Chapter 2 - Cassidy Had Lost More Than Her Leg
Eighteen months earlier, Captain Cassidy Monroe had been attached to a logistics-security detachment operating overseas.
It was not glamorous work.
Convoy escorts.
Equipment transfers.
Personnel movements.
Security coordination between an Army support element and civilian contractors.
Cassidy liked it precisely because it was practical.
Keep people moving.
Bring them home.
Then came Mission Red Hollow.
That was not its official name.
Soldiers gave operations nicknames constantly.
Red Hollow was supposed to be a routine overnight transfer of communications equipment from a temporary depot to a larger secured facility.
Cassidy’s detachment was assigned escort duty.
Thirteen personnel.
Three vehicles.
One civilian contractor truck.
They departed at 0210.
At 0347, an explosion struck the lead vehicle.
The convoy broke apart.
Cassidy remembered noise.
Dust.
Someone screaming over the radio.
Then another blast.
She woke hours later in a military hospital.
Her left leg could not be saved below the knee.
Two members of her detachment died.
Four suffered serious injuries.
The physical losses were obvious.
The administrative one appeared weeks later.
Cassidy tried to obtain the mission report.
Her name was not on it.
Neither were the names of the two dead soldiers.
Nor the other four injured personnel.
According to the final roster—
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their detachment had never participated in Red Hollow.
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