My first assignment was naval intelligence, Pacific Fleet. I was 22 years old, an ensign operating in a world where the information I handled carried weight that no one discussed in public.
I learned quickly that intelligence work was not glamorous. It was meticulous, painstaking, and often invisible. The best work I did in those early years was work that no one outside my chain of command would ever know about. And I made peace with that.
I was promoted to lieutenant junior grade in 2014 and completed my first overseas deployment in the Western Pacific. I was 24 and already running more responsibility than my rank officially suggested.
By 2016, I was a lieutenant, and the trajectory was becoming clear to the people above me, even if it was not yet clear to anyone else.
That was the year I met Frank Hansen.
October of 2016. A Fleet Week reception in San Diego, hosted at a naval air facility. I was there as part of an intelligence briefing delegation. He was introduced by a mutual colleague, a lieutenant commander at the time, 31 years old, Navy surface warfare, from a family in Greenwich, Connecticut, that had nothing to do with military life.