TITANIUM RAIN: THE WARTHOG’S LAST STAND
PART 1: GROUNDED
I counted seventeen water stains on the ceiling tiles.
Seventeen. That was the only thing keeping me from screaming.
Across the metal table, General David “Granite” Howard was shuffling through a stack of papers thick enough to stop a 50-caliber round. The air in the conference room at Kandahar Airfield was recycled, stale, and smelled faintly of floor wax and old coffee. But mostly, it smelled like the end of my career.
“Captain Stewart,” Howard began. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a cement mixer. He didn’t look up. He didn’t have to. The weight of three stars on his collar did the talking for him. “Your actions during Operation Sandstorm violated direct orders, endangered civilian aircraft, and cost the American taxpayers approximately four million dollars in ordinance.”
He finally looked up. His eyes were cold, hard flint. “Four. Million. Dollars.”
I kept my eyes on stain number eighteen, a new one forming near the vent. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about the brass. All I could see was the memory of two weeks ago—Corporal Tony Valdez’s blood pooling on the floor of a burning Humvee. Command had written Valdez off as “acceptable losses.” I hadn’t. I dropped a payload that turned a Taliban ambush into a parking lot, and Valdez went home to his wife instead of a flag-draped box.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself, Captain?” Howard’s question hung in the air like smoke.
I lowered my gaze from the ceiling and locked eyes with him. My flight suit was still damp with sweat, sticky against my skin. My hands were steady.
“Sir,” I said, my voice flat, devoid of the apology he wanted. “I’d do it again.”
Howard’s jaw tightened. A vein throbbed in his temple. He expected contrition. He expected me to play the political game. But you don’t fly an A-10 Thunderbolt—a flying tank built around a thirty-millimeter gatling gun—by playing politics. You fly it by having ice in your veins and fire in your gut.
“Captain Rachel Stewart,” he said, closing the folder with a snap that sounded like a gunshot. “You are grounded pending a full review. Your access codes are revoked. Your aircraft is off-limits. You will report to base administration for reassignment to a desk.”
He leaned forward. “You are dismissed.”
I stood up. My chair scraped against the linoleum. I executed a salute that was technically perfect but spiritually hollow. I turned on my heel and walked out. I could feel his eyes on my back, burning a hole through my flight suit. His aide whispered something about “regulations” as I passed.
I didn’t look back. I just needed to breathe.
I didn’t go to administration. My boots, heavy and familiar, took me to the one place where the world made sense.
Hangar Foxtrot.
It was a cathedral of noise. The screech of pneumatic drills, the clatter of dropped wrenches, the heavy thrum of generators. The smell hit me the second I pushed through the heavy doors—a cocktail of hydraulic fluid, JP-8 jet fuel, and ozone. To civilians, it smelled like a toxic waste dump. To me, it smelled like home.
And there she was.
Tail number 78724. My girl. My Beast.
The A-10 Thunderbolt II isn’t a pretty plane. It doesn’t have the sleek, sexy lines of an F-16 or the stealth geometry of an F-35. It looks like a shark crossbred with a pterodactyl and then beaten with an ugly stick. It has massive, straight wings, two engine pods mounted high on the tail like ears, and a nose painted with gnashing shark teeth.
But the most important part was the nose. Protruding from it was the GAU-8 Avenger—a seven-barreled rotary cannon the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It didn’t shoot bullets; it spat depleted uranium milk bottles at 3,900 rounds per minute. It was the only gun in the world that could make a tank commander question his life choices.
“Heard about the meeting with the brass,” a voice rasped from behind me.
I turned to see Master Sergeant Lisa Griffin. She was wiping grease from her hands with a rag that was older than most of the recruits on base. Griffin was the surgeon who kept my mechanical heart beating. She knew more about the A-10 than the engineers who designed it.
“Figured you’d show up here,” she added, not looking at me. She was staring at the plane.
I ran my hand along the fuselage. The metal was cool, textured with rivets and scars. My fingertips traced a jagged patch of aluminum near the cockpit—a souvenir from a DshK heavy machine gun three months ago.
“They grounding her too?” I asked quietly.
