The Knights of the Risen Blade

Golf 77 is the elite, off-the-books unit at the heart of Knights Arise. These are real men and women — former Marines, priests, mechanics, and specialists — called from ordinary life into extraordinary service. Each one has a story of faith tested by fire. Here are their backstories.

Father Michael Cortez (Beacon)

Commander of Golf 77 Hell’s Kitchen Brawler to Hell’s Worst Enemy

Commander of Golf 77

Hell’s Kitchen Brawler to Hell’s Worst Enemy

The streets of Hell’s Kitchen never slept, and neither did Michael Cortez when he was a kid. By day he was just another Puerto Rican boy from a block that had seen better decades—absent father, mother working double shifts at the diner, and a neighborhood where respect came with a bloody nose or worse. He fought because it was the only language the alleys understood. Bruised knuckles and split lips bought him breathing room.

But at night, when the sirens faded, Michael slipped away. He kept it secret. A patient old priest at St. Paul the Apostle had noticed the boy lingering in the sanctuary one rainy afternoon and quietly handed him a confirmation workbook and a few thick books on the saints and Church history. Michael read them by flashlight under his bedcovers, drawn to something he couldn’t name yet—a sense that there was order and purpose beyond the chaos.

He enlisted at eighteen. The Corps took the street brawler and sharpened him into something lethal. Michael leaned all the way in—the “blood and guts” jarhead who volunteered for the hardest billets. Faith became a weakness he left behind on those cracked sidewalks. He decided there was no place for a god in a world where men died screaming for their mothers in the sand.

Then came the deployment that broke him open. A night raid in Iraq. Grenade landed three feet from his boots—dud. Next morning a sniper round grazed his helmet so close it left a burn mark and nothing more. Two miracles in twenty-four hours. That night, alone in his rack, Michael wept for the first time since he was a boy. The faith he had buried came roaring back—raw and furious, the same way he once fought in those alleys.

He left active duty, went to seminary, and returned to Hell’s Kitchen as a parish priest in the roughest stretch of the old neighborhood. His sermons weren’t polished homilies. They were gritty, street-level talks delivered to gang kids, addicts, single mothers, and old-timers who remembered the block in “the old days”. He didn’t sugarcoat sin or suffering—he had lived both. The same fists that once broke jaws now held the chalice and the oil stock.

The church actually grew. Week after week the pews filled. Even the gangs and criminals showed a strange respect: during his Masses and services, no crime happened within a full block of the church doors. They might run the rest of the neighborhood, but they left Father Cortez’s corner alone.

When the call-up came for the GWOT, Michael answered as a Naval Reserve Chaplain assigned to a Marine detachment. He served the most perilous units, carrying the same worn oil stock he had used on the streets.

It was on one of those deployments that the Order first noticed him. He was called to a forward operating base because a soldier who had handled an ancient relic recovered from a suspected insurgent cache was exhibiting symptoms no medic could explain or treat. The young man was convulsing violently, eyes rolled back, speaking in a guttural voice that wasn’t his own. Standard medical protocols had failed completely. The commanding officer sent for the Chaplain.

Michael didn’t hesitate. He used the holy oil he always carried, prayed the rite of exorcism he had studied in secret, and commanded the entity to leave. The soldier went still. The unnatural presence was gone.

A senior officer watched the entire thing from the doorway—an Order operative who had been waiting years for a man who could fight on both planes with equal conviction.

Michael Cortez didn’t know it then, but that night in the desert made him the perfect choice for the new unit: Golf 77.

Master Sergeant Dan Harris (Forge)

Ground Leader of Golf 77

From Allenton Creek to Sentinel for the Kingdom

The town of Allenton, Missouri, sits quiet along the river like it always has—small, steady, the kind of place where everybody knows your name and your daddy’s name and your granddaddy’s before that. Dan Harris grew up in the shadow of Greater Hope Baptist Church, where his father, Pastor Jeremiah Harris, preached every Sunday with the same calm fire he used to baptize his only son in the creek out back when Dan was thirteen. That day the water was cold and the sun was warm, and something settled deep in Dan’s chest that felt like bedrock. Faith wasn’t something he talked about much back then. It was just… there. Like breathing.

