Chapter 6 - The Atlanta Bound Flight
The dawn air over Jacksonville was cold enough to leave a white crust of frost across the windshield of my rental car.
I sat in the driver's seat with the engine idling, watching the dull amber digits of the dashboard clock shift to 05:15. Beside me, the passenger door clicked open, and the weight of the vehicle shifted as Nico slid into the seat. He was wearing civilian clothes—a dark hoodie and jeans—with his service cap tossed onto the back seat. He looked tired, the shadows under his dark eyes heavy from a night spent arguing, planning, and tearing apart every assumption we had ever shared about our family history.
"I told Vance and Barrett to secure the townhome," Nico said, shutting the door quietly. He didn't look at me; he stared straight ahead through the windshield at the empty parking lot of the motel. "Vance wanted to come with us. He said a retired Master Gunnery Sergeant taking a trip to Atlanta isn't suspicious if we frame it as a joint family visit."
"And what did you tell him?" I asked, keeping my hands resting lightly on the steering wheel.
"I told him no." Nico finally turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a steady intensity that reminded me uncomfortably of our father. "You spent ten years protecting me from your ghosts, Elena. I'm not going to sit in a barracks while you walk into an AFOSI trap alone. If Sterling wants to talk about the Sangin logs, he's going to talk to both of us."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to pull rank, to remind him that he was jeopardizing his career, his chevrons, and his future in the Corps for a mess that belonged exclusively to my past. But as I looked at him—this man who had grown from a bitter, grieving seventeen-year-old into a respected NCO—I realized the argument was already lost. The moment Sterling threatened his promotion record, the boundary between my past life and his present life evaporated permanently.
"If we go to Atlanta," I said quietly, putting the car into drive, "we play this my way. No flying off the handle. No Marine Corps bravado. Sterling isn't an enemy combatant in a valley; he's a desk-bound colonel who hides behind institutional protocol and legal technicalities. We beat him with facts, not muscle."
"Fair enough," Nico muttered, pulling his seatbelt tight across his chest. "So what's the actual play? What did he mean about the flight recorder data being in Savannah?"
"It means someone didn't just misplace a file back in 2013," I said, pulling out of the motel lot and heading toward Route 17. "When my aircraft took that RPG hit outside Sangin, the onboard data module—the one recording telemetry, radio transmissions, and internal cockpit video—was supposedly destroyed in the post-crash fire. That's what I wrote in my after-action report. That's what closed the investigation."
Nico's eyes narrowed. "And it wasn't destroyed?"
"If Sterling is looking for it now, ten years later, it means someone salvaged it before the recovery team arrived," I said, feeling a cold knot twist in my stomach. "And whoever has it has been sitting on it, using it as leverage against the command structure. Sterling thinks I hid it."
"Did you?"
I glanced at him sharply. "If I had a classified flight recorder module in my possession, Nico, do you think I'd be living in a quiet suburb in Georgia driving a mid-size sedan and working a civilian administrative liaison job? I would have been court-martialed and locked away in a federal brig a decade ago."
"Then who took it?"
"That," I said, accelerating onto the highway as the pale Georgia sun began to bleed through the gray horizon, "is what we're going to Atlanta to find out."
The drive to the Jacksonville airport was quiet, save for the hum of the tires against the asphalt and the low murmur of morning traffic. We parked the rental car in the long-term lot, checked in with carry-on bags only, and cleared security without incident. The 06:15 commuter flight to Hartsfield-Jackson was half-empty, mostly business travelers and contractors heading north for the workweek.
We took our seats in row fourteen—me by the window, Nico on the aisle. As the twin jet engines whined to life and pushed the aircraft down the tarmac, I closed my eyes, the familiar vibration of takeoff bringing back the phantom roar of a helicopter rotor blade struggling to maintain lift over a hostile ridge.
It took fifty minutes to cross the state line into Georgia.
When we touched down in Atlanta, the sprawling concrete expanse of the airport felt entirely divorced from the quiet coastal grit of North Carolina. We caught a rideshare outside the terminal and directed the driver toward an unassuming corporate office park off Cheshire Bridge Road—a neutral, glass-and-steel facade that housed several federal defense contracting subsidiaries and, tucked quietly on the third floor, a regional liaison office for Air Force Special Investigations.
The lobby of the building was sterile and quiet, smelling faintly of industrial carpet cleaner and fresh paper. A security guard sat behind a polished mahogany desk, checking badges against a digital manifest.
I walked up to the counter, my ID card already resting between my fingers.
"Major Elena Romano," I said, my voice steady and professional. "Scheduled appointment with Colonel Sterling at 1000."
The guard looked up, scanned my ID, and checked a secondary tablet on his desk. A flicker of recognition—or perhaps mild surprise at seeing someone accompany me—crossed his face as he looked at Nico standing a half-pace behind my right shoulder.
"Visitor badge for your associate, Major," the guard said, pointing to a digital kiosk. "Sign him in, third floor, Room 304."
We rode the elevator in silence. The metallic hum of the cable system felt like a countdown. When the doors slid open on the third floor, we were greeted by white walls, polished linoleum floors, and a single frosted glass door bearing a simple brass plaque: Regional Oversight and Compliance.
I pushed the door open.
Colonel Arthur Sterling sat behind a large, clean oak desk. He was in his late fifties, with iron-gray hair combed straight back, rimless glasses reflecting the fluorescent office lights, and a crisp Air Force service uniform without a single wrinkle. Two civilian aides sat quietly at a side table covered in manila folders and encrypted drives.
May you like
Sterling looked up, took off his glasses, and offered a tight, polite smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"Elena," he said, gesturing to the two empty chairs in front of his desk. "And Sergeant Romano. I'm glad you both made the trip. It saves us the trouble of issuing a formal warrant."
