I Am Calvin Luthor: The God Of War

Chapter 1

Calvin POV

The sky to the north hung heavy and dark, as if the rain wanted to fall. The sun was fading and the clouds were shifting low. The air tasted like the start of trouble.

A thousand soldiers stood in tight formation. Their uniforms were pressed and bright under the lights. We were the California Special Forces, feared across the United States. I am Calvin Luthor, and I am the commander. My face showed nothing. Inside me was only cold quiet and a suffocating command that demanded obedience.

My five-star rank shone on my shoulders. It meant authority. It meant fear. My name had become a warning to terrorists and assassins. Wherever my voice carried, chaos followed. They called me a devil. Some called me Angel Adriel risen from hell. I had faced thousands of battles. No one could challenge me and live to tell it.

Davis West stood near me, as he always did. He was my officer, my friend, my right hand. He wore three stars on his sleeve. He called me his mentor, and I accepted that with a quiet pride. He had been with me since the fights started, and he had earned his place.

Davis cleared his throat and cut through the stillness in my tone. “Are you ready to destroy your enemies now? The arrangement is set, Commander.”

I didn’t answer at once. The world sharpened, then blurred with a memory that hit like a fist. Men in masks had shoved me into a van. I remembered falling, everything going black. I remembered a long, cold stretch of nothing before I staggered back into the present.

“You don’t have to do this, Davis,” I said. The words were steady, but heavy. “My hands are already stained with blood from the war we just fought. I have carried this burden for years. There are debts to settle, and sometimes blood must answer blood.”

Davis pressed on. “Sir, you already defeated the terrorists in Iran. The United States is safer now because of you. This gives us room to recruit and strengthen the California Army.”

“You have traveled the world and struck hard,” he added. “You faced terrorists in many countries. That’s why they planned to kill you. They kidnapped your wife. They almost killed you, Commander.”

“I will always serve you, Commander, with all my heart,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “You are the best officer the California Army ever gave me.”

Davis smiled, small and sharp. “I arranged someone to accompany you to Iraq. We received a tip that your wife was taken there by the terrorists.”

He listed the names like a roll call of professional death. “Five soldiers will go with you: James, Hendrick, Felix, Maximus, and Josh.”

They were the best the unit had to offer. They served the president himself. President Wilson trusted their work. I trusted Davis when he chose them.

James stood thick and solid. Muscle wrapped him like armor. He looked like he could tear through a wall without thinking. Hendrick was tall and lean, a sniper who could vanish into a rooftop and make a single shot count. Felix was skilled in close combat and he had saved Davis once when terrorists trapped him in Gaza. Maximus and Josh handled the network side of war: satellites, drone feeds, camera systems. They could find a target’s heartbeat from space and shut down the world’s eyes if they needed to.

The five of them joined the spy squad and moved toward the jet. We were all going to Iraq. This was to be our last day in the United States before the mission. The barracks buzzed with a fierce kind of silence , the dangerous calm that comes before action.

“Before you leave, Commander,” Davis said, his voice low and proud, “we want to see you off. Your work and your resilience must be honored.”

Thousands of soldiers raised their guns in salute. The sound of gunfire echoed from the barracks like thunder rolling off the mountains. It was ritual and warning wrapped together.

“Salute to Commander Calvin — the king, the god himself,” they shouted in unison.

The chant rolled through the ranks, loud and raw. It was not just respect. It was demand. It was promise. I kept my face blank as they shouted.

Davis snapped to attention and raised his hand to salute me. He looked fearless, as always. “Long live Commander Calvin Luthor,” he said.

He lowered his hand and the spy team formed a tight circle. Their eyes were hard. Every soldier there knew the mission could be a final one. In this line of work, death was a steady companion. Some of us accepted it. Many did not.

I watched them. James adjusted his gear. Hendrick checked his rifle with calm hands. Felix moved through his kit with the confidence of a man who had been in melee a hundred times. Maximus and Josh tapped at a handheld terminal, their screens flashing data and coordinates. The jet waited, engines humming like a great beast ready to leap.

Davis stepped closer to me. “They will get you where you need to go,” he said. “They know how to move. They know how to break into places men hide.”

I touched the strap of my coat and felt the weight of the day settle on my shoulders. Outside, the clouds grew heavier still. The soldiers tightened their grips. The world narrowed to the metal body of the jet, the men assembled, and the name of my wife that burned in a place inside me I kept hidden from most.

“You have given everything for this,” Davis said quietly. “Commander Calvin bring her back.”

