“THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER: THE SECRET WAR OF SARAH GLENN

“”Looks like quite the welcome committee, doesn’t it, boys?””

The voice boomed through the cafeteria at Forward Operating Base Rhino. Lieutenant Reeves, a Tier-1 SEAL with a beard that spoke of a dozen deployments and an ego to match, slammed his tray down. His eyes landed on the only woman in the room not in uniform.

Sarah Glenn sat alone. Khaki trousers, a simple blue button-down, and a dossier that would make the President’s blood run cold. To the elite warriors around her, she looked like a lost tourist or a suburban office worker.

“”Hey, Harvard,”” Reeves shouted, his team erupting in laughter. “”Are you with the State Department? You look a little lost. What’s your rank, if you don’t mind me asking?””

The room went quiet. The SEALS waited for the “”desk-jockey”” to stammer or blush.

Sarah didn’t look up immediately. She thought of her father, Colonel John Glenn—the first American to orbit the Earth. He always said dealing with people was harder than going to space. He was right.

She snapped her folder shut. The sound was like a gunshot.

“”I am Lieutenant Commander Sarah Glenn, Naval Intelligence,”” she stated, sliding her credentials across the table. The mocking grin on Reeves’ face didn’t just fade—it died. “”And I will be briefing your team in thirty minutes on Operation Shadowhawk.””

The cafeteria turned to stone. The name “”Glenn”” carried weight, but it was the jagged, angry scar she revealed on her forearm that silenced the room.

“”I took this two weeks ago,”” she said, her voice ice-cold. “”The Taliban fighter who gave it to me is no longer in a position to hurt anyone. I’ve spent three months mapping every movement in the Korengal. In twelve hours, I’m not just briefing you. I’m going in with you.””

Reeves stared at the scar, then at the woman he’d just insulted. He realized in that moment that the “”spook”” who held their lives in her hands had seen more blood than he had imagined.

But as the mission clock began to tick, Sarah knew the worst was yet to come. There was a leak. An ambush was waiting. And the only way out was up a vertical rock face no man believed could be climbed.

The briefing tent smelled of diesel, sweat, and the cheap coffee that had been reheated since 0400. Sarah stood at the map board in body armor that still had the factory creases, her hair twisted up under a helmet that didn’t quite fit civilian heads. Every operator in Task Force 121 was there: twenty-four of the most lethal men on the planet stared at her like she was a ghost who’d wandered into the wrong afterlife.

Reeves sat front row, arms folded, still tasting the boot he’d put in his mouth at chow. He hadn’t said a word since she’d dropped her credentials.

Sarah didn’t waste time on theatrics. She clicked the projector and the satellite image filled the screen: a walled compound carved into a cliff at 9,800 feet, Korengal Valley.

“Target is Mullah Nasrullah Shirzai. He runs the Haqqani rat-line that’s been chewing up your friends into pieces for six months. We have forty-eight hours before he moves to Pakistan. Window closes forever.”

She clicked again. Red arrows showed patrol patterns, guard posts, the single dirt track in or out.

“Exfil is the problem. Helos can’t get above 9,000 feet at night without lighting up every RPG team from here to Jalalabad. So we go in on foot, twelve klicks over the ridge, hit at 0300. Primary exfil is the track. Secondary,” she clicked one last time, “is straight up this.”

The screen showed a limestone wall that looked like God had taken an axe to the mountain. Eight hundred vertical feet of 5.11 rock, no ledges, iced over in January.

The room erupted in low, disbelieving laughter.

Reeves finally spoke. “Ma’am, with respect, that face has never been climbed. Not by Reinhold Messner, not by anyone. You’re asking us to free-solo a death slab with rifles on our backs after a firefight.”

Sarah met his eyes. “No. I’m asking you to follow me up it. I’ve already done it. Twice. Once to place the beacon you’re looking at right now.”

She pulled off her right glove. The hand was a roadmap of fresh scabs and old scar tissue.

The laughter died.

0337 local time. The compound burned behind them. Nasrullah was zip-tied and hooded in the dirt, two of his lieutenants KIA, one SEAL with a through-and-through in the thigh. So far, so good.

Then the mortar rounds started walking up the valley.

The leak had been real.

Reeves keyed his mic. “All elements, primary exfil is compromised. We are fucked.”

Sarah’s voice came back calm. “Negative. Switch to secondary. Head for the beacon.”

Reeves looked at the cliff now silhouetted against stars and burning tracers. “You’re insane, Glenn.”

“Certified,” she answered. “Move.”

They moved.

The first four hundred feet were steep trail, then scree, then vertical rock. Sarah went up first, no hesitation, finding holds by memory and starlight. She hammered pitons one-handed while the rest of the team roped in below her, rifles slung, moving like a single, very angry centipede.

Halfway up, the thigh-shot SEAL—Petty Officer Ruiz—lost strength. His grip slipped. Twenty feet of air beneath him.

Reeves lunged, caught Ruiz’s wrist, took the full weight. Both men dangled, Reeves’ fingers bleeding on sharp limestone.

Sarah was there in seconds. She looped a sling around Ruiz, clipped him to her own harness, and kept climbing, dragging an extra 190 pounds like it was laundry.

Reeves stared up at her silhouette against the Milky Way. “Jesus Christ, lady.”

“Save it for Sunday,” she grunted. “Climb.”

At the crest, dawn was a thin pink line when the last man rolled over the lip. Below them, Taliban technicals swarmed the burning compound like ants on a dropped sandwich. No one looked down for long.

A lone MH-47, running blacked out, came in low over the ridge, ramp already down. The pilot never technically landed—just hovered six inches off the rock while the team dove aboard.

Reeves collapsed against the bulkhead, chest heaving. Sarah sat across from him, helmet off, hair plastered with sweat and ice. She was smiling, small, tired, real.

He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his vest, offered her one. She took it.

After the bird lifted and banked west, Reeves finally spoke.

“So… daughter of the astronaut, huh?”

Sarah lit the cigarette off the red cabin light, inhaled, exhaled smoke into the rotor wash.

“Dad always said the hardest part wasn’t leaving Earth. It was coming back and dealing with the people who never left.”

Reeves laughed once, short and surprised.

Then he did something no one in the cabin would ever let him forget.

He stood up in the swaying helo, came to attention as best he could, and snapped Sarah Glenn the sharpest salute of his career.

Every man on that bird followed.

Sarah returned it lazily with two fingers, the cigarette still burning between them.

“Stow the hero shit, Lieutenant. Next round at Rhino’s bar is on you.”

Reeves grinned. “Yes, ma’am. And the corner table is yours. Permanently.”

The Chinook thundered into the sunrise, carrying a living legend and twenty-four very humbled killers who would never again judge a book by its lack of beard.

Somewhere over Kunar Province, Sarah Glenn finally closed her eyes.

Mission accomplished. Orbit achieved. Re-entry survivable.

For now.