Chapter 2 - The Ghost of Fort Bragg
The silence in Trauma Bay 2 was heavy enough to crush bone.
Marlene Keating’s jaw hovered open. Graham Vance stepped back until his shoulders hit the crash cart, his face turning as white as his lab coat. Tessa Monroe stared at Avery, her eyes wide with total bewilderment.
"Colonel?" Marlene stammered, her voice cracking. "She’s... she’s a floor nurse! She’s been cleaning bedpans for three weeks!"
Commander Kane didn't even look at Marlene. "Quiet, civilian."
Avery slowly lowered the stack of insurance forms she was holding, setting them neatly on the stainless-steel counter. She looked at Kane, a weary, bitter smile touching the corner of her lips.
"I retired two years ago, Marcus," Avery said softly. Her voice had changed—no longer soft and subservient, but sharp, quiet, and possessing a terrifying weight. "I handed my commission to the Secretary of Defense. I don't take orders from JSOC anymore."
"This isn't JSOC, Colonel," Kane replied, pulling an encrypted leather binder from his tactical vest and handing it to her. "This is the Forward Surgical Team assigned to Operation Ghost Guardian. General Vance’s convoy was ambushed outside Riga three hours ago. He was hit with a neurotoxin variant we haven't seen since the Gulf War. His medical team is paralyzed. You are the only living surgeon who authored the treatment protocol for classified chemical trauma."
Avery froze. Her eyes flicked up to Kane. "Vance?"
"Yes, ma'am. General Arthur Vance."
Avery closed her eyes for a brief second.
Tessa noticed the sudden tension in Avery’s jaw. "Avery... who is General Vance?"
Avery opened her eyes, looking at Tessa with a mixture of sadness and regret. "He’s my father, Tessa."
Graham Vance gasped, taking another step back. "Arthur Vance... the Chairman of the Armed Services Medical Board? That’s... that’s my uncle."
Avery turned to Graham, her gaze cold and piercing. "Which means, Graham, that while you were complaining about my bedside manner and flexing your authority over a rural ER, you were talking to the former Chief of Special Operations Trauma Medicine for the United States Army. I’ve performed open-heart surgery in the back of a moving Humvee while under mortar fire in Fallujah. Your ego isn't impressive; it’s dangerous."
Graham looked down at the floor, unable to meet her eyes.
Avery turned back to Kane. "Who leaked the transit route in Riga?"
"We don't know yet," Kane admitted grimly. "Which is why we can't trust the regional military hospitals in Europe. We're flying him directly to a black-site medical facility in Maine. But he won't survive the flight across the Atlantic without an active arterial line and specialized plasma filtration. I need you on that bird, Colonel."
Avery looked around the small, cramped trauma bay of Oak Creek Memorial. She looked at the blood on her oversized scrubs, the outdated monitors, the frightened patients. She had come to this tiny valley to hide from the ghosts of dead soldiers, from the blood that never seemed to wash off her hands, and from the cold, ruthless demands of military command.
Then she looked at Tessa Monroe—the young nurse who had trusted her instincts.
"Tessa," Avery said softly.
"Yes, Colonel?" Tessa said reflexively, standing up straight.
"The patient in Bay 2 needs a twenty-gauge chest tube connected to wall suction at minus twenty centimeters of water. Make sure Dr. Vance doesn't force the trocar."
"Yes, ma'am," Tessa said without hesitation.
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Avery reached behind her neck, unfastening the paper scrub cap, allowing her long, ash-brown hair to spill over her shoulders. She stepped up to Commander Kane, her posture straight, her shoulders square.
"Get me my gear, Marcus," Colonel Avery Lennox commanded. "We have a bird to catch."