College at twenty-one tested that bedrock harder than he ever expected. A dark season—reckless choices, a relationship that went off the rails, the kind of spiral that makes a young man look in the mirror and wonder if he’s still the same boy his father raised. Dan hit bottom hard enough that he thought he’d never climb out. “I figured I’d never be a Christian again,” he told his father years later, voice thick. The shame was real.

He joined the Navy as a Corpsman looking for structure and a way to serve. What he found instead was a second chance.

On deployment an evangelical Chaplain saw something in the quiet Missouri kid stitching up Marines under fire. That Chaplain didn’t preach at him. He just walked beside him, talked straight, and reminded him that grace isn’t earned—it’s received.

One night in the middle of the sand, Dan rededicated his life right there in the chapel tent. When he came home on leave he stood in the creek again, tears streaming down his face while his father wrapped him in a hug that felt like the whole world coming back together.

After the Navy he went to seminary, then stepped into the role he was born for: youth pastor at Greater Hope. He poured everything he had into those kids, the same fire that once saved him now forging young souls who needed someone steady in their corner. Dan wasn’t flashy. He was the guy who showed up with coffee and Scripture and a listening ear, the everyman who made faith feel possible even when life was hard.

Local gangs moved in fast, seeing easy targets in the chaos. When they tried to snatch a couple of vulnerable teens from the camp, Dan didn’t freeze. The old Corpsman instincts kicked in. He organized the group, got the kids to safety, and stood his ground long enough for help to arrive. No heroics, no speeches, just steady, quiet leadership under pressure.

The Order needed men who could lead on the ground, who had already walked through fire and come out with their faith intact. Dan listened, prayed hard that night, and felt that same pull he’d felt in the creek all those years ago.

He said yes.

It was on a mission trip after his Navy days that the Order first noticed him. They were doing post-hurricane relief in the Midwest, teens from Greater Hope helping rebuild, handing out supplies, running a little camp for kids who’d lost everything. Local gangs moved in fast, seeing easy targets in the chaos. When they tried to snatch a couple of vulnerable teens from the camp, Dan didn’t freeze. The old Corpsman instincts kicked in. He organized the group, got the kids to safety, and stood his ground long enough for help to arrive. No heroics, no speeches, just steady, quiet leadership under pressure.

An Order operative, working undercover as a relief worker, watched the whole thing. Later, when the dust settled, the operative pulled Dan aside and laid the truth on him: there was a war bigger than the one Dan had already fought. Human evil and something darker—supernatural—working together. The Order needed men who could lead on the ground, who had already walked through fire and come out with their faith intact. Dan listened, prayed hard that night, and felt that same pull he’d felt in the creek all those years ago.

Master Sergeant Dan Harris didn’t set out to become a modern Templar. He just kept doing what he’d always done—showing up, standing in the gap, and forging something stronger than the darkness trying to tear people apart.

He joined the Navy as a Corpsman looking for structure and a way to serve. What he found instead was a second chance. On deployment an evangelical chaplain saw something in the quiet Missouri kid stitching up Marines under fire. That chaplain didn’t preach at him. He just walked beside him, talked straight, and reminded him that grace isn’t earned—it’s received. One night in the middle of the sand, Dan rededicated his life right there in the chapel tent. When he came home on leave he stood in the creek again, tears streaming down his face while his father wrapped him in a hug that felt like the whole world coming back together.

He said yes.

Sergeant Jack Jackson (Tread)

Ground Assault Specialist / Primary Operator of the GMGM-01 – (“Jim-Jim”)

The streets of Birmingham, Alabama taught Jack Jackson how to fight long before he ever learned how to drive. Born to a single mother who worked two jobs just to keep the lights on, Jack learned early that the world didn’t hand out second chances. By the time he was ten he was already running with the older kids, fists flying in alleyway scraps, earning the kind of reputation that kept trouble at arm’s length — or brought it straight to his door.

But speed was always his escape. At seven years old he won his first national go-kart championship at a track outside Atlanta, the youngest driver ever to stand on that podium. Something about the roar of an engine, the grip of tires on pavement, and the way a machine could be coaxed into doing the impossible clicked deep inside him. If it had gears and wheels, Jack could make it dance.

When he was fifteen, a church youth rally in a borrowed warehouse on the edge of Birmingham changed everything. A guest speaker from a small evangelical church in south Alabama stood up and talked about a God who loved fighters — not because they were perfect, but because He could redeem even the hardest hearts. Jack walked forward that night, tears cutting clean tracks through the dirt on his face, and gave his life to God. The street fighter didn’t disappear overnight, but something new was forged in him: a stubborn, unshakable belief that no matter how dark the road got, you kept moving.

