The Price of Peace

The heater’s low hum fills the office, pressing against the stillness like a heavy hand. My fingers rest on the edge of the file, the weight of it anchoring me to the desk. Ramirez’s face stares up at me from the photograph clipped to the cover. He looks impossibly young in the image—bright-eyed, his smile easy and confident. That was before Saluma, before the ambush, before three soldiers under his command didn’t make it home.

The air in the room smells faintly of burned coffee and metal, like the remnants of an old battlefield that refuse to fade. The clock on the wall ticks unevenly, its rhythm scraping at my nerves. I’ve read the file so many times that the details blur together. Ramirez split his team. He disobeyed orders. Three men dead. The intelligence assets lost. But beneath the stark facts, I can hear the ghosts. The shouted commands, the staccato crack of gunfire, the panicked calls for medics. I can feel the weight of their deaths, even here, miles away from the battlefield.