Page 212 of Scars of Fate

Someone else.

Someone I had believed was dead.

“Call sign?” I demanded.

A pause.

Then the man answered.

“Ghost.”

The air left my lungs.

Ghost had served beside me at the observation post eight years ago.

He had supposedly died three months later in an explosion outside Kandahar.

I had carried his casket.

Watched his wife receive a folded flag.

“You’re dead,” I whispered.

“That was the idea.”

“Where are you?”

“Closer than you think.”

Headlights appeared on the service road below.

A dark convoy rounded the bend.

Boone raised his rifle.

“We’ve got company.”

The vehicles stopped.

Doors opened.

Armed men poured out.

I pushed Wynn behind me.

Then the lead vehicle flashed its headlights.

Two short flashes.

One long.

Two short.

An old recognition signal from the observation post.

One only Ghost and I should have known.

The radio crackled again.