Chapter 41: The Night of the Long Shadows

That night, the barracks felt like a tomb. I was confined to my cot, an MP stationed at the door. They had taken my radio. They had taken my rifle. For the first time in months, I felt like the "Spotted Witch" again—a freak trapped in a cage.

The door creaked open at 0200. It wasn't the MP. It was Viper.

"Get your boots on, Ghost," he whispered.

"Sergeant First Class? What are you doing?"

"The Captain is being moved to the helipad in twenty minutes," Viper said, his face a mask of grim determination. "Sterling wants him out before the men wake up. He thinks if he removes the head, the body will fall. He’s wrong."

Viper handed me a bag. My radio. My rifle. "Thorne and Jax are already at the perimeter. We aren't letting them take him. And we aren't letting them take you."

"Viper, this is mutiny," I whispered, my hands trembling as I laced my boots. "Real mutiny. We’ll all go to Leavenworth."

Viper looked at me, his eyes reflecting the dim red light of the bay. "I’ve spent twenty years following orders, Ramírez. Most of them were good. This one? This one is rot. And I don’t let rot touch my soldiers."

We moved through the shadows of the base like ghosts. The 3rd Platoon was awake, moving in a silent, coordinated dance they hadn't learned from any manual. This was the bond we had forged in the Martyrs—a loyalty that went deeper than rank.