He left the city behind and headed deeper into south Alabama, chasing the only family he had left — an uncle who raced dirt-track cars on the weekends. There, Jack learned real mechanical work. He could tear down and rebuild anything with an engine, and he could make it run faster, stronger, and quieter than the factory ever intended. The military noticed. The Army took one look at his mechanical aptitude and his street-honed grit and put him straight into Special Tactics training.

For the next eight years, Jack became the guy who could get a broken-down Humvee moving again in the middle of a firefight, the guy who could hot-wire an enemy vehicle and turn it against its owners, the guy who always had one phrase on the comms when things went sideways: “Keep it moving!”

It was during a high-risk extraction in a dust-choked valley in Afghanistan that the Order first noticed him. A heavily damaged MRAP was pinned down under heavy fire with wounded aboard. Every conventional rescue attempt failed. Jack ignored protocol, commandeered an abandoned enemy technical truck, welded armor plating on the fly, and drove straight through the kill zone — weaving, accelerating, and somehow keeping the vehicle alive long enough to pull every last soldier to safety. No one should have survived that run. Jack did it twice.

An Order operative embedded with the unit watched the entire operation from a ridgeline. Later, in the quiet of a forward operating base, he sat Jack down and told him the truth: the fight he’d been waging wasn’t only against men with guns. There was something darker at work — something that used human evil as a doorway. The Order needed a driver who could push experimental vehicles to their absolute limit on both planes of existence.

Jack listened, prayed through the night, and gave the same answer he always gave when the mission called: “Keep it moving.”

Sergeant Jack Jackson didn’t set out to become the primary operator of the Knights’ one-of-a-kind GMGM-01 “Jim-Jim.” He just kept doing what he’d always done — taking the wheel, pushing the machine past what anyone thought possible, and refusing to let the darkness win.

From Birmingham street fighter and go-kart champion to the man who makes Jim-Jim roar.

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Sarah “Sal” Bennett (Lift)

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Condor and Striker Pilot

Sarah Bennett grew up in the shadow of Edwards Air Force Base in California, the daughter of a civilian flight-test engineer and a high-school English teacher.

From the time she was old enough to ride her bike to the fence line, she watched jets scream across the desert sky and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. She joined the Air Force at twenty-two, not because anyone in her family had worn the uniform, but because she refused to watch from the ground.

The Air Force quickly discovered she had the rare combination of ice-cold nerves and natural stick-and-rudder skill that fighter pilots are made of. She became one of the first women to qualify for the F-22 Raptor.

The program was still overwhelmingly male, and Sarah made it clear from day one that she wasn’t interested in special treatment or lowered standards. “I fly my own wings,” she told her squadron commander the day she pinned on her wings. She proved it in every training mission and every deployment. She flew combat sorties over the Middle East with the same calm precision she brought to every pre-flight prayer she began saying quietly in the cockpit.

At twenty-five, during a long night of reading everything from Augustine to modern theology while stationed at Nellis, Sarah found herself drawn to the Anglican tradition. The intellectual depth, the beauty of the liturgy, and the quiet insistence that faith and reason could walk together felt like home. She was confirmed in the Episcopal Church a year later and began making it a habit to offer a short prayer of thanksgiving and protection before every flight. Her squadron mates teased her about it at first, until they noticed her jet always seemed to come home.

After thirteen years of service and multiple combat tours, Sarah retired at thirty-five as a captain. She told her commander she was looking for “something that mattered more than just breaking the sound barrier.” She had no idea how literally that prayer would be answered.

The Order approached her six months after she left active duty. An operative who had flown with her on a classified joint mission sat down with her over coffee and laid out the truth: the Order needed someone who could pilot an entirely new class of aircraft — a stealth heavy-lift ornithopter code-named the Condor — and do it with the same unflinching calm she had shown in the F-22. They needed a pilot who understood that the mission would sometimes require fighting on two planes at once.

Sarah listened without interrupting. When the operative finished, she asked only one question: “Does this bird still need prayers before takeoff?”

The operative smiled. “Every single time.”

She said yes the next morning.

