At the bottom was a signature.
Major General Thomas Hale.
Retired.
I knew that name.
Not because I had ever met him socially. Not because we had served in the same unit. I knew it because every soldier who worked in certain places knew it. Hale had commanded the Joint Operations Evaluation Group during the years when my unit had been assigned to missions that never appeared on ordinary deployment records.
He had signed the papers that sent us into places with no flags on the maps.
He had signed the papers that brought some of us home.
And he had signed the condolence letter my mother received after my final deployment.
Crawford read the signature again.
Then he looked across the range at me.
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