, which I recognize as praise and warning in the same breath.

“He’ll lead the second element,” I say.

“Steady hands,” Okafor agrees, sliding the next file over. “This one goes with him.”

Sergeant Finn Wilder. I read the marksmanship section twice, just like I once read a specialist’s file twice, and for a similar reason. Confirmed shots out past distances that make my range at Kestrel look like a carnival booth. His psych evaluation uses the word contained three times, which tells me the evaluator ran out of nicer ways to say something.

“A sniper like that, sitting on our ridge line,” Okafor says. “Changes the math on Hill 604.”

“It changes the math on everything.” I set Wilder’s file down. “If the Wolves are glassing us, I want somebody glassing back.”

Wilder’s file is followed by two more: Specialist Kevin Liu, medic, and Corporal Terry Sykes, breacher.

Then the next four files come as a built unit, which I’ve never seen before. A cover memo explains: Staff Sergeant Cole Maddox’s team operates as a single unit and is to be deployed as one. Somebody with stars on their shoulder signed off on that arrangement, which means somebody with stars owed this team a favor.

Maddox himself is thirty-six, and according to his personnel photo, has the kind of face that’s been telling younger soldiers no for a decade. Then Specialist Rhett Bishop, combat medic, a stack of commendations for casualties stabilized under fire. Corporal Jace Walker, breacher, whose disciplinary section is longer than his citation section and whose citation section is impressive. And Sergeant Harper Quinn.

Okafor reads her file longer than the others.

I raise my eyebrows. “Problem, Sergeant?”

“No, sir. Opposite.” He turns a page. “She’s carried this team’s navigation and half its planning for two rotations. Somebody kept writing her evaluations like she was support staff.” He sets it down. “Somebody was wrong.”

“Then we won’t be.” I stack the eight files and knock them square again. “Callahan, Liu, Sykes and Wilder take the empty huts by the ops line. Maddox’s team gets the two next to supply. Which leaves us the problem of four huts that have been housing spiders and a mouse dynasty since before I got here.”