Chapter 4 - The Broken Gavel
By seven o'clock the following morning, the sun was just beginning to cut through the mountain fog over Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs. The air was thin, crisp, and smelled of jet fuel and pine needles—a stark, comforting contrast to the stale luxury of the Sterling Grill.
I stood in the briefing room of Building 101, wearing my flight suit—sage green, functional, adorned with my squadron patches and the cloth rank insignia on my shoulders. On the wall behind me, a massive digital display showed high-resolution telemetry data from a tactical exercise scheduled for later that afternoon.
The door to the briefing room opened, and General Vance walked in, holding two cardboard cups of mess-hall coffee. He handed one to me without a word, stepping up beside me to look at the display.
“How are you feeling, Lauren?” the General asked quietly.
“Clear, sir,” I replied, taking a sip of the bitter black coffee. “Ready for the brief.”
General Vance nodded, leaning his hip against the edge of the conference table. “Your father called my office at six this morning.”
I froze for a second, my eyes remaining fixed on the screen. “I apologize if he caused a disturbance, sir.”
“He didn't cause a disturbance,” Vance said, a faint dry smile touching his eyes. “He tried to use his title to get past my chief of staff. When that failed, he demanded to know why the Air Force had kept your military record from his family for six years. He threatened to file a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Defense.”
I let out a soft sigh, shaking my head. “He thinks everything can be solved with a legal motion.”
“My chief of staff informed him that his name was not listed on your casualty notification form or your security clearance protocol,” Vance continued smoothly. “She told him that as far as the United States Military was concerned, Richard Hayes was a legal stranger to Captain Lauren Hayes.”
The words landed with a quiet, heavy impact. A legal stranger. It was the absolute truth, codified by government paperwork I had signed six years ago when I lay in a hospital bed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
“He sounded... small, Lauren,” Vance added softly. “I think the reality of what he lost hit him somewhere around midnight.”
Before I could answer, the door swung open again. Lieutenant Colonel Dave “Viper” Miller, my squadron commander, stepped inside, holding a tablet.
“Morning, General. Lauren,” Miller said, nodding to us. He looked at me with a mixture of respect and concern. “The news out of Denver travels fast. Half the base is talking about what happened at the restaurant last night.”
“I’d prefer if we kept the focus on today’s sortie, Colonel,” I said firmly.
“Understood,” Miller said, tapping his tablet screen. “We have four A-10s from the 66th Weapons Squadron flying low-altitude tactical routes through the Royal Gorge sector today. You’re leading Flight One.”
“Understood, sir.”
“One more thing,” Miller added, looking toward the window overlooking the flight line. “There’s a car parked near the main gate. A silver Mercedes. Base security says the driver has been standing by the visitor center for two hours asking to speak with you.”
I closed my eyes briefly, feeling a cold knot form in my stomach.
“Tell security to give him a visitor’s pass for the museum lobby if he wants to stay out of the cold,” I said calmly. “But I have a flight plan to execute.”
An hour later, I was standing on the tarmac beneath the massive, rugged nose of an A-10C Thunderbolt II.
The Warthog isn't a pretty aircraft. It doesn't have the sleek, elegant lines of an F-22 Raptor or the terrifying, ghost-like curves of a B-2 Stealth Bomber. It is a flying tank—a heavy, brutal piece of machinery built around a 30mm GAU-8 Avenger rotary cannon capable of firing sixty rounds of depleted uranium per second. It is covered in thick titanium plating, heavy rivets, and dual turbofan engines mounted high on the fuselage to protect them from ground fire.
It is an aircraft built for one purpose: to protect the people on the ground when everything else has failed.
I ran my gloved hand over the nose cone, checking the pitot tubes, inspecting the heavy landing gear, feeling the solid, cold metal beneath my fingers. This was my world. In this cockpit, there were no legal arguments, no false pretenses, no expectations of who I should be. There was only altitude, airspeed, fuel state, and the mission.
As I climbed the yellow crew ladder toward the cockpit, I looked out toward the base perimeter fence half a mile away.
Beyond the barbed wire, standing beside a silver Mercedes in the cold morning light, was a lone figure wearing a long black overcoat. Even from this distance, I could recognize the rigid posture of Richard Hayes.
He was watching me climb into the sky.
May you like
I pulled on my helmet, snapped the oxygen mask over my face, and lowered the heavy plexiglass canopy. The twin engines roared to life behind me with a high-pitched, terrifying whine, vibrating through every bone in my body.
I didn't look back at the fence again. I TAXIED toward the runway, throttled up, and lifted forty thousand pounds of titanium and steel into the cold mountain air.