I looked at him and saw the steady loyalty I had come to expect. “ I will Bring her back,” I replied. “If they break her, I will break them.”

The men around us finished their last checks. The engines of the jet coughed and then rose to a steady, angry roar. Men climbed in. The captain called the final commands. A gust of wind lifted a dusting of loose paper at the tarmac like white birds fleeing a threat.

James came to my side, squared his shoulders, and said, “Commander, we will bring her back.”

His voice was simple and true. Hendrick added, “We know what to do. We’ve planned for every chance.”

Felix gave a short nod. “We’ll pull the strings and pull her out.”

Maximus and Josh fell silent for a moment, then Josh said, “We’ve got eyes from above. No place will hide for long.”

I took their words like a shield. I did not show the ache that sat at the center of my chest. I had no room for soft things in the open. My life had hardened me.

Davis stepped forward and placed his hand on my shoulder. The gesture was small but it meant the same thing as the roar of the engines: go, fight, and return. He said, “Be careful, Commander.”

I looked at the sky, at the path the plane would take. I thought of the masked men who had put me in a van. I thought of the car crash that sent me into the dark for months. I thought of waking to a world that had not been kind while I lay broken. I thought of the day my wife had been taken the way the world had narrowed to two hands closing around her and then tearing her away.

“I will be careful,” I said. The words tasted like iron.

The jet’s ladder dropped. I watched them climb. The final checks finished. The captain signaled. The jet rolled forward and then leapt into the sky like a beast from the pit. It rose through the clouds, a hard white scar across the gray.

Davis gave his final salute as the fighter jet lifted and vanished into the cloudline. For a moment, the world held its breath.

I stood alone on the tarmac among the thousands of soldiers who had watched us go. Their faces were lit by lights and resolve. The chant still echoed in my ears like a drum. I felt the press of a thousand expectations on my shoulders: bring her back, win, survive. I felt the weight of my name.

I am Calvin Luthor. The name that screams horror and terror. My game has just begun.

The rain started then, thin and cold, but steady. It fell on my coat and mixed with the dust from the runway. The sound of it was small and honest. The soldiers released their salute and began to file back to their places. Life here would go on, even as a small part of me moved across the ocean toward a war I had never wanted but could not refuse.

That night, in the jet, I thought of how the world had shaped me. I thought of the boy who had once hoped for different things. The man I had become was a product of broken promises, of betrayals that burned with a slow, red hunger. They had branded me. They had tried to bury me. Instead I rose — not to ask for mercy, but to take justice.

In the jet flap snapped in the wind. Hendrick sat with me for a while, silent, watching the map spread between us. Small pins marked the places we had already fought. New pins would be added soon. The map smelled faintly of sweat and oil and the gunpowder that had followed us from one fight to the next.

“We owe them a lesson,” I said finally, my voice low and controlled.

Hendricks looked up, the lines around his mouth tightening. “We do,” he agreed. “And we will make them pay for what they did to you — to her.”

I picked up a small photograph from the pocket of my coat. It was of the two of us after the wedding, at night when the world was quiet and we had not yet learned how fragile peace could be. She smiled with a softness that made me remember who I had been before the war rewired my soul. I let the picture rest against my palm for a long time. It warmed my hand in a simple, human way.

The plan was set. The men were chosen. The jet carried them us into the darkness. We would move when the time was right. This mission would not be simple. It would test every part of us, and some would not return. That was the price of the choices we had made.

Hendrick rose and straightened his uniform. He touched the two-star insignia on my shoulder with a reverent thumb. “When they call your name,” he said, “know that we answered.”

I nodded. The rain fell harder, and the smell of it mixed with the iron tang of the base. I folded the photograph and slid it back into my pocket as if putting an order into my body to remember: why I fought, who I fought for.

Outside, the night stretched on. The jet was a pale memory above the clouds. Below, men moved and prepared and lived the dangerous life we had chosen.

Soon, I would follow. Soon, my shadow would fall over the places that had taken from me. I had no mercy left to offer the men who stole my quiet and my wife. Mercy was for the weak. I knew the shape of the path ahead. I would burn and kill anyone who dared touch my family or cause me pain.

The jet lights blurred into a sea of small fires in the rain. The soldiers filed back into their bunks. The base settled into a fierce, watchful quiet. I stood a little while longer, letting the sound of the rain drown out the echo of the engines.

Then I turned and walked toward the pilot seat where plans waited and the next move of the game would be plotted. T

he world had already labeled me. They whispered my name in fear. I would give them more reason to fear.