“A sub-contractor?” I interrupted.
I didn’t mean to speak. I hadn’t planned to. But Rocky had shifted in the aisle. Feeling the tension in the room, he had crept forward until his snout rested gently on the toe of my worn combat boot. The cold of his nose seeped through the leather.
“Sergeant Hayes, please,” the committee chairman cautioned gently, but his eyes were fixed on the dog’s exposed ribcage. “Let your counsel speak.”
“No, sir,” I said, stepping forward. I felt Earl’s hand briefly touch the back of my belt—a silent, steadying weight. “With respect, Mr. Chairman, I want Mr. Pendelton to look at this dog and say the word ‘protocol’ again.”
Pendelton kept his eyes dead ahead. “We are running a professional logistics network, Sergeant. Mistakes happen in logistics.”
“Logistics,” I repeated, the word tasting like copper on my tongue. “In the Helmand Province, when a bomb went off under our lead Humvee, Rocky didn’t treat me like logistics. He had sharp shrapnel embedded in his flank—the very scar you marked as ‘healed’ in your fraudulent filing three months ago. He dragged me eighty yards through burning diesel and small-arms fire while his own blood pooled in the dirt. He didn’t ask for a voucher. He didn’t submit a invoice. He just stayed until the medevac arrived.”
