Part 1:

I never thought a simple sound could bring me to my knees in the middle of a grocery store, but trauma doesn’t care about your schedule.

It was a Tuesday afternoon in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The kind of day that feels heavy with humidity, the sky a bruised purple threatening rain. I was standing in the checkout line, staring blankly at a magazine rack, trying to remember if I needed almond milk or regular. Just a normal person doing a normal thing. That’s the mask I wear now. Staff Sergeant Noel Hart, the quiet neighbor, the woman who jogs at dawn. They don’t see the rest. They don’t see the ghosts that stand just behind my shoulder, waiting for a quiet moment to lean in and whisper.

Four years in Special Operations teaches you how to compartmentalize. You learn to lock the fear, the adrenaline, and the horror into little metal boxes in your mind. You weld them shut and bury them deep so you can function. So you can smile at the cashier. So you can sleep without screaming. But sometimes, the locks rust. Sometimes, the boxes break open.

It started with a low thrumming sound. Distant at first, then growing louder, vibrating against the glass windows of the store. Thump. Thump. Thump.

A medical transport helicopter from the nearby base, flying low.

To everyone else in the line, it was just background noise. To me, it was a time machine.

My breath hitched in my throat. The grocery store dissolved. The fluorescent lights flickered and died, replaced by the dim red glow of a cargo hold. The smell of fresh bread vanished, choked out by the stench of burning jet fuel, sweat, and ozone. The cool air conditioning turned into the suffocating, humid heat of a jungle halfway across the world.

I wasn’t in Fayetteville anymore. I was strapped into the back of a UH-60 Blackhawk, hurtling over a hostile green ocean at 140 knots.

My hands, which had been holding a shopping basket, were suddenly gloved and gripping the cold steel of my HK416 rifle. I could feel the familiar weight of the weapon, tracing its lines like I was holding the hand of an old friend. It was the only thing that made sense in the chaos.

“90 seconds!” The Crew Chief’s voice roared above the thunder of the blades. I could see him clearly, his face tight, his hand signaling the time.

The vibration rattled my teeth. Beside me, my team was locked in. Major Dean Ror, our leader, sat like a stone statue, his eyes scanning the nothingness. Ethan “Tech” Hail, Nora Vega, Cal “Doc” Walker. We were a single organism, breathing in sync, waiting for the drop.

Below us stretched the jungle—a maze of triple-canopy forest that looked like a dark, wet bruise on the earth. Somewhere down there, deep in territory controlled by people who wanted us d*ad, a CIA officer named Adam Mercer was running for his life. He was carrying intel that could shift the entire war, and every fighter in a fifty-mile radius was hunting him.

Our brief had been brutally simple: Fast rope insertion. Locate the operative. Recover the data. Extract before nightfall.

Five operators. 70 kilometers of enemy ground. Four hours of daylight.

It looked simple on paper. In practice, it was a s*icide mission. We all knew it. We just didn’t say it.

“30 seconds!” the next shout came.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm that threatened to drown out the rotors. This was the moment. The threshold. Adrenaline washed away the fear, leaving behind a cold, sharp clarity. I stood up, moving toward the open door where the wind screamed, tearing at my uniform. The fast rope coiled on the floor like a sleeping serpent, waiting to deliver us into the fire.

I looked at Major Ror. He met my eyes and gave a single, firm nod. No words were needed. We had survived enough hells together to speak in silence.

The Blackhawk flared violently, the nose pitching up as the pilot fought to hold a hover over a tiny clearing that looked more like a trap than a landing zone. Through my night vision goggles, the world was a wash of green phosphor and shadows.

“Go, go, go!” the Crew Chief yelled, slapping the side of the door.

I didn’t hesitate. hesitation gets you killed. I grabbed the thick rope, the coarse fibers biting into my gloves. I took a breath of the heavy, humid air, and I stepped out into the void.

The world blurred upward. I was sliding through 80 feet of open air, suspended between the safety of the sky and the danger of the ground. My boots slammed into the mud, and I dropped into a crouch, weapon up, scanning the tree line.

The jungle was silent. Too silent.

And that’s when I knew. We weren’t just dropping into a rescue mission. We were dropping into something much, much worse.

Part 2

The silence that follows a helicopter extraction is the heaviest silence on earth.

One second, your world is a deafening hurricane of rotor wash, screaming turbines, and the shouting of the Crew Chief. The next, the bird banks away, the noise fades into a rhythmic thump-thump-thump in the distance, and then… nothing.

Just the jungle. And us.

I stood up from my crouch in the mud, the wet earth instantly soaking through the knees of my combat pants. The humidity hit me like a physical blow—a thick, suffocating blanket of heat that smelled of rotting vegetation, wet soil, and something ancient. It was the smell of a place that didn’t want us here.

“Rally point Alpha,” Major Dean Ror’s voice ghosted through our encrypted earpieces. He sounded calm. He always sounded calm. It was the kind of voice that lowered your heart rate just by hearing it. “Standard dispersion. Hart, you’re on point. Vega, rear security. Move.”

