Part 2
The rifle roared, spitting a gout of fire into the blinding whiteout.
Down in the valley, the RPG gunner’s chest erupted. He spun violently, the rocket launcher tumbling from his grip before detonating harmlessly into a deep snowdrift.
Panic rippled through the enemy formation. They hadn’t expected overwatch. They hadn’t expected a sniper.
I didn’t give them time to adjust. I cycled the bolt, the spent brass ejecting and hissing into the snow. I acquired my second target—a rifleman trying to sprint for the treeline. Crack. Center mass. He dropped instantly.
The remaining four scrambled for cover behind a cluster of boulders, directing a hail of suppressing fire blindly up the ridge. Bullets chewed the ice inches from my face, showering my goggles with freezing shrapnel. I ducked, crawling backward, moving to my secondary firing position ten yards to the right.
They thought they had me pinned. I settled in again, exhaling slowly. I found the narrow gap between the rocks. Crack. A third hostile fell backward, his helmet shattered.
The last three realized they were being hunted by a ghost. They broke formation, falling back into the dense pines. The immediate threat to Squad Six was neutralized, but the storm was getting worse, and Hayes’s men were still bleeding.
I slung the rifle over my back and slid down the steep, icy embankment, practically free-falling until I hit the valley floor. I sprinted toward the burning Humvee.
As I breached their perimeter, a frantic young soldier swung his M4 directly at my chest, his eyes wide with terror.
“Hold your fire!” I barked, grabbing the hot barrel of his rifle and physically shoving it downward.
Lieutenant Hayes, clutching a bloody gash on his thigh, blinked at me through the thick smoke. “Vance? The… the cook? What the hell are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass, Lieutenant,” I snapped, dropping to my knees beside a private who was bleeding heavily from his shoulder. I ripped open my medkit, dragged the kid upright, and jammed a combat dressing into his wound. He screamed in agony, trying to thrash away.
“Shut up and breathe, kid!” I ordered, wrapping it tight. I turned back to Hayes. “Who are these guys? This isn’t a training op.”
“I don’t know!” Hayes yelled over the roaring wind. “We were just transporting a secure lockbox back from the comms relay! They ambushed us, used an EMP grenade to fry our vehicle. They wanted the box!”
I frowned. A secure lockbox? On a routine patrol?
I left Hayes and jogged over to the nearest dead hostile. I grabbed him by the tactical vest and hauled him out of the snowdrift. No insignia. Sterile weapons. High-end night vision. I ripped off his balaclava. He wasn’t some local insurgent; he was an American, heavily scarred, wearing a distinct silver dog tag.
My blood ran cold. The tag bore the logo of Vanguard Security—the same private military contractors who were supposed to be our extraction team three years ago. The team that abandoned Mason and me in the desert.
A radio on the dead man’s chest suddenly crackled to life.
“Alpha One, this is Bravo Actual. We heard sniper fire. Do you have the package? Over.”
The voice sent a violent shockwave through my chest. It was Commander Vance. My own uncle, now a high-ranking official at the Pentagon. The man who had supposedly protected me by hiding me in the Fort Greely kitchen.
I picked up the bloody radio, my hand trembling not from the cold, but from sheer, blinding rage. I pressed the transmission button.
“Bravo Actual,” I whispered, my voice dripping with venom. “Alpha One is dead. The package is secure. And the Ghost is coming for you.”
Dead silence on the other end. Then, my uncle’s voice returned, stripped of all its usual warmth, completely hollowed out by fear.
“Avery… you’re supposed to be in the kitchen.”
“I quit,” I replied, crushing the radio under my boot.
I spun back toward Hayes, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him to his feet. “We have to move. Now. They’re sending everything they have.”
Before Hayes could even process my words, the low, mechanical drone of an armored troop transport echoed through the valley, its heavy headlights cutting through the blizzard like predatory eyes.