Griffin snorted, a harsh sound. “Bird doesn’t have a rank, Captain. Can’t court-martial an airplane.” She tossed the rag onto a workbench. “But… they pulled her from the active roster. Scheduled for depot maintenance. They want to ship her stateside.”
My stomach dropped. “Depot maintenance” was polite military-speak for “stripped for parts and turned into scrap metal.” This plane had flown too many sorties, taken too many hits. She was tired. Like me.
“She’s not done,” I whispered. “She’s got fight left in her.”
Chief Warrant Officer Ray “Fix” Butler slid out from under the port engine, his bald head gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights. Butler was a mechanical wizard. “Captain,” he nodded respectfully. “I’ve been giving her a once-over. She’s got more patches than a quilt, but the bones? The bones are solid. Engines run smooth. Hydraulics hold pressure.”
He looked at me, his eyes knowing. “She wants to fly, Captain.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Well, she’s going to have to fly without me. I’m probably going to be pushing papers in a Pentagon basement, analyzing the cost-effectiveness of paperclips.”
The hangar doors rumbled open, letting in a blast of hot, dusty air and the roar of a convoy returning from patrol. Through the gap, I saw the Hindu Kush mountains looming in the distance. jagged, brown teeth biting into the sky. Somewhere out there, the enemy was watching. Waiting.
“Captain Stewart. Report to the Communication Center immediately.”
The PA system crackled, cutting through the hangar noise. It wasn’t a request.
I exchanged a look with Griffin. Emergency comms usually meant one thing: chaos.
“Go,” Griffin said. “We’ll keep her warm.”
The Comms Center was a bunker buried beneath the main ops building. It was a cave of blinking lights and glowing screens. The air conditioning was cranked so high it felt like a meat locker.
Sergeant Emma Cole was hunched over the primary console, pressing her headset so hard against her ears her knuckles were white. Lieutenant Karen Hunt, the intel officer, looked up as I walked in. Her face was pale.
“Captain Stewart reporting as ordered,” I said.
Hunt didn’t waste time on pleasantries. “We’ve got a team in contact. Sector 77 Charlie. SEAL reconnaissance patrol. Bravo Seven.”
My blood ran cold. Sector 77C. That was “The Throat”—a network of narrow canyons and vertical cliffs. It was a kill box. Radio signals bounced off the walls like ping-pong balls, and the terrain gave the enemy the high ground every time.
“Status?” I asked.
“Six operators,” Hunt said, her voice tight. “Engaged with superior enemy forces. Surrounded. Ammunition critical.”
“Requesting immediate close air support,” Cole added from the console. “But… we have a problem.”
“Weather,” Hunt said. She pointed to a large monitor displaying meteorological data. A massive blob of angry red and purple was swallowing the map to the north. “Ceiling is dropping fast. Visibility is deteriorating. By the time we scramble conventional assets from Bagram, conditions will be zero-zero.”
I looked at the board. Two Apache gunships were weathered in. The F-16s were tasked hours away.
“Closest air support is ninety minutes out,” Hunt said. “They don’t have ninety minutes.”
“Bravo Seven, this is Base Control, do you copy?” Cole shouted into her mic.
Static. Just harsh, white noise.
Then, a voice cut through. Weak. Broken. Like a ghost trying to speak through a storm.
“…pinned down… taking heavy fire… casualties…”
Then silence.
“I’m losing them,” Cole whispered. She looked up, her eyes wide with panic. “Ma’am, the signal is dying.”
I stared at the map. Six men. Trapped in a stone coffin. The enemy was closing in, probably moving along the ridges, setting up a crossfire. They would bleed them out slowly.
“There is one option,” I said. The words left my mouth before my brain signed off on them.
Hunt looked at me. “Captain, you’re grounded.”
“The aircraft isn’t,” I shot back. “My bird is fueled. She’s armed. I can be wheels up in fifteen minutes.”
“Captain, General Howard revoked your flight status. If you get in that cockpit, you’re not just ending your career. You’re going to prison. Leavenworth. Dishonorable discharge.”
“I know,” I said.
Static surged through the speakers again. Then, a voice. Clearer this time. Desperate.
“…anyone… Bravo Seven… we’re finished…”
We’re finished.