I took a breath, tasting the metallic tang of adrenaline that was still flooding my system, and shifted the weight of my HK416. This rifle was an extension of my body. I knew every scratch on the receiver, every ounces of its weight. I’d cleaned it until my fingers bled, zeroed it until I could hit a quarter at a hundred yards. In a world where everything was uncertain, my rifle was the only truth I had.

I moved forward into the green.

Moving through triple-canopy jungle isn’t like hiking. It’s a fight. Every step is a negotiation with the terrain. The vegetation was a tangled wall of vines, massive ferns, and trees with trunks so wide you couldn’t see around them. The canopy above was so dense that it blotted out the sun, turning the mid-afternoon light into a perpetual, gloomy twilight. It messed with your internal clock. It messed with your depth perception.

We moved in a tactical column, seven meters between each operator. Enough space so that a single grenade wouldn’t take us all out, but close enough to support each other instantly.

My eyes swept the sector ahead—left to right, right to left, near to far. Scan. Step. Pause. Scan.

My brain was running a constant threat assessment loop. That shadow behind the mahogany tree—is it a man or a stump? That snap of a twig—was it an animal or a boot? The jungle is never truly quiet; it’s a cacophony of insects, birds, and wind. The trick is listening for the wrong sounds. The silence of a bird when it sees a predator. The rhythmic swishing of grass that isn’t caused by the wind.

“Tech, status on our package?” Ror’s voice broke the silence in my ear, barely a whisper.

Behind me, Ethan “Tech” Hail was hunched over his receiver, tracking the encrypted beacon that our target, CIA officer Adam Mercer, was supposed to be carrying.

“Signal active,” Tech replied, his voice tight. “Bearing northeast, 1.8 kilometers. But stationary. Same ping for thirty minutes.”

“Could be hiding,” Nora Vega whispered from the rear. “Going to ground to let a patrol pass.”

“Or worse,” I thought, but I didn’t say it.

“Or setting up an ambush,” I said instead, my voice flat. Paranoia isn’t a flaw in our line of work; it’s a survival mechanism. You assume the worst, and you plan for it.

“We won’t know until we get eyes on him,” Ror said. “Keep pushing.”

We advanced deeper. The terrain fought us. Roots hidden under layers of wet leaves tried to twist our ankles. Wait-a-minute vines with thorns the size of shark teeth snagged our gear. The mud sucked at our boots with a greedy squelch every time we lifted a foot. We were already drenched in sweat, our uniforms sticking to our skin, eyes stinging from the salt dripping off our foreheads.

But we didn’t slow down. We couldn’t.

Somewhere ahead of us, Adam Mercer was alone. I tried to imagine what he was going through. He wasn’t an operator like us. He was a CIA asset, trained in tradecraft and espionage, not jungle warfare. He was alone in 70 kilometers of enemy territory, carrying a laptop that contained the names of every undercover operative in the region. If the insurgents caught him, they wouldn’t just k*ll him. They would take him apart, piece by piece, until he gave them the password. And then they would use that laptop to dismantle our entire intelligence network.

We were racing against time, and time was winning.

I was focused on a cluster of ferns about twenty meters ahead when I saw it. It was subtle—just a flash of color that didn’t belong in nature’s palette.

“Hold,” I whispered, raising my left fist.

The team froze instantly. It was like someone had hit the pause button on the world. Behind me, I felt the others drop to one knee, weapons coming up to cover their sectors.

I eased forward, moving heel-to-toe to minimize sound. My weapon led the way, the muzzle seeking the threat.

There, snagged on a jagged branch at waist height, was a scrap of fabric.

I reached out with a gloved hand and gently unhooked it. It was light tan cotton. Khaki. The kind of material you’d find on a civilian button-down shirt, not a military uniform. It wasn’t weathered or faded. It was fresh. It still smelled faintly of laundry detergent, a stark, chemical scent that clashed with the earthy rot of the jungle.

I turned it over. There were dark, crusted stains on the edges.

“Eyes on that,” Ror’s voice came through.

“Fabric on vegetation,” I reported, keeping my voice low. “Civilian material. Fresh.” I brought it closer to my NVGs. “Blood. Not a lot, but enough to mean he’s hurt.”

“Trail?”

I scanned the ground. Now that I knew what to look for, the signs were there. A crushed fern. A scuff mark in the moss where a boot had slipped. A broken twig hanging by a thread of bark.

“Trail continues northeast,” I said. “He’s moving fast. Careless. He’s not worrying about noise discipline anymore. He’s running scared.”

“Or he’s being chased,” Doc Walker chimed in.

We followed the trail. It was easy to follow, which terrified me. Mercer was crashing through the brush, leaving a highway of disturbed vegetation that anyone could see. If we could track him this easily, so could the enemy.

