Chapter 2 - Extraction Point Charlie
Seventy-two hours earlier, the desert had been all heat and distance and bad decisions.
Alpha Squad had been dropped outside a canyon network west of Gila Bend on what command called a clean retrieval mission. Recover a hostile courier. Capture a data package. Extract before nightfall. Standard language. Standard lies.
Evelyn had been attached as a communications specialist, which was exactly how Captain Garrett liked to think of her—support staff in a vest, useful for frequencies and field encryption, not someone he needed to consult when things turned ugly.
But things turned ugly fast.
The first warning came when Evelyn intercepted a burst transmission on a frequency command had never briefed them on. The second came when Reeves, their navigator, found enemy movement exactly where their route should have been clear. The third came when Mitchell’s vehicle hit a buried charge that had been placed with impossible precision—as if someone had known exactly where Alpha Squad would be.
By dusk, the canyon had become a kill box.
Garrett called for emergency extraction. Rotor support was denied because of a sand front moving in from the southwest. They were told to reach Extraction Point Charlie on foot. Then Reeves took a round high in the thigh while covering the squad’s withdrawal, and everything started breaking apart.
Hayes wanted to keep moving. Mitchell wanted to destroy the extra gear and run light. Garrett looked at Evelyn once—small frame, support assignment, no official combat résumé worth respecting in his mind—then looked at the wounded man and made the choice fear always makes easier.
“Everyone for themselves,” he said. “Charlie in twenty. Move.”
Reeves tried to object. Evelyn didn’t.
She was too busy getting his bleeding under control.
May you like
When Garrett ordered the others out, Evelyn looked up once, memorized every face, and then went back to saving the man they were leaving to die.
That had been the moment the mission stopped being a mission and became an indictment.