Two words.
The room went silent. The kind of silence that screams.
I didn’t look at Hunt. I didn’t look at the map. I looked at the door.
In the military, orders are god. You follow them, or the machine breaks. But sometimes, the machine is too slow. Sometimes, the machine is wrong. And sometimes, you have to decide if you can live with yourself if you do nothing.
I turned and walked out.
“Captain!” Hunt called after me. “Captain Stewart!”
I kept walking.
The walk back to Hangar Foxtrot felt like a funeral march, but my heart was hammering a war drum against my ribs.
I wasn’t just breaking a rule. I was shattering the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I was stealing a forty-million-dollar aircraft to fly a suicide mission into a storm that grounded birds with better avionics than mine.
When I burst into the hangar, Griffin looked up. She saw my face. She saw the set of my jaw. She dropped her wrench.
“Crew, how long to get 724 ready for immediate launch?” I barked.
“Captain, you’re not supposed to—”
“How long, Griffin?”
Butler stepped out, wiping his hands. “She’s fully loaded from the morning scrub. Combat mix on the gun. Two Mavericks. Two winders. Rocket pods. She’s heavy, but she’s ready.”
“Spin her up,” I said. “Now.”
Griffin stepped into my path. She was a big woman, imposing. She lowered her voice. “Rachel. They will bury you for this. They will take your wings, your pension, your freedom. You walk out to that tarmac, there is no coming back.”
“I know,” I said, looking her dead in the eye. “But there are six guys in a cave who are about to die because I was too worried about my pension. I’m going.”
Griffin held my gaze for a long second. Then, a slow, grim smile spread across her face.
“Butler!” she roared, her voice echoing off the rafters. “Prep the bird! Pull the pins! Captain Stewart is going hunting!”
The hangar exploded into motion. It was a beautiful, chaotic ballet. I grabbed my gear—helmet, G-suit, survival vest. Everything felt heavier today. The weight of the decision.
I climbed the ladder. The cockpit of the A-10 is a bathtub of titanium armor. It’s tight, cramped, and smells of sweat and old metal. I strapped in. The harness clicked—a sound of finality.
I flipped the battery switch. The panel lit up like a Christmas tree.
APU Start. The auxiliary power unit whined to life.
Engine Start. Left. Then Right.
The twin TF34 turbofan engines began to spool. It started as a low growl, deep in the throat, and rose to a high-pitched scream that vibrated through the seat and into my spine. The Beast was waking up.
“Tower, Thunderbolt 724, requesting immediate taxi. Emergency departure,” I radioed.
“724, you are not on the flight schedule,” the controller, Captain Barnes, replied. His voice was confused. “State your intentions.”
“Bravo Seven is in contact. I am responding.”
“724, hold position. I have a red flag on your status. You are grounded. Repeat, hold position.”
I looked at the storm clouds gathering over the mountains. I looked at the runway.
“Negative, Tower. I’m rolling.”
I released the brakes. The A-10 lurched forward.
“724! You are not cleared! Stop your aircraft immediately!”
I clicked the radio off.
I lined up on the runway. Throttle to the firewall. The engines roared, a deafening, beautiful sound. The acceleration pushed me back into the seat. The runway lights blurred into streaks of white.
At 140 knots, I pulled back on the stick.
The ground fell away. The hangar, the base, General Howard, my career—it all shrank until it was just dust in the rearview mirror.
Ahead of me lay the storm. And inside it, Hell.
The turbulence hit me the moment I crossed the perimeter.
The A-10 bucked like a bronco. Rain lashed against the canopy, sounding like gravel being thrown at glass. I checked my radar altimeter. The ground was rising to meet me. The desert flats were gone, replaced by the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
I switched my comms to the emergency guard frequency.
“Bravo Seven, this is Thunderbolt 724. Inbound your position. If you can hear me, click your mic twice.”
Static.
“Bravo Seven, 724. Give me a sign, boys.”
Nothing.
I checked the time. Twenty-six minutes since their last transmission. In a firefight, twenty-six minutes is a lifetime. It’s enough time to die a hundred times over.