Ten minutes later, the dynamic changed.

“Movement,” Vega’s voice cracked over the comms, sharp and urgent. “Rear, 7 o’clock. 60 meters. Single individual moving parallel to our route.”

We froze. My heart slammed against my ribs. I pivoted slowly, sinking lower into the undergrowth until the mud soaked my chest. I brought my optic up, dialing the magnification.

Through the scope, the jungle was a wall of blurred green, but then I saw him.

A lone figure. He was moving carefully, stepping high over roots, his head on a swivel. He wore olive drab fatigues that were mismatched and stained. In his hands, he carried an AK-pattern rifle at the low ready.

Insurgent.

“I’ve got visual,” I whispered. “Single hostile. AK-47. Moving west to east on a search pattern.”

My crosshairs settled on his chest. It was a perfect shot. At this range, with the HK416, I couldn’t miss. I could end him before his brain even registered the sound of the shot. My finger rested on the trigger guard, hovering millimeters from the curved metal of the trigger.

Just say the word, Major.

“Hold fire,” Ror ordered. “Nobody fires unless we are compromised. We do not announce our position.”

It was the right call, but it was the hardest one to follow. Every instinct in my body screamed to neutralize the threat. That man was hunting us. He was hunting Mercer. If we let him go, he might find the trail. He might radio his friends.

But if I fired, the sound would echo for miles. Every fighter in the valley would know exactly where we were. We would go from being ghosts to being targets.

So we watched.

I watched him through my scope, my breathing shallow and controlled. I watched him pause and look at a broken branch. I watched him wipe sweat from his forehead. I watched him look directly at the patch of ferns where I was hiding.

For a second, I thought he saw me. I tightened my grip on the rifle, taking up the slack on the trigger. Come on. Don’t make me do it.

He stared for a heartbeat longer, then turned his head and kept moving. He vanished into the dense foliage to the east.

“Clear,” Vega reported after thirty agonizing seconds.

“Where there’s one, there’s more,” Doc said.

“They’re running search grids,” Ror assessed. “They know Mercer is close. We need to move faster than they can sweep.”

We picked up the pace. Stealth was still priority number one, but speed was now a close second. We moved through the jungle with a grim determination. The signs of Mercer’s flight were getting worse. We found a place where he had fallen hard, sliding down a muddy embankment. There were deep claw marks in the mud where he had frantically scrambled to get back up.

Then, we found more blood. Not just a smear this time, but drops spattered on the leaves. He was bleeding actively now.

“Tech, beacon?” Ror asked.

“Stronger,” Tech replied. “We’re within 400 meters. Signal is still stationary.”

The jungle seemed to close in around us. The trees grew tighter, the canopy lower. The air felt charged, like the atmosphere before a lightning strike.

Then, I heard it.

Voices.

Human voices. Not the whispers of my team, but the guttural, unconcerned speech of men who feel safe. They were speaking a local dialect, loud and agitated.

I snapped my fist up. The team locked up instantly.

“Contact front,” I breathed. “Voices. Multiple speakers. 75 meters. Straight ahead.”

“Get off the trail,” Ror commanded. “Concealment positions. Silent on my mark.”

We melted into the jungle. I slid behind the massive root system of a fig tree, pressing my body into the hollow. I pulled leaves and vines over my helmet and shoulders, breaking up my silhouette until I was just another lumpy shadow on the forest floor.

I slowly eased my rifle barrel over the root, peering through the vegetation.

Ahead of us, the jungle opened up into a small, natural clearing. The light was brighter there, filtering down in shafts through a break in the canopy.

And there he was.

My stomach dropped.

In the center of the clearing, bound to a rough-barked tree with thick plastic zip-ties, sat a man. He matched the description perfectly. Late thirties, athletic build, wearing a torn khaki shirt and cargo pants.

It was Adam Mercer.

But he wasn’t just sitting there. He was slumped forward, his chin on his chest. His face was a mask of bruises, one eye swollen shut, blood trickling from a split lip. His shirt was ripped open, revealing dark purple bruising on his ribs.

Around him stood eight men.

They were heavily armed. AK-47s, SKS rifles, and—my blood ran cold—one man set up behind a PKM machine gun on a bipod, facing the trail we had just come from. They were waiting.

They weren’t just holding him; they were interrogating him. One of the insurgents, a tall man with a red scarf wrapped around his head, leaned in and shouted something at Mercer, then struck him across the face with the back of his hand. Mercer’s head snapped back, but he didn’t make a sound.

“Visual on the package,” I whispered, my voice barely audible even to myself. “He’s captured. Restrained. Appears beaten. Eight hostiles. One crew-served weapon—PKM.”

The silence on the comms was heavy. We had expected to find him hiding in a hole, scared but free. We hadn’t expected a hostage situation.

“Tech, confirm ID,” Ror said.

“Confirmed,” Tech replied. “That’s Mercer. And… I see the backpack. It’s on the ground near the PKM gunner.”

