Chapter 15 - Owen Takes the Stand
Six weeks later, at the court-martial, Owen entered the witness room through a protected corridor. He wore a plain blue shirt and walked with a cane.
When I saw him, I remembered the young man who used to complain that my coffee tasted like burnt tires. I wanted him back. He wasn't coming back. But this man, scarred and frightened, was still Owen.
“I might freeze,” he said.
“Then tell the judge you need a minute,” I answered. “You don't owe anyone a performance.”
On the stand, Owen described the convoy, the attack, and the radio message saying extraction had been canceled. He did not pretend he remembered every minute. He said plainly which details had blurred during captivity.
Hayes approached. “You hid for years. You used false names. You accessed military networks without permission. Why should this panel believe you?”
“Because I'm not asking them to believe everything,” Owen replied. “Check the timestamps. Check the flight logs. Check what the other witnesses saw.”
“Did Sarah Vance abandon you too?”
Owen looked at me. My heart went still.
“No,” he said. “She came down the mountain after the helicopter left. She couldn't carry all of us. She never stopped trying.”
Thorne stared at his hands.
The prosecutor then played a short, authenticated audio fragment from the recovered memory card. Beneath the gunfire came Luke's voice: “Three alive at Point Echo. We are waiting.”
A second voice answered over the evacuation frequency: “Package secured. Proceed without them.”
The voice wasn't clearly identifiable from that fragment alone.
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Then Mae Quinn rose from her seat in the gallery and spoke to a court officer.
“I know who said that,” she whispered. “I was standing right beside him.”
