Then Ethan laughed softly.
“You can yell at me when we land.”
Dana covered her mouth.
Missile warning.
Jack shouting.
Dana ordering countermeasures.
Then Ethan’s final clear transmission.
“Wraith, take them home. I’ve got your six.”
The recording continued beyond the explosion.
Dana had never remembered that part.
Her own voice was screaming his call sign.
Jack was screaming at her to climb.
And beneath the chaos, the rescue helicopter pilot came over the channel.
“Wraith flight, we are clear. Your guy bought us the corridor. We have six souls aboard.”
Six.
Dana replayed the sentence.
Six people had lived because Ethan turned back.
She cried then.
Not neatly.
Not with the controlled silence she had practiced for two years.
She bent forward until her forehead touched her hands and let grief become larger than guilt.
By morning, the dog tags were still around her neck.
But they felt different.
Not lighter.
Nothing could make them light.
Different.
In the weeks before that drive, Dana also did something she had avoided even longer than the squadron. She called Ethan’s mother.
The number had remained in her phone under a name she could never bring herself to delete. Dana expected voicemail. Instead, a woman answered on the second ring.
“Dana?”
Her knees nearly gave out.