“The laptop,” Ror said.

We had a choice to make. A terrible, impossible choice.

Standard procedure for a compromised team in this situation is usually to observe and report. If the asset is captured, the mission changes. A rescue operation against a superior force, dug in and waiting, is tactical s*icide. The smart play—the safe play—was to call in air support or wait for a larger force.

But we didn’t have air support on standby. We didn’t have a larger force. And looking at the way that leader was unholstering a pistol and pressing it to Mercer’s temple, we didn’t have time.

If we waited, Mercer died. If we left, the intel was lost.

“We’re not leaving him,” Ror said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.

“We do this smart,” he continued, his voice shifting into pure command mode. “Sweep for additional forces. Identify firing positions. Plan the assault. We get one chance at this. If we miss, or if they get a radio call out, we’re dead.”

“I’ll take the PKM gunner,” Nora Vega offered immediately. “First shot. I drop him before he can lay down grazing fire.”

“Good,” Ror said. “Hart?”

“I’ve got the leader,” I said, locking my crosshairs on the man with the red scarf. He was pacing now, waving his pistol. “I take leadership early. Disrupt their command structure.”

“Doc, you’re on Mercer,” Ror ordered. “The second the shooting starts, you sprint to him. Cut those bindings. Check him. Get him moving. Tech, you’re with me. We hit center mass. Maximum violence of action. We overwhelm them before they realize there are only five of us.”

“Copy,” we all chorused.

We spent the next five minutes in a state of hyper-focus. We crawled, inch by inch, into better positions. I moved to the right, finding a firing lane through a gap in the trees that gave me a clear view of the leader’s head. Vega moved left, flanking the machine gunner.

The waiting was the hardest part. Watching them hit him again. Watching the leader scream in his face. My finger was on the trigger, the metal warm against my skin. I controlled my breathing. Inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for four.

My heart was pounding, a heavy drum in my ears, but my hands were steady. This is what we trained for. This is what separated us from everyone else. The ability to stand on the edge of the abyss and not blink.

I looked at the leader through my optic. I could see the sweat on his face. I could see the anger in his eyes. He had no idea that he had five seconds left to live.

“All operators,” Ror’s voice was ice cold. “Standby.”

The jungle held its breath. The insects seemed to stop buzzing. The wind died down.

“On my mark,” Ror whispered.

I took a half-breath and held it. My reticle was steady on the center of the leader’s chest.

“3…”

I tightened my grip.

“2…”

I focused on the front sight.

“1…”

“Execute.”

My rifle cracked against my shoulder.

The double tap was almost simultaneous—pop-pop. Two rounds left my barrel at 3,000 feet per second. Through the scope, I saw the leader jerk violently as the rounds impacted his chest. He crumpled to the ground instantly, the pistol falling from his hand.

To my left, Vega’s rifle barked once—a deeper, sharper crack. The PKM gunner’s head snapped back, and he slumped over his weapon, dead before he hit the dirt.

Then, the world exploded.

“Move! Move! Move!” Ror screamed.

We didn’t just fire; we unleashed hell. Ror and Tech opened up with fully automatic fire, sweeping the center of the clearing. The noise was deafening, a chaotic roar of gunfire that shattered the jungle’s peace.

The remaining insurgents panicked. They had been relaxed, arrogant, thinking they were the hunters. Now, they were being torn apart by an invisible enemy. Two of them went down in the first second, their bodies jerking as bullets slammed into them.

I shifted my aim. Another fighter was scrambling for his AK, trying to bring it to bear on the clearing.

Not today.

I swung my rifle, tracked him, and fired. He spun around and fell.

“Doc, go!”

I saw Doc Walker break cover from the tree line, sprinting straight into the kill zone. He wasn’t firing. He was running toward Mercer with a knife in one hand and his medical kit in the other. Bullets were snapping through the air, cutting leaves and shredding bark around him, but he didn’t flinch.

This is the part they don’t tell you about in the movies. The chaos. The confusion. The sheer, overwhelming noise. You can’t hear orders. You can’t hear yourself think. You rely on muscle memory and the trust that the person next to you is doing their job.

I scanned for threats. An insurgent on the far side of the clearing had managed to drop behind a log. He was blindly firing his AK over the top, sending rounds buzzing past my head like angry hornets.

“Contact left! Log pile!” I shouted, though I knew they probably couldn’t hear me.

I adjusted my aim, waiting for him to pop up. He raised his head to aim—

Crack.

I put a round through his helmet. Threat neutralized.

Doc reached Mercer. I watched through my peripheral vision as he slashed the zip-ties. Mercer slumped forward, unable to support his own weight. Doc grabbed him by the combat harness, hauling him up, shielding the asset’s body with his own.

“Package is secure!” Doc yelled into the comms. “We’re moving!”

“Tech, grab the laptop!” Ror shouted, firing a burst to suppress the remaining fighters who were scattering into the bush.