Captain Sarah “Sal” Bennett didn’t set out to become the primary aerial operator for Golf 77. She simply kept doing what she had always done — flying her own wings, praying before every mission, and refusing to let the darkness win.

From one of the first female F-22 pilots to the woman who makes the Condor rise.

Staff Sergeant Layla Abadi (Patch)

Layla Abadi grew up in the red dust of the Navajo Nation, the only child of Lutheran medical missionaries who ran a small clinic out of a converted trailer on the edge of Window Rock. From the time she could walk she was handing her mother gauze and her father stethoscopes, learning to treat everything from infected wounds to broken hearts. Evenings were filled with hymns sung in both English and Navajo around a small kerosene lantern, her parents teaching her that healing was never just about the body — it was about restoring the image of God in broken people. one who keeps Golf 77 alive on both planes.

That world ended the night she was sixteen.

A local drug ring — what some on the reservation quietly called the Navajo mafia — had grown tired of her parents’ clinic interfering with their trade. They came in the dark. Layla hid in the supply closet as she heard the shots and her parents’ final prayers. When the silence fell, she crawled out to find them gone. The authorities called it a random act of violence. Layla knew better. Something darker had used human greed as its weapon.

Grief nearly swallowed her. For months she lived with distant relatives, angry at God, angry at the world, angry at herself for surviving. But one night, sitting alone in the desert under a vast star-filled sky, she remembered her mother’s voice quoting Scripture: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” Something shifted. The same faith that had sustained her parents now became her anchor. She decided the best way to honor their memory was to finish what they started.

At seventeen she left the Nation for nursing school in Phoenix. She graduated as a Registered Nurse at twenty-two, top of her class, then did something few expected: she went back.

For the next several years Layla served as a traveling nurse on the reservation, treating everything from diabetes complications to gunshot wounds, often working out of the very same trailer where her parents had been killed. She became known as the quiet, steady hand who showed up no matter how late or how dangerous the call.

An Order operative embedded with the medical team watched her work and saw something rare: a healer who refused to break even when surrounded by darkness.

They approached her weeks later. The offer was simple. The Order needed a medic who could treat both the wounds of the body and understand the deeper wounds of the soul — someone who had already stared evil in the face and chosen to keep serving anyway.

Layla didn’t say yes immediately.

She prayed for three days in the same desert where she had once felt abandoned by God. On the third night she felt the same peace her parents had carried.

She accepted.

Staff Sergeant Layla Abadi didn’t set out to become Golf 77’s primary medical specialist. She simply kept doing what her parents taught her — showing up with healing hands and an unshakeable faith, patching bodies and souls in the middle of the fight.

From the red dust of the Navajo Nation to the one who keeps Golf 77 alive on both planes

At seventeen she left the Nation for nursing school in Phoenix. She graduated as a Registered Nurse at twenty-two, top of her class, then did something few expected: she went back. For the next several years Layla served as a traveling nurse on the reservation, treating everything from diabetes complications to gunshot wounds, often working out of the very same trailer where her parents had been killed. She became known as the quiet, steady hand who showed up no matter how late or how dangerous the call.

The Order first noticed her during a joint medical mission that turned into a rescue operation. A cartel-linked group tried to kidnap several young girls from a remote clinic. While others panicked, Layla stayed calm. She triaged the wounded, shielded children behind overturned tables, and kept everyone alive until help arrived. An Order operative embedded with the medical team watched her work and saw something rare: a healer who refused to break even when surrounded by darkness.

Layla didn’t say yes immediately. She prayed for three days in the same desert where she had once felt abandoned by God. On the third night she felt the same peace her parents had carried. She accepted.

Corporal Elijah “Eli” Martinez (Pulse)

That world ended the night she was sixteen.

Elijah Martinez grew up in the colorful chaos of Miami’s Little Cuba, where the streets hummed with salsa music, the smell of cafecito, and the constant risk of getting caught up in the wrong crowd. By the time he was twelve, Eli had already learned how to run — not just from trouble, but with it. His single mother worked double shifts cleaning offices, and the block became his playground and his battlefield. He was fast with his fists and faster with his mouth, the kind of kid who could talk his way out of a jam or into one, depending on the day.

