Page 12 of My Forbidden Commander

“Sit,” Wolfe says, without looking up. “Command wants the report from the man who made the spot. That’s you.”

I sit. My pulse goes haywire. I’m used to being called up before brass to be reprimanded. I’m not used to… whatever this is.

The call goes through on the second try. Some major at regional command answers, and Wolfe walks him through it in that stripped-down brief style of his—patrol route, the halt at Hill 604, the observer, the hide, the card. No drama. No adjectives.

“The initial detection came from my rear security element. Specialist Reyes caught optical glint on the back trail at approximately four hundred meters and called the halt. His spot gave us the observer, the observer gave us the hide, and the hide gave us this card. If it weren’t for him, they’d still be counting our patrols, and we’d still be walking a mapped route. Everything we know tonight, we know because of him.”

The handset crackles. The major asks something about the wolf’s head insignia. The conversation moves on to patrol windows and pattern analysis and whether Kestrel needs a drone tasked overhead.

And I sit there screaming inside.

Everything we know tonight, we know because of him. On the record. To command. With my name attached. He didn’t have to say it that way. He could’ve said rear security detected an observer and left it there. He said it like it’s nothing.

But it is something. I can tell because he still hasn’t looked at me. He’s looked at the map, the card, Okafor, the handset, the wall. Everywhere in the hut except the chair I’m sitting in.

Okafor looks at me, though. While Wolfe talks distances and timelines into the handset, the sergeant’s eyes come over to me, and they’ve changed since I arrived. Not friendly. Okafor doesn’t do friendly. It’s reassessment. And then his gaze slides sideways to the Colonel and his expression changes in a way I can’t read and don’t like.

He’s a senior NCO with two tours in the Dustlands. Reading people is half his job.

Then it’s my turn to talk, though I don’t have a whole lot to say. The Colonel covered all of it and then some. I recount the events with a voice that’s about half an octave too high for my liking, and I don’t add anything that hasn’t already been said.

The call ends. Wolfe sets down the handset and finally, finally, looks at me, but it’s just two seconds and then gone.

“Command’s tasking overhead surveillance on the pass. Patrol windows go random effective immediately. No more schedule for them to map.” He straightens the card with one finger. “Good work today, Reyes.”

Just three words delivered like a supply requisition, but my heart feels like it’s going to beat its way out of my chest.

“Best seat in the house, sir,” I say smugly.

Okafor grunts. Wolfe’s jaw clenches, and he turns back to the map.

“Dismissed. All of you. Chow, weapons maintenance, sleep, in that order.”

By 2100, the barracks hut smells like gun oil, boot cleaner, and the plum brandy Delgado swears he doesn’t have. The wood stove is losing its fight with the mountain cold, and Hayes has been building up to something for ten minutes. I can tell because he keeps looking at me and then looking at Spencer and then snickering into the weapon he’s cleaning.

“Okay,” he says finally, ramming a bore brush down his barrel. “I just want to walk through the timeline. Day one: personal weapons qual with the Colonel. Day two: personal PT observation, in which the Colonel corrected every man in this unit except one. Day three: personal patrol, in which our Reyes here⁠—”

“It was a unit patrol,” I point out.

“—in which our Reyes here got personally pulled up the column to go for a romantic ridge walk with the task force commander⁠—”

“To search an enemy hide.”

“—a private ridge walk, just the two of them, while the rest of us lay in the mud growing moss⁠—”

“Doing our jobs,” Delgado says.

“—and then got personally named on a command net like he’d invented the rifle.” Hayes spreads his hands, brush in one, barrel in the other. “I’m just saying. I’ve been in this army six years, and no colonel has ever learned my first name. Reyes has been here four days and Wolfe’s writing him into the history books.”

“He said one sentence,” I mutter.

“He said everything we know tonight, we know because of him.” Hayes delivers it in a gravel-voiced impression of Wolfe that’s honestly not bad. Especially since he heard it secondhand. “Petrillo was there. Petrillo, was it romantic?”

“I was looking at the range card,” Petrillo says diplomatically from his bunk.

“It was accurate,” Spencer says. He doesn’t talk often, so we all shut up to listen to what he has to say. He racks his weapon’s bolt, sets it aside, and looks at me. “You caught glass at four hundred meters in fog from the worst seat in the column. That’s not the Colonel playing favorites. That’s the reason none of us walked into whatever the Wolves were planning.” He goes back to his kit. “Good spot, kid. Saved our asses.”

I blink a few times. I’m getting the warm and fuzzies in a completely different way than the ones good old Colonel Wolfe deploys.