Tech sprinted to the backpack, scooped it up, and slung it over his shoulder in one fluid motion.

“Got it! Let’s go!”

“Break contact!” Ror ordered. “Rally point Bravo! Move!”

We had hit them hard, shocking them with violence and precision. We had killed five of them in less than ten seconds. But the others were recovering. They were shouting, calling out to each other. And worse—I could hear distant shouting from the jungle beyond. Reinforcements.

The gunshot echoes were like a dinner bell. We had kicked the hornet’s nest, and now the whole swarm was waking up.

“Hart, Vega, cover our exit!” Ror commanded.

“Copy!”

I stayed in my position, scanning the tree line while Doc and Tech dragged Mercer toward the exit path. Vega was firing controlled bursts to keep the enemy heads down.

“Go! Go!” I yelled as Ror ran past me.

I fired three more rounds at a shape moving in the bushes, then turned and sprinted.

Running through the jungle is hard. Running through the jungle while people are shooting at you is a nightmare. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But the adrenaline was a drug that kept me moving.

We crashed through the undergrowth, bounding back in a tactical withdrawal. One team moves, one team covers. Bound. Set. Fire. Move.

“How is he?” I heard Ror ask over the comms.

“He’s in bad shape,” Doc’s voice was breathless. “Ribs are broken. Possible internal bleeding. He’s conscious, but barely. I can’t move him fast.”

“We have to move fast,” Ror said grimly. “We just woke up the whole damn valley.”

As if to answer him, a sound ripped through the air behind us. A high-pitched screech followed by a deafening CRUMP.

An RPG exploded against a tree twenty feet to my left. The concussion wave knocked the wind out of me, stumbling me sideways into a thorny bush. Dirt and splintered wood rained down on my helmet.

“RPG!” Vega screamed. “They’ve got heavy weapons!”

My ears were ringing. The world was spinning. I shook my head, trying to clear the dizziness.

“Keep moving!” Ror yelled. “Don’t stop! If we stop, we die!”

We were five operators dragging a wounded man and a laptop through the most hostile terrain on earth, with an angry army on our heels. And the sun was starting to set.

The shadows were getting longer. The jungle was getting darker.

And we were a long, long way from home.

“Tech,” Ror gasped as we scrambled up a muddy rise. “How far to the extraction point?”

“Six hundred meters to Charlie,” Tech replied. “But…”

“But what?”

“I’m picking up radio chatter,” Tech said, and for the first time, I heard fear in his voice. “Intercepts. They’re moving blocking forces to the extraction point. They know where we’re going.”

I froze for a split second, my boot sliding in the mud.

“They interrogated him,” Doc said, looking down at Mercer. “He probably gave it up. They beat it out of him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ror said. “We adapt. New plan.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked, scanning the rear. I could see movement in the trees behind us. They were closing the distance.

Ror looked at the map on his wrist, then looked at the darkening sky.

“We push past Charlie,” he said. “We head for the river. It’s two clicks further, but they won’t expect it.”

“Two clicks?” Vega asked. “With a wounded man? In the dark?”

“It’s that or walk into an ambush at Charlie,” Ror said. “We go to the river. We call for a hot extract there.”

“They’ll be on us before we get halfway there,” I said, firing a shot at a shadow that got too close.

“Then we fight them every step of the way,” Ror said. He looked at me, his eyes fierce and alive. “We’re Special Forces, Hart. We don’t ask for easy. We ask for possible.”

He turned to the team.

“Tech, call it in. New extract. Tell the bird to bring plenty of ammo. We’re going to need it.”

I slammed a fresh magazine into my rifle. I had four mags left. About 120 rounds.

“Let’s move,” I said.

We turned away from the safety of the planned route and plunged deeper into the unknown, toward the river. Behind us, the jungle was alive with the sounds of pursuit—shouting, engines revving, and the sporadic crack of AK fire.

The hunt was on. And we were the prey.

Part 3

“Two clicks,” I repeated to myself. “Two clicks to the river.”

In a civilized world, two kilometers is nothing. It’s a twenty-minute jog. It’s a drive to the grocery store that takes less time than a song on the radio. But in the jungle, at night, with a wounded man and an army on your heels, two kilometers is an eternity. It is a distance measured not in meters, but in heartbeats and drops of sweat.

We moved off the established game trails and plunged straight into the “wait-a-minute” vines and dense undergrowth. It was the only way to avoid the ambushes we knew were waiting for us on the path to Rally Point Charlie. But the jungle fought back. Every step was a battle. Vines tangled around our boots like tripwires. Thorny branches whipped at our faces, slicing exposed skin. The ground was uneven, a treacherous mix of mud, rotting logs, and hidden holes that threatened to snap an ankle with every misstep.

The sun had fully set now. The twilight gloom had surrendered to a suffocating, inky blackness.

“Goggles down,” Major Ror whispered.

