CHAPTER I – THE PILOT THEY WOULDN’T LET FLY

By 06:30, the Afghan sun was already turning Kandahar Air Base into a griddle. Captain Delaney Thomas stood beside A-10 Thunderbolt II #297, running her hand along its titanium armor like she was checking the pulse of an old warhorse.

She looked almost comically small against the Warthog’s bulk—5’4”, 125 pounds, red hair pulled tight in a regulation bun. To most of the squadron, she still looked like a kid fresh out of the Academy. To Delaney, every rivet and panel on that jet was a promise: If you do your part, I’ll do mine.

She had done her part.
Four hundred simulator hours. Hundreds more in the air. Top 5% in targeting accuracy. She’d memorized maps of the Korengal and every valley like it, traced ridgelines until she could see them with her eyes closed. While others drank at the club, she snuck into the simulator at 3 a.m., flying imaginary close air support runs over imaginary troops who died if she messed up.

But what her file didn’t show was what her commanders chose to focus on:
“Too emotional.”
“Too intense.”
“Prone to overthinking.”

“Thomas, you’re not flying today,” Major Sanderson said, boots crunching the gravel as he approached.

Delaney kept her eyes on her checklist. “Sir, I’m on the rotation. #297 is mission-ready. So am I.”

“Change of plans. Morrisons’ taking the formation with the 23rd. I need experienced hands in the air, not someone who might freeze if things get complicated.”

Her jaw tightened. “Sir, I’ve logged more combat hours than half that formation. My CAS accuracy is—”

Sanderson waved it off. “I need you where your… attention to detail shines. Coordinate maintenance, logistics, the unglamorous stuff that actually keeps this squadron moving.”

Logistics. Again.

In the briefing room, Delaney sat in the back, her notebook already open. Up front, Captain Jake Morrison briefed the day’s intel. Enemy movement was increasing in the Korengal Valley—red icons blooming across the map.

“Their patrol patterns are tightening,” Morrison said. “Could be prep for some kind of offensive.”

Delaney frowned. It didn’t look like prep. She’d been tracking the same patterns in her off-duty hours, drawing lines, connecting dots. What she saw looked like a net closing.

She raised her hand. “Sir, that’s not prep, that’s shaping. They’re building an ambush box. They cut off our mobility, we send rescue forces, and they slam the lid shut. We should—”

“Thomas,” Sanderson cut in, weary and annoyed. “You’re here to track equipment, not rewrite doctrine. Leave tactical analysis to pilots who are actually flying.”

The snickers around her felt like small cuts. Only Captain Lisa Rodriguez threw her a sympathetic glance.

In the hallway afterward, Rodriguez sighed. “You’re not wrong. They just don’t want to hear it from you.”

“What happens if I’m right and we ignore it?”

Rodriguez shrugged, eyes tired. “Then some people die. And the system writes a report about it.”

That night, at 0300, while the rest of the squadron slept, Delaney sat alone in the dark simulator bay. Virtual mountains rose up on the display, crosswinds howling through digital valleys.

“Falcon Base, this is Thunderbolt 7,” her recorded ground voice crackled in her headset. “We’ve got 300-plus friendlies surrounded, danger close. We need precision CAS or we’re done.”

Pass after pass, she threaded her simulated A-10 between SAM threats, putting rounds within meters of friendlies. She wasn’t training for the missions they gave her.

She was training for the one they’d refuse to let her fly—until there was no choice.

---

CHAPTER II – 381 NAMES ON THE EDGE OF OBLIVION

The emergency klaxon sounded at 13:47 on an otherwise quiet Thursday. The base shifted instantly from routine to razor-edge. Delaney dropped her clipboard in Supply C and sprinted to the operations center.

Inside, the air hummed with controlled panic. Radios crackled. Screens updated. Every second dragged lives closer to zero.

“Sir, SEAL Team 7 and attached elements are pinned in the Korengal Valley,” Senior Airman Peterson reported. “Initial estimate: 381 U.S. personnel surrounded by roughly 800 hostiles.”

Three hundred eighty-one.

The number punched straight through Delaney’s chest. This wasn’t a small team. It was a task force. The exact size she’d built into her nightmare simulator scenarios.

Morrison zoomed in on the satellite feed. “They’re in a basin. Enemy on three ridgelines, overlapping fields of fire. Heavy machine guns, RPGs, confirmed SAM sites. No exfil routes.”

“Helos?” Sanderson asked, though he already knew.

“Negative,” Chief Williams said. “We already lost a Chinook trying to punch in. SAM coverage is total. No bird gets close without eating a missile.”

“What do we have in the air?” Sanderson pressed.

“Four F-16s inbound, ETA 25 minutes. They can do precision-guided strikes,” Morrison said. “But with enemy that close to friendlies, they can’t drop under 100 meters. Too much fratricide risk.”

Delaney stepped forward. “Sir, the F-16s can’t do what needs doing. The A-10s can. I know that valley. #297 is fueled and armed. I can be wheels up in ten.”

Sanderson turned on her like she’d spoken blasphemy. “Thomas, you’re not on combat status for this operation.”

“They’re out of time, sir. This is exactly what the Warthog is built for. Danger-close CAS in bad terrain.”

“This mission requires seasoned combat pilots,” Morrison cut in. “Not someone whose most intense engagement is yelling at a maintenance report.”

Peterson looked up, pale. “Sir… SEAL Team 7 says they can hold maybe an hour. Ammo’s low. They’re already taking heavy casualties.”

An hour. Maybe.

