A USMC Captain Asked Her Call Sign As A Joke At The Bar — "REAPER TEN" Made Every Marine Stand Up
Chapter 8
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
He read a single line on his phone in the dome light—a name and a date: Reaper 10 — March 21st, 2019—a note he had written in his own handwriting on the inside cover of the working notebook he had carried in 2019 and had not opened in two years. He closed the phone, looked out the window once at the dark trees passing, set his cover on his knee, brushed the bill once with the back of his hand, and put it back on the seat. Brennan held the limit plus four anyway: Brennan was a careful driver, a careful aide—a man Brewster trusted with a name only three other Marines on Earth had clearance to hear.In the bar, Whitlock had decided in his head that she was a Walmart commando—a civilian who had bought a jacket online and was sitting on a bar stool fronting. He believed the camera would carry him through. He did not see Brim step back; he did not see Donnelly flip the breaker; he did not see Bowers stand at the back booth and start to move toward the aisle; he did not see Rivera's phone hand shake the second time.He wrote in his notebook:2231: Subject continued to refuse identification.2232: Subject appears under the influence.The second sentence was not true. He wrote it anyway because it would help, and because by 2232 he had begun writing for the courtroom in his own head rather than for the bar in front of him.Hourigan lifted the glass. Sip. Set. Sweep: front door, back hallway, kitchen pass.The bar dimmed behind her.The black early hours of March 21st, 2019. Helmand Province, Afghanistan—the slope above a Taliban shadow governor's mountain compound. Two American contractors held in a second-story room. 43 minutes to time on target.Then-Captain Renee P. Hourigan, 25 years old, in plate carrier and Crye uniform, lay flat on a wet rock above the compound and counted the courtyard below: four hostiles by the well, two on the roof, two more in a doorway facing east. The wind was wrong on her right.At her shoulder lay Sergeant First Class Kane H. Westmore, 29 years old, her senior team chief. She had done this with him 41 times; she had not lost him on any of them. She had never told him so. Westmore was the first man in my life who never asked me to prove anything. He just watched and decided. That was the whole gift—he gave it to me on the first day.The internal monologue lifted once; it would lift twice more—and only twice more—in the next 43 minutes."Ma'am: two hostages confirmed, second floor; four hostiles, courtyard. Wind on our right.""Copy, Kane. Time on target: three minutes."The team moved—two columns, quiet feet on wet rock. The breach charge set; the breach charge fired; the compound door went in. Two hostiles down inside 30 seconds with two well-aimed shots from her team.Hourigan took the lead through the courtyard, Westmore on her six. The stack moved exactly as they had drilled the stack in 2017 on a mockup at Stone Bay. She cleared the stairs, Westmore at her shoulder. The door opened at the top of the stairs: empty room. A second door opened off-axis, set into the wall at her two o'clock—the room where the contractors were.