The clouds were so thick I was flying on instruments, trusting the green glow of my HUD (Heads-Up Display) to keep me from smashing into a mountainside. Lightning flashed, illuminating the jagged peaks around me like strobe lights in a horror movie.
I dropped altitude. I had to get below the cloud deck to see anything.
800 feet. 500 feet.
I broke through the bottom of the clouds.
The valley of Sector 77C opened up below me. It was a nightmare landscape of grey rock and deep shadows. And it was alive.
My thermal imaging screen lit up. White-hot specks moving amongst the cold rocks.
“Bravo Seven, this is Thunderbolt. I’m overhead. Talk to me.”
“…Thunderbolt… is that you?”
The voice was weak, barely a whisper. But it was there.
“I’ve got you, Bravo Seven. Give me a sitrep.”
“We’re… cave… North wall… taking fire… three sides… Enemy is closing… 200 meters…”
I banked the A-10 hard to the left, straining against the G-force. My eyes scanned the valley floor.
There.
Muzzle flashes. Not the rhythmic pop-pop of American carbines. The erratic, heavy chug of AK-47s and PKM machine guns. There were dozens of them. A swarm of heat signatures converging on a dark slit in the canyon wall.
“I see ’em, Bravo Seven,” I said, my thumb hovering over the master arm switch. “Keep your heads down. I’m coming in hot.”
But as I lined up for the run, a streak of green light arced up from the rocks.
Tracer fire.
Then another. And another. A web of green light reaching up to grab me.
“Warning. Radar Lock.” The cockpit computer blared.
They weren’t just insurgents with rifles. They had heavy weapons. And they were waiting for me.
I gritted my teeth and pushed the stick forward, diving straight into the teeth of the anti-aircraft fire. The GAU-8 spun up beneath my feet, a vibration that rattled my very soul.
“Let’s dance,” I whispered.
PART 2: THE KILL BOX
The sound of the GAU-8 Avenger firing is not a sound you hear; it is a sound you feel. It vibrates through the joystick, up your arm, and settles in your teeth. BRRRRRRRT. A sound like canvas ripping, amplified by the wrath of God.
I pulled the trigger.
The aircraft shuddered violently as thirty-millimeter high-explosive incendiary rounds poured out of the nose. Below me, the valley floor erupted. The rock clusters where the enemy had dug in disintegrated into a cloud of grey dust and red mist. The tracers reaching for me blinked out, silenced by the sheer volume of depleted uranium.
“Target suppressed,” I shouted over the comms, banking hard to the right to avoid the canyon wall. My wingtip missed the granite face by maybe fifty feet. “Bravo Seven, I’m clearing a path. What’s your status?”
“Thunderbolt, this is Evans,” the voice came back, strained but steady. “We’ve got one urgent surgical. Gunshot wound to the spine. We can’t move fast. But we can’t stay here. The cave is compromised.”
“Copy, Evans. I see a mining operation about two clicks south. Looks like a flat clearing. Defensible. If you can get there, I can cover you.”
“Two clicks is a marathon in this terrain, Thunderbolt. But we’re moving. Powell, take point.”
I orbited overhead, fighting the storm. The wind shear was brutal, tossing the thirty-thousand-pound aircraft around like a paper kite. Rain hammered the canopy so hard I had to shout to hear myself think.
My radar warning receiver (RWR) screamed again. Dee-dee-dee-dee.
“Missile launch! Missile launch!”
I didn’t think. I reacted. I slammed the throttle forward and jerked the stick left, popping flares. A bright magnesium flower bloomed behind me. A streak of smoke passed under my right wing, close enough that I felt the percussion of its wake.
This wasn’t a ragtag militia. They had MANPADS—Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems. Heat seekers.
“Bravo Seven, be advised,” I yelled, my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. “You are up against professional opposition. They have surface-to-air capabilities. This is a coordinated ambush.”
I swung back around for another pass. That’s when I saw them.
Through the rain-streaked canopy, my thermal sensors picked up a new cluster of heat signatures moving down the southern ridge. Not scrambling like insurgents. They were moving in a tactical column. Spaced out. overlapping fields of fire.
“I’ve got reinforcements moving on your flank!” I warned. “Company strength. Maybe fifty pax. They’re trying to cut you off!”