Delaney scanned the tactical display. She saw more than icons. She saw the lines of fire, the blind spots, that one narrow seam where precise cannon runs could chew a corridor out of the kill zone.

“Sir, with respect,” she said, voice steady despite the blood roaring in her ears, “Walker is deployed. Henderson is grounded. Kowalski’s bird is down. Who else on this base has more CAS hours in this terrain than I do—even if they’re only in the sim?”

Sanderson’s jaw clenched. “We are not gambling 381 lives on a pilot who’s never flown CAS under fire.”

“So we’re just… what? Accepting 381 folded flags?”

“This conversation is over, Captain,” Lieutenant Colonel Hayes snapped. “You will return to your assigned duties.”

The sound in the room blurred for a moment—the radio chatter, the clacking keys, the clipped command voices. Delaney heard none of it. What she saw were names that would soon be etched on stones and read in a flat, official tone.

Thirty minutes later, the F-16 flight lead called in.

“Kandahar, this is Viper 1. We have eyes on. Confirm: most hostile positions are within 50 meters of friendlies. We cannot safely engage primary threats.”

Translated: We can’t touch the ones killing them.

Peterson’s voice shook. “Sir, SEAL Team 7 says they’re down to maybe 30 minutes of ammo. They’re asking for anything, anything at all.”

Delaney stepped back from the operations center door and made a choice.

She was done asking.

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CHAPTER III – THUNDERBOLT 7

Ten minutes later, A-10 #297 snarled down the runway and clawed into the sky.

Delaney’s hands were steady on the stick, but the weight of what she’d just done sat heavy in her chest. Unauthorized takeoff. Unauthorized combat mission. Career suicide, if she lived long enough to stand before a tribunal.

She’d left a note on her bunk, one line written in tight, controlled letters:

If you’re reading this, it means I chose to act.

At 15,000 feet, she keyed into the SEAL net. “Trident Actual, this is Thunderbolt 7, A-10 out of Kandahar, inbound for close air support.”

A pause. Then a voice, strained but sharp. “Thunderbolt 7, confirm you’re cleared for danger-close. We’ve got enemy inside 50 meters.”

“Trident Actual, I’m cleared to keep you alive. Mark your position with IR. Paint me your worst problems.”

Below, the Korengal Valley unfolded—just like the maps, just like the sim. Only this time, the muzzle flashes weren’t pixels.

“Multiple PKM nests on the east ridge, overwatching our position,” the SEAL leader called. “If you don’t take them, we’re done.”

“Copy. In hot.”

Delaney rolled #297 into a near-vertical dive. The ground rushed up, the ridgeline growing large in the HUD. Her threat warning shrieked as enemy gunners tracked her. She ignored it.

Her thumb found the trigger. The GAU-8 cannon roared, the whole airframe shuddering as thirty-millimeter rounds stitched the ridgeline twenty-five meters from the American IR strobes.

The PKM nest vanished in a shower of rock and dust.

“Thunderbolt 7, perfect hits!” Trident Actual yelled. “You just took out the east guns! Give me the same on the north slope!”

She pulled up hard, banked, came around again. Another dive. Another screaming run. More shrieking warnings. More controlled bursts landing exactly where they had to.

In the command center at Kandahar, Sanderson stared at the feeds. Viper 1’s voice confirmed what the radar already showed. “Sir, that A-10 is putting rounds inside 25 meters of friendlies. I’ve never seen flying like this. It’s insane… and it’s working.”

“Thunderbolt 7, this is Kandahar command,” Sanderson’s voice finally broke through on her unused frequency. “You are ordered to abort and RTB immediately.”

Delaney flipped that channel to mute.

“Trident Actual, west ridge, grid marked. You ready?”

“Send it.”

She sent it.

Pass after pass, she carved an exit route out of the valley. Enemy fire thinned. SEAL comms shifted from panicked contact reports to terse, controlled movement calls.

“Thunderbolt 7, this is Trident Actual. We’re moving. You’ve opened us a door. Keep it open.”

“Roger. I’m not going anywhere.”

For forty-three minutes, she danced on the edge of physics and probability, flying her Warthog like the machine had been built specifically for her hands. She destroyed SAMs at the edge of their launch envelope. Shredded machine gun nests clawing for her people. Put steel exactly where the enemy needed it least, and freedom exactly where the SEALs needed it most.

When #297 finally touched back down at Kandahar, Delaney was sure she was landing into handcuffs.

Instead, she saw a wall of uniforms along the taxiway. Applause rolled over the tarmac like thunder.

Major Sanderson waited at the base of her ladder, face carved from stone.

“Captain Thomas,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “you stole an aircraft, violated direct orders, and conducted an unauthorized solo combat mission.”

“Yes, sir.” She met his eyes. “I accept full—”

“You also brought home 381 Americans command had already written off as unrecoverable,” he finished. “SEAL Team 7 reports zero friendly casualties during exfil.”

He paused, then added, quieter, “They’re calling you a legend on every net.”

Six months later, in a different briefing room, Delaney stood at the front instead of the back. The patch on her shoulder now read: CAS Development Program.

“The A-10 hasn’t changed,” she told the room full of combat pilots. “Our understanding of what it can do has.”

On the screen behind her, diagrams and footage of that day in the Korengal played back in slow motion—danger-close runs, reanalyzed and rewritten into doctrine.

“Sometimes,” she said, “leadership isn’t about following the rules that keep everyone comfortable. It’s about knowing which ones you have to break so others get to come home.”

They’d called it insubordination.

History called it courage.