The Captain and the Wind

The trap

The mission was a study in controlled tension. Jun’s unit moved through the jagged, snow-clad peaks with a ghost-like silence, their white winter camouflage making them one with the landscape. Jun was at the point, his senses hyper-alert, every nerve ending firing. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe, and the only sounds were the crunch of their snowshoes and the howl of the wind—a wind that felt like an omen.

They reached the designated coordinates, a narrow pass between two sheer rock faces. It was a perfect spot for an ambush. Jun deployed his men with silent hand signals. Min-jae and a sniper rifle took the high ground. Dae-ho and the others were positioned along the ridge, their weapons trained on the kill zone below. They waited. The cold seeped into their bones, a patient enemy.

Jun’s mind, however, was not fully on the mission. It kept drifting to a smoky tea house, to a woman with resilient eyes and raw, chapped hands. Choi Gwan’s men are watching the tea house. The thought was a splinter in his brain. This mission felt wrong. The intelligence had been too precise, the setup too convenient.

His train of thought was shattered by the faint whine of an engine in the distance. A single, rugged vehicle appeared, winding its way through the pass. The defector transport.

Right on schedule.

But Jun’s instincts, the ones that had kept him alive for a decade on the border, screamed in protest. It was too clean. Where was the South Korean extraction team? The elite unit they were supposed to engage?

He raised a clenched fist, the signal to hold position. His men froze.

The vehicle entered the kill zone. Nothing happened.

The silence stretched,thick and heavy.

Then, a new sound. Not from the pass, but from behind them. The distinct, metallic click of a safety being disengaged.

“A noble effort, Captain,” a voice said.

Jun turned slowly. Lieutenant Choi Gwan stood there, flanked by a squad of his Internal Security troops. Their weapons were not pointed at the pass, but at Jun and his men.

It was a trap. And they were the prey.

“Lieutenant,” Jun said, his voice dangerously calm. “This is an active military operation. You are compromising it.”

“No, Captain,” Choi smiled, that thin, cruel smile. “You are the compromise. We have no intelligence about a defector. There is no South Korean team. This was a test of your loyalties. And you have failed.”

“Failed? We followed orders to the letter.”

“Did you?” Choi took a step forward. “Your men are positioned to ambush a fictional enemy. But your heart was never in it, was it? You were thinking of her. The woman from the tea house. You led your men here on a fool’s errand, driven by a distraction. That is a failure of command. That is treason.”

Jun’s mind raced. This was worse than he thought. Choi hadn’t just set him up to fail; he’d set him up to look like a traitor in front of his own unit. He could see the confusion and dawning horror on the faces of Min-jae and Dae-ho.

“The men are not a part of this,” Jun said, his tone shifting from calm to ice. “They followed the orders of their commanding officer. The fault is mine alone.”

“How very heroic,” Choi sneered. “But loyalty is a chain, Captain. And your men are bound to you. They will share your fate.” He gestured to his troops. “Disarm them. All of them. You are all under arrest for conspiracy against the state.”

The world seemed to slow down. Jun saw the ISB troops move forward. He saw the betrayal in his men’s eyes—not toward him, but toward the situation. They were soldiers, patriots, and they were being branded as traitors.

He couldn’t let this happen.

As the first ISB soldier reached for his rifle, Jun moved.

It was a blur of controlled violence. He knocked the rifle aside, drove his elbow into the man’s throat, and spun, using the soldier’s body as a shield as another fired. The shot went wide. Jun drew his sidearm in one fluid motion.

“Stand down!” Choi yelled, his own pistol drawn.

Chaos erupted. Jun’s men, seeing their Captain attacked, hesitated for a split second before their training took over. They didn’t know who the enemy was anymore, but they knew they were under fire.

“Fall back!” Jun roared, firing two suppressing shots toward Choi’s position. “To the secondary rally point! Now!”

It wasn’t a retreat. It was a disintegration. The unit broke into scattered fragments, diving for cover, returning fire at the ISB troops. The pristine snow was churned to mud and spattered with crimson.

Jun provided cover, a relentless, precise force. He dropped two of Choi’s men with clean shots to the leg and shoulder—non-lethal, but incapacitating. He wasn’t going to kill fellow soldiers, even if they were trying to arrest him on false charges.

He saw Min-jae and Dae-ho laying down covering fire for the others to escape. His heart swelled with a painful pride. They were good men. They didn’t deserve this.

A bullet whined past his ear, close enough to feel the heat. He returned fire, forcing Choi to take cover behind a rock.

“You see, Captain!” Choi shouted over the gunfire. “You fire on your own! You are everything I said you were!”

Jun didn’t answer. He had one goal: survival. His own, and his men’s. He provided one last volley of cover, then melted back into the tree line, following the escape path his unit had taken.

He ran, his breath burning in his lungs, the sound of the firefight fading behind him. He had not just failed the mission; he had started a civil war within his own army. He was now a fugitive. A traitor.

And the moment he had feared was here. The net had closed. He was cut off from his command, his authority, his protection.

There was only one place left to go. One person left to protect.

He changed direction, heading not for the rally point, but east, toward the village. Toward the tea house. Toward Yuna.

He was no longer Captain Ryu Jun, the guardian of the border.

He was the N

ighthawk, a man on the run. And his only mission now was to save the wind.