I lined up. I had to break that column.
I squeezed the trigger again. BRRRRRRRT.
The cannon roared, but halfway through the burst, a loud THUMP shook the airframe. The cockpit lights flickered. Master Caution alarm blared.
HYD PRESS LOW. ENG 2 FIRE.
“Dammit!” I shouted. I looked right. My starboard engine was trailing thick, black smoke. They’d hit me. Small arms or a lucky RPG, it didn’t matter. I reached down and pulled the fire handle, cutting fuel to the right engine. The fire suppression system hissed. The smoke turned white, then thinned.
I was flying a single-engine brick in a hurricane, inside a canyon, while being shot at by half of Afghanistan.
“Thunderbolt, we see smoke,” Evans radioed. “You’re hit. Get out of here. Return to base. That’s an order.”
“Negative, Bravo Seven,” I gritted out, trimming the aircraft to compensate for the lost engine. “I’m not leaving you. Keep moving.”
Then, a new voice cut into my headset. A voice that froze my blood faster than the altitude.
“Thunderbolt 724, this is Overlord Actual.”
It was General Howard. He was on the line personally.
“Captain Stewart. You are in direct violation of a standing order. You are flying a damaged aircraft in zero-visibility conditions. Turn around immediately. If you do not comply, I will have you pulled from that cockpit in cuffs.”
I stared at the fuel gauge. 1,200 pounds. Maybe twenty minutes of flight time, if I nursed it.
“General,” I said, my voice shaking with adrenaline. “I have six Americans on the ground. They are outnumbered ten to one. If I leave, they die. It’s that simple.”
“There are other assets inbound, Captain. Two Apaches are launching now.”
“They’re ninety minutes out!” I screamed, losing my military bearing. “These men have nine minutes, not ninety! I am the only asset in the sky!”
“Captain Stewart, that is a direct order! Abort!”
I looked down at the thermal screen. The SEALs were moving, small glowing dots in a sea of darkness. The enemy column was reforming, closing the net.
I reached up to the comms panel.
“I’m sorry, General,” I whispered. “Signal is breaking up.”
I flipped the switch to OFF.
Silence. Just the wind, the rain, and the groan of my dying aircraft.
I was alone. Truly alone.
“Alright, girl,” I patted the dashboard. “Just you and me. Let’s finish this.”
I banked hard, ignoring the sluggish response of the controls. I had to buy them time. I dropped the nose, aiming for the reinforcements. I was out of cannon ammo. I switched to rockets.
FWOOSH. FWOOSH.
Hydra 70 rockets spiraled out from the pods, slamming into the ridge line. Explosions lit up the canyon walls. I saw bodies flying, rocks shattering.
But as I pulled up, the A-10 shuddered violently. A new warning light. FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM FAULT.
The stick went mushy in my hands. The hydraulics were bleeding out. The plane was dying.
“Thunderbolt! We’re at the mining camp!” Evans yelled. “But we’re pinned! Heavy machine gun at 12 o’clock! We can’t cross the open ground!”
I looked at the mining camp. It was a flat plateau covered in rusted equipment—conveyor belts, crushers, old trucks. A heavy DshK machine gun was set up in a concrete bunker, hammering the SEALs as they tried to drag their wounded medic across the kill zone.
I had no gun. No rockets. One engine. And no hydraulics.
I checked my fuel. Six minutes.
I couldn’t make it back to Kandahar. I couldn’t even make it out of the valley.
I looked at the enemy bunker. I looked at the SEALs.
An idea formed in my mind. A stupid, reckless, insane idea. The kind of idea that gets you a Medal of Honor or a closed-casket funeral.
“Bravo Seven,” I keyed the mic. “I’m out of ammo. I’m out of fuel. I’m coming down.”
“Say again, Thunderbolt?”
“I’m putting her on the deck. Get clear of the landing zone.”
I lined up the A-10 with the short, rocky strip of the mining camp. It wasn’t a runway. It was a gravel pit filled with boulders.
I dropped the landing gear handle. Nothing happened. The hydraulics were dead.
“Okay,” I breathed. “Belly landing it is.”
