Lieutenant Ordered the Homeless Veteran to Clean Hangar — Until Navy Helicopter Called His Call Sign
Chapter 4
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Winters grabbed the radio. "27, this is North Island. Copy your emergency. Stand by for command." She looked around frantically. "Where's Commander Patterson? We need our CSAR lead!"The pilot in the flight suit, Torres, jogged over. "Patterson's off base. Medical appointment in Los Angeles. Won't be back for three hours.""Three hours?" Winters's voice climbed an octave. "Those pilots don't have three hours! Storm's moving at 40 knots! We need someone now!" She turned to Callahan. "Sir, what do we do?"Callahan's face had gone pale. Combat search and rescue coordination wasn't his specialty; it wasn't anyone's specialty on base right now except Patterson, and Patterson was 200 miles away. "Contact regional command. See if they can send someone from—""There's no time," Torres interrupted. "By the time someone flies here from San Clemente or Coronado, those men are dead! We need to launch now. But without a coordinator who knows storm protocols..."He didn't finish the sentence. They all knew what happened to rescue helicopters that went into 15-foot swells without proper coordination: they became additional casualties.Marcus had stopped mopping. The coordinates Winters had read out were burned into his brain:33° 21' North, 120° 45' West. He could see the ocean map in his mind: the currents, the wind patterns this time of year, the approach vectors that would keep helicopters out of each other's rotor wash in high winds. He'd run a hundred missions just like this.But that was when he was Commander Sullivan. That was when people trusted him. Before Helmand Province. Before he killed his own men with bad intelligence.The radio crackled again:"North Island, 27! Pilots are in the water! Losing visual contact due to wave height! We need guidance! Please advise!"Winters looked at Torres. Torres looked at Callahan. Callahan looked at the floor. No one had an answer.Outside, the sun was dropping toward the horizon. Marcus knew what that meant: darkness in two hours. Finding three men in the Pacific Ocean at night with storm conditions was nearly impossible. The window was closing; lives were slipping away. Just like Helmand Province. Just like his brothers. History repeating because he wasn't there to stop it.He wanted to speak, wanted to tell them he could do this. But the words were trapped behind walls of guilt and PTSD and four years of silence. What if he failed again? What if he gave them bad coordinates and more men died?The photo in his backpack burned hotter: three faces, three ghosts, three reasons to stay quiet and keep mopping.But then Corporal Foster said something that changed everything. He was looking at his phone, scrolling frantically."Wait... CSAR storm protocols. There was a guy years ago... some legend who pulled off impossible rescues. He coordinated that mission in Helmand Province where—" He stopped. Looked up. Looked directly at Marcus. "—where six pilots got extracted in 48 hours during active combat. They said it was impossible. They said whoever coordinated it was some kind of tactical genius. Call sign Reaper. Whoever he was, he could do this."