A USMC Captain Asked Her Call Sign As A Joke At The Bar — "REAPER TEN" Made Every Marine Stand Up
Chapter 9
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She stepped to the doorway. Westmore read the angle a quarter-second before she did: he hooked an arm under her plate carrier from behind and pulled her back two feet into the empty room.The rocket-propelled grenade came through the courtyard wall and detonated against the inside lintel of the doorway she had been about to enter. The room turned to dust; the wall she had been facing went into the next room; the doorway she had been about to step through stopped being a doorway.She landed on her back; Westmore landed on her. The plate carrier had taken the angle of the blast; she felt the weight come off and on again with each breath she could not yet draw. The dust filled her mouth; the dust filled the corners of her eyes.She felt the wound under her hand before she opened her eyes: the shrapnel had gone through the side seam of his plate carrier, above the right side panel where the carrier did not cover. She found the hole with her fingers, then with her palm. He had three minutes, maybe two. She knew it; he knew it. They did not talk about it."Reaper 10—you good?""I'm good, Kane. Hold on.""Get the contractors, Reaper 10." He said her call sign one more time—quiet, like a benediction.I told him on the slope I would buy him a beer when we got home. He laughed. He said he was buying. He said I was a captain on captain's pay and could not afford it. He was right—he was always right about the pay. He was right about everything that did not matter, and most of what did.Then he went quiet. She closed his eyes with the heel of her hand. She did not cry.She finished the room, cleared the second door, and found the two American contractors zip-tied to a bed frame. She cut the ties with her boot knife, kept her voice flat, and told them to stay behind her, to put a hand on her plate carrier, and not to let go. She brought them down the stairs and put them on the exfil bird. She went back for the four wounded. She carried two hostages and four wounded operators to the exfil bird in 17 minutes; the bird lifted at 0355.She was 25 years old. She had been in command of the team for 51 minutes. She had lost the man who taught her what command meant. She did not sleep on the bird: she sat with Westmore's hand under hers until the bird landed at Bagram and the medics put a blanket over him and rolled him through the doors. She did not let go of the hand until the medics asked her twice, and she let go on the second ask.Six weeks later, Stone Bay, a private ceremony: then-Captain Easton Brewster, her company commander, in dress uniform, with three sets of parents in the front row—Westmore's wife, Westmore's mother, the four families of the wounded who had come home. Brewster pinned the Silver Star to her dress blues. He did not speak from a card; he spoke from memory. He said three sentences; the middle sentence was about Westmore. She did not smile. She has not smiled in a Marine uniform since.