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My sister hurled red wine across my dress uniform and told me I had no place in that ballroom, my father told security to get me out before I humiliated his future son-in-law, and I watched the stain slide over my ribbons, checked the countdown on my watch, and said, “You’re right. I don’t,” because in less than a minute the entire room was going to understand why I had really come.

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support choppers.

Instead, it had overheated. It dropped in and out, the static whining in our earpieces, before it died completely.

A Stryker convoy, suddenly flying blind without air-traffic guidance, attempted to reroute. I remembered the frantic voices over the backup radios, the blinding dust, the sick, visceral punch of silence in my headset when continue reading …

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