Dana followed the gesture.
A yellow maintenance cart sat beneath the forward fuselage, abandoned at an angle that made no sense. One access panel on the cart stood open. A tiny red light inside it blinked three times, paused, then blinked again.
The same pattern she had noticed near the military annex.
Her stomach dropped.
“Megan.”
The flight attendant was still standing in the aisle, pale and gripping the seatbacks for balance.
“Yes?”
“Get the captain on the interphone. Tell him there may be an active transmitter outside the aircraft near the forward service area. Tell him the fighters are signaling us, not targeting us.”
Bradley stared at her. “How can you possibly know that?”
Dana ignored him.
Megan did not.
“Ma’am, I need to know who you are before I tell the flight deck to take instructions from a passenger.”
Dana looked at the F-22 again.
She had spent two years refusing the name that came next.
“Major Dana Callahan. United States Air Force. Retired. Former flight lead, First Fighter Wing. Call sign Wraith.”
The old veteran in 14F made a sound like a breath catching.
Bradley simply blinked.
Megan lifted the interphone.
Thirty seconds later the captain’s voice came through the cabin speaker, no longer thin with panic but clipped and deliberate.
“Major Callahan, this is Captain Rourke. Can you come forward?”
Dana closed her eyes.
Every instinct she had spent two years teaching herself to obey said no.
Stay seated.
Stay anonymous.
Let other people be responsible.
Then the dog tags pressed into her palm.
She stood.
Bradley pulled his knees aside without being asked.
The aisle seemed longer than it had during boarding. Passengers watched her pass with the strange silence people gave someone they had suddenly decided was not what she appeared to be. Dana hated it. She had never wanted admiration. Not after the desert. Not after Ethan.
At the cockpit door, Megan keyed her in.
