Page 9 of My Forbidden Commander

“Here’s what you don’t understand,” I say, keeping my voice low. “It was a good correction. Tactically sound. If Okafor had brought it to me over the map, I’d have made the change and thanked him.”

Reyes blinks, visibly thrown. He didn’t expect me to give him the point.

“But you didn’t bring it to me,” I continue. “You wrote it on my board in the dark. You wanted me to find it. You wanted a reaction.” I stop close enough that he has to tip his chin up to hold my gaze. “How’s this one?”

His breath goes shallow. I hear it change. Neither of us moves.

“You’re at rear security,” I tell him.

His jaw tightens. “Sir, the ambush pattern⁠—”

“I know the ambush pattern. I wrote the brief.” I step back, grab my gloves off the table, and pull them on to give my hands a mission. “The order of march did change tonight, Reyes. Just not because of your correction. I’m walking this one. Second position. If the ambush comes, it comes to me.”

Reyes narrows his eyes. A muscle ticks in his cheek as he clenches his jaw.

“You put your best rifle where the fight starts,” he says finally. “Your words. Basically. Sir.”

“My best rifle showed me last night what he does with orders he doesn’t agree with.” I hold his gaze, unblinking. “You’ll cover our six until I know that when I put you somewhere, you stay there. On patrol, in a firefight, anywhere. If I can’t predict where a weapon will point, it’s no use to me. It’s just a hazard I’m carrying around.”

“And if I stay where you put me?”

I let a second pass before answering. “Then we’ll talk about where you belong.”

I can practically see the gears turning behind his eyes, responses being drafted and discarded.

“Yes, sir,” he finally says. No hook in it this time.

I nod. “Step-off in thirty. Dismissed.”

He goes. The door swings shut behind him, and I stand there in the lantern light and tell myself I added my own name to that patrol for tactical reasons.

Yeah. I don’t buy it either.

We step off at 0530 into fog thick enough to choke on.

The Velin approach is an old goat track widened by decades of smugglers and soldiers who all wanted the same thing—to move through these mountains without dying. Okafor takes point, I walk second, and behind me the file stretches back into the fog. Delgado under the heavy kit, Spencer with the gun, Petrillo, Hayes and his radio.

And seventy meters back, at the end of the line, Reyes.

I don’t turn around to look at him. Okafor checks the file every time we halt, and every time, the report comes up the line with the same two words: rear secure. I keep my eyes on the slope ahead and pretend I can’t feel him at my back.

The first time we stop to rest, Hayes drops to a knee beside Delgado and talks to him in a whisper that carries anyway, because it’s too goddamn quiet out here.

“Question. If I die of this rucksack before the enemy gets a shot in, does it count as combat?”

“No,” Delgado answers dryly.

“What does it count as?”

“Natural causes.”

“That’s cold, man. That’s going in the letter to my mother. Your son died of nature.”

“Quiet,” Okafor hisses from up the slope, and Hayes shuts up.

Spencer scans left with the gun. Petrillo passes a water check down the file. Routine. Good routine. I run my eyes over each of them and find nothing to correct, which is the highest compliment I can give.

The track bends north below a ridge line the map calls Hill 604. This is where the Dravosian patrol pattern broke. Until ten days ago, they walked this ridge twice a week, regular as a train schedule. Then twice in three days. Then nothing at all for five.