Everything changed the summer he turned twelve. A local 1st Assembly of God church started a Royal Rangers outpost in a borrowed storefront. Eli only went because they offered free hot dogs and video games after the meetings. What he got instead was a group of men who treated him like he mattered. One evening, during a simple Bible story about David facing Goliath, something broke open inside him. The youth leader — a burly Pentecostal deacon who had once been a gang member himself — prayed with Eli right there on the worn carpet. Eli felt a fire he couldn’t explain, a rush of the Holy Spirit that filled him with the joy of redemption while tears ran down his face. From that night on, the street kid had a new identity: he was filled with Pentecostal fire.

At eighteen, he joined the Marines, looking for structure and a way to honor the God who had pulled him off the streets. The Corps quickly discovered Eli had a natural gift for communications and cyber systems. He could troubleshoot a jammed radio under fire, improvise a secure link with scavenged parts, and keep a squad connected when everything else was falling apart. But he never treated comms as just technical work. Before every mission he would quietly pray over the radios — “Bind them, Lord. Let Your words flow through these wires.” The other Marines teased him at first, until they noticed that when Eli was on the net, the team always seemed to hear what they needed to hear.

It was during a tense night operation in the Pacific that the Order first noticed him. A Marine recon team was pinned down and cut off from support. Eli, serving as the junior comms operator, refused to give up. While bullets cracked overhead, he cobbled together a working link using a damaged satellite phone and an old tactical radio, then calmly walked the team through a complex exfiltration while whispering prayers between transmissions. An Order operative embedded with the unit watched the entire thing and later pulled Eli aside.

The operative didn’t waste words. He told Eli the truth: the war the Marines were fighting had a deeper layer — one that required both technology and fervent prayer. The Order needed a comms specialist who could keep the team connected on the physical battlefield and who understood that spiritual warfare sometimes required binding things that no jammer could touch. Eli listened, prayed through the night in the chapel tent, and gave the same answer he had given when the Royal Rangers leader first asked if he wanted to follow Jesus: “I’m all in.”

Corporal Elijah “Eli” Martinez didn’t set out to become Golf 77’s Pulse — the man whose voice and fingers keep the team’s communications alive in the middle of chaos. He simply kept doing what he had always done since that night in the Little Cuba storefront: running toward the fight with fire in his heart, grit in his hands, and the name of Jesus on his lips.

From the streets of Little Cuba to the voice that keeps Golf 77 connected on both planes.

From the red dust of the Navajo Nation to the one who keeps Golf 77 alive on both planes.

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A senior officer watched the entire thing from the doorway—an Order operative who had been waiting years for a man who could fight on both planes with equal conviction.

Michael Cortez didn’t know it then, but that night in the desert made him the perfect choice for the new unit: GolfThe streets of Birmingham, Alabama taught Jack Jackson how to fight long before he ever learned how to drive. Born to a single mother who worked two jobs just to keep the lights on, Jack learned early that the world didn’t hand out second chances. By the time he was ten he was already running with the older kids, fists flying in alleyway scraps, earning the kind of reputation that kept trouble at arm’s length — or brought it straight to his door.

bbbbBut at night, when the sirens faded, Michael slipped away. He kept it secret. A patient old priest at St. Paul the Apostle had noticed the boy lingering in the sanctuary one rainy afternoon and quietly handed him a confirmation workbook and a few thick books on the saints and Church history. Michael read them by flashlight under his bedcovers, drawn to something he couldn’t name yet—a sense that there was order and purpose beyond the chaos.

A senior officer watched the entire thing from the doorway—an Order operative who had been waiting years for a man who could fight on both planes with equal conviction.

Michael Cortez didn’t know it then, but that night in the desert made him the perfect choice for the new uniThe streets of Birmingham, Alabama taught Jack Jackson how to fight long before he ever learned how to drive. Born to a single mother who worked two jobs just to keep the lights on, Jack learned early that the world didn’t hand out second chances. By the time he was ten he was already running with the older kids, fists flying in alleyway scraps, earning the kind of reputation that kept trouble at arm’s length — or brought it straight to his door.

Commander of Golf 77 Hell’s Kitchen Brawler to Hell’s Worst Enemy

Commander of Golf 77 Hell’s Kitchen Brawler to Hell’s Worst Enemy

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MEET GOLF 77

The Knights of the Risen Blade

Father Michael Cortez (Beacon)

Sergeant Jack Jackson (Tread)

Staff Sergeant Layla Abadi (Patch)