Part 3
The hum of the armored transport vibrated through the frozen ground, rattling my bones. Two heavy machine guns were mounted on its roof, cutting through the snowstorm as the vehicle barreled relentlessly toward our position.
“Lieutenant, get your men into the treeline! Move!” I screamed, hauling the wounded private over my shoulder and practically throwing him toward the safety of the pines.
Hayes grabbed his rifle, limping behind his squad. “What about you?”
“I’m going to cook them a meal,” I gritted out.
I sprinted back to the dead Vanguard contractor, ripping two blocks of C4 explosives and a detonator from his tactical webbing. The transport was fifty yards out, its heavy treads crushing the snow, the gunners blindly firing into the wreckage of Hayes’s Humvee.
I dove behind the burning chassis of the Humvee, the intense heat scorching my face through the freezing wind. I slapped the C4 onto the exposed, ruptured fuel tank of the ruined vehicle, set the charge, and ran.
I dove laterally into a snowdrift just as the armored transport rolled past the Humvee, intending to crush whatever was left of our defenses.
I squeezed the detonator.
The explosion was apocalyptic. The shockwave blew me backward, raining molten metal and flaming debris across the valley. The armored transport flipped entirely onto its side, engulfed in a massive fireball. The heavy machine guns fell silent. The Vanguard backup was wiped out in a single, devastating heartbeat.
Silence descended over the valley, save for the crackling of the fire and the howling wind.
I slowly pushed myself out of the snow, my ears ringing violently, and limped over to where Hayes and his men were huddled. They stared at me with a mixture of absolute awe and terror.
“What… what is in that lockbox?” I demanded, panting heavily.
Hayes fumbled with his pack, pulling out a heavy, reinforced steel case. “The relay outpost commander told us to bring it to Fort Greely. He said it was classified data recovered from a crashed drone.”
I shot the lock off with my sidearm and popped it open. Inside was a single encrypted hard drive. And stamped on the metal casing was a familiar serial number. It was the same data drive Mason and I had secured in the desert three years ago—the one that contained proof of massive black-market weapons deals being orchestrated by high-ranking American officials.
Suddenly, it all made perfect, sickening sense.
Three years ago, Mason and I didn’t fail a mission. We were set up to be eliminated because we found this data. When I miraculously survived the ambush, my uncle, Commander Vance, panicked. That was why he had showed up unannounced in my base kitchen at 3 AM. He had played the role of the benevolent protector, telling me the CIA was looking for a scapegoat and that he was hiding me off the grid to save my life.
He hadn’t been hiding me to protect me. He had been keeping me close, monitoring me as a cook to ensure I never spoke of what happened, keeping me imprisoned by my own guilt over Mason’s death. But when this backup drive miraculously surfaced at the remote relay, he hired Vanguard to intercept it and wipe out Hayes’s squad to leave no witnesses.
He just didn’t expect the cook to hear the radio.
Three hours later, the storm broke, and real military helicopters swarmed the valley. We were evacuated to Elmendorf Air Force Base. I didn’t hand the drive to the base commander. I handed it directly to a contact I still had at the Department of Justice.
By dawn, Commander Vance was dragged out of the Pentagon in handcuffs, the entire conspiracy blown wide open.
I stood on the tarmac, watching the sunrise paint the Alaskan mountains in shades of gold and bruised purple. The freezing wind whipped my hair across my face, but for the first time in three years, the cold didn’t bother me.
Hayes walked up beside me, leaning heavily on a crutch. He looked at my sniper rifle, which was slung securely across my back, and then up at me.
“So,” Hayes said softly, a small, grateful smile forming on his bruised face. “I guess you won’t be making meatloaf on Tuesdays anymore?”
I looked out at the horizon, feeling the phantom weight of Mason’s hand on my shoulder lift away. I was finally free.
“No, Lieutenant,” I said, stepping toward the waiting helicopter. “The kitchen is officially closed.”
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