I cut the remaining engine. The silence was deafening. The only sound was the wind rushing over the canopy. I was a glider now. A thirty-ton titanium glider.
I aimed for the gap between two rusted crushers.
The ground rushed up. 100 feet. 50.
“Brace, brace, brace.”
The A-10 hit the ground with the violence of a car crash. The belly armor screamed as it ground against the granite. Sparks showered the canopy like fireworks. The impact threw me forward against the harness, knocking the wind out of me.
The plane bounced, slewed sideways, and smashed through a wooden shed. Dust and debris filled the cockpit. We slid for what felt like forever, a screeching, grinding slide that rattled my teeth loose.
Then, with a final, lurching jolt, the Beast stopped.
Steam hissed. Alarms beeped weakly.
I was alive.
I fumbled for the canopy release. It was jammed. I kicked it. Once. Twice. The explosive bolts fired, blowing the glass clear.
I scrambled out of the cockpit, grabbing the survival rifle clamped behind the seat. I jumped down from the wing, my knees buckling as I hit the gravel.
The world was chaos. Rain, smoke, and the crump-crump-crump of the enemy machine gun.
The A-10 had slid right into the middle of the camp, acting as a massive steel wall between the SEALs and the enemy bunker.
“Over here!” a voice roared.
I saw a figure waving from behind a pile of slag. It was Evans.
I sprinted across the open ground, bullets kicking up dirt at my heels. I dove behind the slag pile, sliding in the mud next to him.
He looked at me, his face smeared with camo paint and blood. He looked at the smoking wreckage of my plane. Then he looked back at me.
“You are absolutely out of your mind, Captain,” he said.
“I aim to please,” I gasped, checking the action on my rifle. “What’s the play?”
“We hold,” Evans said, pointing to the perimeter. “We hold until we die, or until the cavalry shows up.”
The enemy fire intensified. They knew we were trapped. They were moving in for the kill.
And that’s when I saw him.
A figure on the ridge line, holding a radio. He wasn’t shooting. He was watching. Observing.
I raised my rifle, looking through the scope. He was wearing mismatched camo, but his gear… his radio… it was high-end. American high-end.
He raised the handset to his mouth.
My headset, still around my neck, crackled. The emergency frequency was open.
“Package is grounded. Repeat, Package is grounded. Move to secure. Do not kill the pilot. I want her alive.”
The voice was clear. It was calm.
And it was American.
I looked at Evans. He had heard it too. His eyes went wide.
“That’s not Taliban,” he whispered.
“No,” I said, a cold rage settling in my chest. “That’s a traitor.”
We weren’t just fighting an ambush. We were fighting a setup. Someone had sold us out. And they were watching us bleed.
PART 3: TITANIUM RAIN
“Package?” Evans spat the word like it was poison. “They want to take you?”
“Looks like I’m popular,” I muttered, peering over the rusted rim of a conveyor belt. The enemy was advancing, using the wreckage of my plane as cover. “If they want me, they’re gonna have to take me in pieces.”
“Scope!” Evans barked. “Drop the radio guy!”
Petty Officer Powell, the sniper, shifted his long rifle. “Negative. He’s behind hard cover. I can’t get a clean shot.”
“Then we make him move,” I said.
I grabbed a fragmentation grenade from Evans’ vest. “Cover me.”
I didn’t wait for permission. I scrambled up the side of the slag pile, exposing myself to the ridge. Bullets snapped past my head like angry hornets. I pulled the pin and hurled the grenade as hard as I could toward the ridge.
It fell short, but the explosion forced the radio operator to duck.
“Now, Powell!”
CRACK.
The sniper rifle barked. On the ridge, the radio operator spun around, his shoulder exploding in a spray of red. He dropped the radio and tumbled down the slope, landing in the scree.
“Go! Get the radio!” Evans shouted.
I sprinted. It was fifty yards of open ground. I ran low, zigzagging. Mud splashed my visor. My lungs burned.
I reached the body. The man was groaning, clutching his shoulder. I kicked his pistol away and grabbed the radio. It was a Harris handheld—encrypted, military grade.
I pressed it to my ear.
“…abort capture. Eliminate all targets. Wipe the site. No witnesses.”