I flipped my Night Vision Goggles (NVGs) down over my eyes. The world transformed instantly. The black abyss turned into a grainy, shimmering green phosphor landscape. Shadows became deep voids; trees became ghostly pillars. Depth perception in NVGs is tricky—everything looks flat, two-dimensional. You have to trust your feet more than your eyes.

We were moving in a diamond formation, tight and controlled. I was on point, my HK416 scanning the green tunnel ahead. Ror and Tech were in the middle, hauling the comms gear and the laptop. Doc Walker was at the rear, practically carrying Adam Mercer.

Mercer was dead weight now. The adrenaline of the initial firefight had worn off, and his body was shutting down. I could hear his ragged breathing over the team comms—a wet, rattling sound that meant fluid in his lungs. Every few steps, he would stumble, and Doc would heave him back up, grunting with the effort.

“Doc, status?” Ror asked, his voice low.

“He’s fading, Major,” Doc replied, the strain evident in his whisper. “BP is dropping. He’s got broken ribs puncturing the pleura. He needs a chest tube and a surgeon, not a hike through hell.”

“Keep him moving,” Ror said, his tone hard but necessary. “If we stop, he dies. If we slow down, we all die.”

“Copy.”

We pushed on. The sound of pursuit behind us had changed. The frantic shouting and random gunfire had stopped. That was bad. It meant they were organizing. They were communicating. They weren’t just chasing us anymore; they were hunting us. They were moving in sweeps, checking the likely routes, coordinating with the trucks I had heard earlier.

My world narrowed down to the view through my optic and the sound of my own breathing. Inhale. Step. Exhale. Scan.

About a kilometer in, we hit a ravine. It was a jagged scar in the earth, maybe thirty feet deep, with a fast-moving stream at the bottom. The sides were steep, slick mud.

“Tech, check the map,” Ror ordered.

Tech halted, shielding the glow of his GPS unit. “It cuts across our azimuth. We have to cross it. Going around adds another click.”

“We cross,” Ror said. “Hart, slide down. Secure the far bank. Vega, rear guard. Tech and Doc, get the package across.”

I holstered my rifle and slid down the muddy bank on my backside, using roots as handbrakes. I hit the water at the bottom—cold, fast, waist-deep. I waded across, the current tugging at my legs, and scrambled up the other side, digging my fingers into the wet clay.

I crested the top and brought my weapon up, scanning the tree line. Nothing. Just green static.

“Clear,” I signaled.

One by one, the team slid down and struggled across. Watching Doc and Ror drag Mercer through the water was agonizing. Mercer cried out once—a sharp, involuntary sound of pain as the cold water hit his battered ribs.

“Quiet!” Ror hissed, clapping a hand over Mercer’s mouth.

We froze.

From the ridge above us, where we had just come from, a beam of light cut through the darkness. A flashlight. Then another.

Voices.

They were tracking our boot prints in the mud.

“Move,” Ror signaled, hand motions only. ” fast and silent.”

We scrambled up the far bank, slipping and sliding, desperation lending us strength. We dove into the thick brush at the top just as the beams of light swept over the water below.

I watched through the leaves. Three insurgents stood on the opposite ridge. They were looking down at the stream. One of them pointed at the slide marks we had left in the mud. They knew.

They shouted something back into the jungle.

“They’re on us,” Tech whispered.

“Push,” Ror ordered. “Double time.”

We broke into a run. It wasn’t a sprint—you can’t sprint in this terrain—but it was a punishing, lung-burning jog. We crashed through the vegetation, noise discipline sacrificed for speed. We didn’t care about snapping twigs anymore. We just needed distance.

My legs felt like lead. My shoulders ached under the weight of my plate carrier and pack. But I forced myself to focus on the rhythm. Left, right, left, right.

“Contact left!” Vega screamed.

I spun around.

A flanking element. They had guessed our route. Two insurgents stepped out from behind a massive teak tree less than twenty meters away.

I didn’t think. I reacted.

My rifle snapped up. The holographic sight settled on the lead man’s chest. I squeezed the trigger twice. Pop-pop. The suppressor swallowed the report, turning it into a harsh cough. The man dropped.

The second man fired.

Crack-crack-crack.

His rounds went high, shredding the leaves above my head. Sparks flew as a bullet clipped Tech’s radio antenna.

Ror and Vega opened up, a wall of disciplined fire that cut the second man down before he could adjust his aim.

“Check fire! Check fire!” Ror yelled.

“Is everyone hit?”

“Tech?”

“I’m good,” Tech gasped, checking his gear. “Radio took a hit. Antenna is sheared. Range is going to be compromised.”

“Can you fix it?”

“I can jury-rig it, but I need time.”

“We don’t have time,” Ror said. “Fix it on the move. Let’s go!”

We kept running. The gunshot had given away our exact position. Now, the jungle came alive. We could hear engines revving to our right—parallel to us. Technical trucks with mounted machine guns were racing along a logging road, trying to cut us off before we hit the river.

