Operation Puppet Master

Inspired by true events.

June 10, 1982

Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

Brigadier General Raymond P. Calloway was one report away from a goddamn aneurysm.

The buzzing fluorescent lights overhead felt like they were drilling into his skull, a constant, high-pitched whine that grated on his nerves. His desk was a war zone—memos stamped URGENT, reports stacked in precarious towers, intelligence briefings bristling with bad news.

But this report—the one clenched in his fist like an incendiary device—was the worst.

Illiteracy rates among new recruits had reached twenty-five percent.

One in four soldiers could not fully comprehend the written orders placed in front of them.

Calloway inhaled sharply, flipping through the data again. It was worse than expected. Not just numbers—stories. A recruit who mistook disarm for detonate. Another who couldn’t read the warning label on a Claymore mine and damn near killed himself. A soldier who signed an equipment log with an X.

This wasn’t an embarrassment. It was a national security crisis.

A sharp knock at his door.

“Enter,” he barked.