The voice on the other end. I recognized it.
It wasn’t just an American. It was Colonel Matthews. The operations officer from Kandahar. The man who sat three desks down from General Howard. The man who had briefed me on the Rules of Engagement two days ago.
“Matthews,” I whispered.
I keyed the mic. “Matthews, you son of a bitch.”
Silence on the line. Then: “Captain Stewart. You are proving to be… inconvenient.”
“I’m going to bury you,” I snarled.
“You’re going to die in that hole, Rachel. Goodbye.”
The line went dead.
I looked up. The enemy on the ridges had stopped advancing. They were pulling back.
“Why are they retreating?” I yelled, running back to the SEALs.
Evans looked at the sky. “They aren’t retreating. They’re clearing the blast zone.”
A low whistle cut through the air.
Mortars.
“INCOMING!”
We dove into the shelter of the A-10’s crushed fuselage just as the world exploded.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The ground shook. Shrapnel pinged off the titanium tub of the cockpit. Dust choked the air.
“Doc! How’s the kid?” Evans yelled over the ringing in our ears.
The corpsman, Long, was shielding the wounded SEAL, Russell, with his own body. “He’s fading! We need medevac now!”
The mortar fire stopped. The silence that followed was worse. It meant the infantry push was coming. The final wave.
“Fix bayonets if you got ’em,” Evans said grimly. He looked at me. “Captain, you got a sidearm?”
“9mm,” I said, drawing my pistol. “Seven rounds.”
“Make ’em count.”
We waited. The shadows stretched long and dark. Then, the screaming started. They came over the berms, pouring down the slopes like water. Dozens of them.
We opened fire.
It was a blur of noise and violence. I fired until my slide locked back. Reloaded. Fired again. Beside me, Powell was working the bolt of his rifle like a machine. Evans was firing controlled bursts.
But there were too many.
I saw an insurgent climb onto the wing of my crashed jet. He raised an AK-47. I raised my pistol. Click.
Empty.
I braced myself, grabbing my survival knife.
Suddenly, the insurgent’s chest exploded. Then the man behind him. Then the rock he was standing on.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK.
A rhythmic, heavy thumping sound filled the valley.
I looked up.
Hovering above the canyon rim, framed by lightning, was an AH-64 Apache.
“Apache Lead to Bravo Seven,” a female voice crackled over the radio. It was Major Lisa “Venom” Parker. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was a bitch.”
Her chain gun swiveled, spitting fire. The 30mm rounds tore through the enemy ranks.
“Venom!” I screamed. “Watch the ridge! RPGs!”
Too late.
A smoke trail zipped from the rocks. The RPG slammed into the Apache’s tail boom.
The helicopter spun violently. “I’m hit! I’m hit! Losing tail rotor authority!” Parker shouted.
She fought it all the way down. The Apache crashed hard about two hundred meters from our position, rolling onto its side.
“NO!” I yelled.
But the crash didn’t stop the fight. It just paused it. The enemy cheered, sensing blood.
“They’re gonna overrun us,” Powell said, checking his last mag.
Evans looked at me. “It was an honor, Captain.”
I gripped the radio—the traitor’s radio. “I’m not dying here,” I said. “And neither are you.”
I switched frequencies. Not to Base. Not to Command. To the squadron tactical channel.
“Hog Flight, this is Mama Bear. I am down. Parker is down. We are surrounded. If anyone can hear me… we need rain.”
Static.
Then, a voice. Deep. Texan. Beautiful.
“Mama Bear, this is Hog Lead. We hear you loud and clear.”
Major Webb. My squadron commander.
“We were ordered to stand down, Rachel. But we took a vote. We decided we didn’t like that order.”
I looked at the sky.
“Look up, darlin’. Bringing the thunder.”
Four A-10 Warthogs crested the mountain peaks in diamond formation. They didn’t come in fast. They came in slow, ominous, inevitable.
The lead plane dipped its wing.
“Cleared hot,” Webb said.
The valley dissolved.
It wasn’t a strafing run. It was an erasure. Four GAU-8 Avengers opened up simultaneously. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT.