“They’re boxing us in,” I said, realizing their tactic. “They’re pushing us toward the water.”

“That’s where we want to go,” Doc grunted, hoisting Mercer’s arm over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” I said grimly. “But they know that.”

The last five hundred meters were a blur of exhaustion and terror. My lungs were burning so bad I tasted blood. Every muscle fiber screamed for me to stop, to lie down, to quit. But quitting meant death. Not just for me, but for Mercer, for Ror, for all of us.

“Water!” Vega called out. “I smell water!”

The trees began to thin. The ground sloped downward. Through the gaps in the canopy, I saw the reflection of the moon on a wide, dark surface.

The river.

We burst out of the tree line and slid down a sandy embankment. The river was wide, maybe forty meters across, swollen and churning with brown water. It was moving fast.

“Perimeter!” Ror barked. “Set security! 180 degrees! Back to the water!”

We fanned out, forming a semi-circle with our backs to the raging river. It was a classic “Last Stand” position. We had nowhere left to run.

“Tech, get that radio working!” Ror ordered. “Call the bird!”

I dropped into a prone position behind a fallen log, my chest heaving. I checked my ammo.

“Mag check!” I called out.

“Two mags,” Vega said.

“One and a half,” Doc replied.

“One,” Tech said, not looking up from his radio.

I looked at my own rig. I had one full magazine in the weapon and one spare on my belt.

Less than sixty rounds per person. Against a force that numbered in the dozens, maybe hundreds.

“I’ve got signal!” Tech shouted, his voice cracking. “It’s weak, but I’ve got it. Cobra 1-1, this is Ground Team! We are at Rally Point Delta! Hot extract required immediately! Danger close!”

Static hissed in our ears. Then, a voice. Faint, broken, but beautiful.

“Ground Team… Cobra… copy Delta… inbound… ETA… ten mikes…”

“Ten mikes?” Vega looked at Ror, her eyes wide in the green glow of the NVGs. “Ten minutes? We don’t have ten minutes.”

“We make ten minutes,” Ror said. He looked at each of us. His face was smeared with mud and camouflage paint, but his eyes were steady. “Dig in. Pick your targets. semi-auto only. Make every round count.”

“Here they come,” I whispered.

The jungle edge, fifty meters away, began to flicker. Flashlights. Voices. The snapping of branches.

They weren’t being subtle anymore. They knew we were trapped. They were forming a line, getting ready to sweep us into the river.

I rested the barrel of my HK416 on the log. I flicked the safety off. I slowed my breathing, pushing the exhaustion into a box in the back of my mind.

“Mercer,” Ror said, kneeling beside the wounded man. “You holding up?”

Mercer was lying in the sand, his face pale as death. He coughed, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips. He looked up at Ror.

“The laptop,” Mercer wheezed. “Don’t… let them… take it.”

“They won’t,” Ror promised. “If it comes to it, Tech destroys it. Then we destroy ourselves. Nobody takes anything tonight.”

Mercer nodded weakly and closed his eyes.

“Contact front,” I announced calmly.

Shadows detached themselves from the tree line. First one, then three, then ten. They were moving cautiously, testing our defenses.

“Wait for it,” Ror murmured. “Let them commit.”

A machine gun opened up from the trees—a RPK, judging by the sound. Green tracers zipped over our heads, hissing into the river behind us.

Sand kicked up into my face. I didn’t flinch. I kept my crosshairs on a silhouette moving toward a stump.

“Engage,” Ror said.

I squeezed the trigger. The silhouette dropped.

Vega fired. Tech fired.

For a moment, we held them. Our fire was precise, deadly. We were operators; we didn’t miss. But there were too many of them.

“RPG!” Doc screamed.

I saw the flash before I heard the launch. A rocket streak of light erupted from the jungle.

It hit the sandbank ten meters to our right. The explosion was deafening. A geyser of sand and water erupted, raining down on us. The shockwave rattled my teeth.

“Sound off!” Ror yelled.

“Good!”

“Good!”

“Clear!”

“They’re bracketing us!” Tech yelled. “Next one will be closer!”

The enemy fire intensified. It wasn’t just small arms anymore. The heavy thump-thump-thump of a mounted DShK heavy machine gun started up from the logging road. Large caliber rounds—bullets the size of fingers—started tearing through the driftwood log I was using for cover. Splinters the size of shrapnel flew into my face. I ducked low, pressing my cheek into the wet sand.

“We can’t hold this!” Vega shouted over the roar. “We need air support!”

“Air is ten mikes out!” Ror shouted back.

“We’ll be dead in five!”

I popped up, fired two rounds at a muzzle flash, and ducked back down. My bolt locked back. Empty.

“Reloading!” I screamed.

I grabbed my last magazine. My hands were shaking, slippery with sweat and mud. I fumbled the reload, cursing. Smooth is fast. Smooth is fast. I slammed the fresh mag in and hit the bolt release.

