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CSM.
    “Sergeant Major,” he said, his voice level and calm. “Now you be advised: we are not in General Præsidium’s chain of command. We are under this command’s operational control in your AO. But we work for the United States Army Special Forces Command (Airborne), and we get our taskings and mission planning approved by them.”
    Holy shit . Kate blinked a few times into the light.
    Brendan concluded: “You can indicate your understanding of this organizational structure by saying, ‘Yes, sir.’”
    A very heavy beat passed.
    The CSM snapped a salute, said the words, turned, and exited.
    Jake rose and gave Brendan a big smile and a high-five.
    Everyone else on the team clapped.
    * * *
    With this drama concluded, Kate backed away from the door and sat back on the bed. She could still hear everything outside and listened to about fifteen minutes of rapid operational planning – by guys who knew how to do it.
    But they were out there together and she was here by herself, set apart.
    And sitting there alone in the dark, she found herself experiencing a strange rush of claustrophobia. She was suddenly aware of being there in this beleaguered, possibly shrinking bubble of life and light, Camp Lemonnier – while all around them surged the darkness and chaos of Djibouti Town, and the rest of Djibouti out past that, and the entire Horn of Africa, most of it probably equally blacked out and maybe growing sicker and crazier by the minute, and beyond that all the rest of what had been known for centuries as the Dark Continent, all of it strange and new and menacing, and pressing in on her here in this tiny bed, with the bunk above it ten inches from her face.
    She also realized she had no idea what the hell was going on out there.
    But she decided she wasn’t in any big hurry to find out.
    She’d just decided to do as instructed – get some sleep – when her eyes spontaneously developed gigantic lead weights, and a profound soul-tiredness squeezed her body. Within seconds, the darkness of oblivion came rushing up to embrace her. She’d had no idea she was so exhausted, until suddenly she was.
    Maybe getting some rack actually was the most useful thing she could do right now. She might have a lot more to do, and to prove, in the morning – whatever that might bring. Two minutes earlier, she wouldn’t have imagined she could sleep, not after that firefight. But two minutes was a long time. Evidently things around here moved in seconds and minutes, rather than minutes and hours, as they had in Afghanistan.
    The last thing she heard from out in the Team Room was:
    “Wait – how the hell do we actually get out the gate?”
    “I like the odds of our gun trucks versus the gate at 60mph.”
    “True, that. Okay. Let’s run it.”
    And after that, it was all Kate had left in her to get the headphones on her head and the shemagh wrapped around her face, before she fell into sleep like a gallows sandbag dropping.
    And her consciousness shut like a slammed door.

Falling
    Camp Lemonnier - 555 Bunk Room
    Falling.
    She felt herself falling through empty space—
    But her body convulsed as an iron grip seized her bicep and yanked her out of the air. She sat bolt upright, clawing at her face and struggling for breath.
    “Kate! Get up!”
    The world was black and heavy, and she was buried and drowning – until the shemagh got unwound from her face and the two levels of ear-pro pulled clear of her head. It was still dark – except there were short, bright flashes coming in the window from outside.
    And there were new sounds: sirens, shouting, and gunfire. And screams.
    There was also Elijah, shaking her roughly, and shouting at her from one foot away. “Kate! We gotta go! Get up – NOW!”
    “What? What’s happening?” She blinked rapidly, still not convinced of any reality beyond her dream, which still clung to her.
    “The camp’s falling! We gotta go!”
    She just looked at him stupidly for a second in the darkness.