The sound was so loud it vibrated my bones. The entire northern ridge ceased to exist. The enemy force evaporated in a cloud of dust and uranium.
Then came the bombs. Mark-82s. JDAMs. They pounded the mortar positions into silence.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
One of the Hogs peeled off and lowered its landing gear.
“I’m putting her down,” Webb radioed. “Evans, get your wounded ready. We’re doing a hot extract.”
“On this terrain?” I yelled. “Webb, you’ll snap your gear!”
“Watch me.”
Webb slammed his A-10 onto the gravel. It bounced, skidded, and came to a halt fifty feet from us. The canopy blew open.
“LOAD ‘EM UP!” Webb screamed over the engine whine.
We moved. We dragged Russell into the cockpit, jamming him onto Webb’s lap. Evans and Powell grabbed the struts of the landing gear. I grabbed Parker, who had dragged herself from the Apache wreck, and we clung to the boarding ladder.
“GO! GO! GO!”
Webb gunned the engines. The A-10 lurched forward, overloaded, groaning. We bounced over the rocks.
We hit the end of the mining camp and fell off the plateau.
For a second, we dropped. My stomach hit my throat.
Then, the wings caught air. We lifted.
We were flying.
The flight back was a blur. We landed at Kandahar with half the base waiting for us.
Police cars. Ambulances. And General Howard.
We taxied to a halt. I jumped down from the ladder, my legs shaking. Medics swarmed the plane to get Russell.
I didn’t go to the medics. I walked straight toward General Howard.
Beside him stood Colonel Matthews. He was smiling, a predator’s smile. He thought he had won. He thought I was dead, or at least discredited.
Security Forces moved to intercept me. “Captain Stewart, you are under arrest!”
I held up the Harris radio.
“Stop!” I yelled.
I walked right up to Matthews. He flinched, just slightly.
“General Howard,” I said, my voice hoarse from smoke and screaming. “I have a recording on this device. A recording of Colonel Matthews ordering the execution of American soldiers.”
Matthews’ face went pale. “She’s delusional, General. She crashed a forty-million-dollar aircraft. She’s in shock.”
“Play it,” I said, shoving the radio into Howard’s chest.
Howard looked at me. He looked at the radio. Then he looked at Matthews.
He pressed the playback button.
“…abort capture. Eliminate all targets. Wipe the site. No witnesses… You’re going to die in that hole, Rachel.”
Matthews’ voice rang out across the silent tarmac.
Matthews turned to run.
“MP!” Howard roared. “Secure that officer!”
Three MPs tackled Matthews before he made it two steps. They slammed him into the concrete.
Howard looked at me. His expression softened. The “Granite” cracked.
“Captain Stewart,” he said quietly.
“Sir.”
“You disobeyed a direct order. You stole an aircraft. You destroyed government property.”
He paused. He looked at the paramedics loading Russell into the ambulance. He looked at Evans and Parker, battered but alive.
“And you are the finest officer I have ever commanded.”
He ripped the grounding order from his clipboard and tore it in half.
Two Weeks Later.
The hangar smelled like home again.
My A-10—Tail 724—was a wreck. She was sitting on blocks, her wings removed, her nose crushed. She would never fly again. She had given her last breath to get us off that mountain.
I ran my hand along the scarred titanium tub.
“You did good, girl,” I whispered.
“Captain?”
I turned. Staff Sergeant Evans was standing there. He was in his dress blues, leaning on a cane. The rest of Bravo Seven was behind him.
“We heard you were getting a new bird,” Evans said.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “They’re giving me a fresh one from the States. But… it won’t be the same.”
Evans stepped forward. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, jagged piece of metal. It was a fragment of the GAU-8 from my crashed plane. He had polished it until it shone like silver.
“We wanted you to have this,” he said, pressing it into my hand. “So you never forget what you did.”
I looked at the metal. I looked at the men.
“We’re finished,” Evans said, echoing the words he had whispered into the radio that day. “That’s what I said. I gave up.”
He looked me in the eye.
“You didn’t.”
I closed my hand around the metal. It was cold, hard, and unbreakable. Just like the bond between us.
“No,” I said, a smile finally touching my lips. “I’m just getting started.”
