Prologue

The thunder of rotor blades was a physical weight, vibrating through the metal floor of the Super Stallion and rattling the teeth in Sergeant Lance Richards’ jaw. Outside the open side hatch, the humid jungle air smelled of ozone, bruised canopy leaves, and hot aviation fuel.

“Richards! Do you have visual on the target area?”

Major Vance’s voice barked through the headset, sliced by static. Lance pressed his thumb to the chin-strap of his helmet, leaning over the edge. Sun glinted off the belly of the gunship as it banked hard over the emerald ridges below.

“Visual confirmed, Major,” Lance replied into his boom mic. He adjusted the glass of his tactical rangefinder, zooming in on the cluster of tin roofs tucked beside a winding river bend. “Grid coordinate Delta-Seven-Niner.”

“Commence strike immediately. Paint the center of that grid for the payload.”

Lance squinted through the crosshairs. He didn’t see hostile insurgents, armored vehicles, or weapon emplacements.

He saw clotheslines strung between palms, billowing with bright red and yellow garments. He saw a child chasing a stray dog past a wooden well. He saw women kneeling by the river bank, washing rice in woven baskets. A quiet river village, completely oblivious to the war machine hovering three thousand feet above.

“Say again, Major?” Lance’s grip tightened on his carbine until his knuckles turned ash-white. “Coordinates show a civilian settlement. I repeat—no hostile signatures in the quadrant. Just civilians.”

“You have your orders, Sergeant!” Vance’s voice cracked like a whip over the comm line, stripped of any human warmth. “That grid is hot! Paint the target now, or so help me God, I’ll strip those stripes off your arms before we touch down!”

“Sir, negative! I am not painting innocent civilians!”

“Paint the target, Richards! That’s an order! Paint the—”

Static exploded in Lance’s ears—a sharp, shrill squeal that cut through the thunder of the rotors and the roar of the wind.