Thirty rounds left. That was it.

“Boats!” Tech yelled. “River! upstream!”

I turned my head. Above the roar of the gunfire, I heard the whine of outboard motors. Two long, wooden boats were coming down the river, spotlights sweeping the water. They had mounted machine guns on the prows.

They were flanking us from the water.

“We’re surrounded,” Doc said. It wasn’t a complaint. It was just a fact.

“Vega, take the boats!” Ror ordered. “Hart, Tech, keep the jungle back! Doc, keep Mercer alive!”

Vega shifted her position, exposing herself to fire from the tree line to engage the boats. She opened up, her rifle barking rhythmically. She took out the spotlight on the lead boat, plunging it into darkness, but the gunner kept firing, spraying the bank with lead.

I turned back to the jungle. They were advancing. I could see their faces now in the flashes of gunfire. They were screaming, chanting, sensing blood. They knew we were low on ammo. They knew we were cornered.

I fired. Dropped a man.

Moved my aim. Fired. Missed. Adjusted. Fired. Dropped him.

Click.

My heart stopped.

I looked at my rifle. The bolt was forward. It wasn’t empty. Malfunction.

“Jam!” I yelled, rolling onto my back.

I frantically worked the action. Tap, rack, bang. I cleared the stovepipe jam, a spent casing that had failed to eject. I rolled back over.

An insurgent was twenty feet away, sprinting at me with a machete raised. He had gotten through the perimeter while I was clearing the jam.

I didn’t have time to aim. I pointed the barrel and pulled the trigger.

He fell so close to me that dirt from his boots kicked into my face.

I scrambled backward, crab-walking in the sand.

“I’m out!” Tech screamed. “Primary weapon dry! Switching to sidearm!”

“Me too!” Vega yelled. “Last mag!”

“Ror!” I shouted. “We need options!”

Major Ror was firing his pistol now, his rifle lying empty beside him. He looked at the sky, then at the river, then at us.

There was a strange calm in his eyes. The look of a man who has run the numbers and accepted the result.

“Fix bayonets if you got ’em,” Ror said, his voice cutting through the noise. “Knives out. We hold this ground. Nobody crosses this line.”

I drew my combat knife with my left hand, keeping my rifle in my right with the last few rounds I hoped were there.

The enemy fire paused.

Silence.

It was worse than the noise.

“Why are they stopping?” Vega whispered.

“They’re reloading,” Ror said. “And they’re getting ready for the final push. They want to take us alive. They want the laptop.”

I looked at the jungle. I could hear them whispering. I could hear the metallic click-clack of magazines being loaded. I could smell the ozone and the blood.

I looked at my team.

Tech was destroying the encryption key on the radio, smashing the internals with a rock. Doc was holding Mercer’s hand, murmuring a prayer or a comfort. Vega was wiping blood from a cut on her forehead, her knife gleaming in the moonlight.

Major Ror stood up, just slightly, checking the perimeter.

“It’s been an honor,” he said softly.

Then, from the darkness of the jungle, a voice shouted a command. A roar went up—a primal, terrifying sound of a hundred men charging at once.

“Here they come!” I screamed.

I raised my rifle. I had seven rounds left.

I aimed at the first shape that broke the tree line.

“Cobra! Where the hell are you?” Tech screamed into the dead radio.

The sky remained dark. The only light came from the muzzle flashes of a hundred enemy rifles opening up at once.

The world turned into white noise and pain.

Part 4

The muzzle flash of a hundred rifles firing at once doesn’t look like a spark. It looks like a wall of lightning.

Time didn’t just slow down; it shattered. I watched the first wave of insurgents crest the small rise of the riverbank in a strobe-light series of frozen images. Their mouths were open in screams I couldn’t hear over the roar of gunfire. Their eyes were wide, fixed on us, fixed on the kill.

I raised my HK416. I didn’t aim. You don’t aim at a tidal wave. I just pointed at the mass of bodies and squeezed the trigger.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three rounds. My shoulder kicked three times. A man in the front row dropped, clutching his throat. Another stumbled.

Click.

The bolt locked back on an empty chamber. The sound was small, mechanical, and final. I was dry. My primary weapon was now just a seven-pound club of aluminum and steel.

“Reloading!” I screamed, a habit born of training, even though I had nothing to reload with.

I dropped the rifle to its sling, the hot metal searing against my chest, and ripped the combat knife from the sheath on my vest. The blade was six inches of matte black steel. Against an army, it looked like a toothpick.

“Hold the line!” Major Ror roared. He was standing tall, firing his pistol with a rhythmic, terrifying calm. Bam. Bam. Bam. Every shot dropped a target. But for every man he dropped, three more surged forward.

They were ten meters away. Then five.

I saw the face of the man coming for me. He was young, maybe twenty. He had a scar running down his cheek and wild, drug-fueled eyes. He raised a machete, screaming something guttural.

I stepped into him. You don’t retreat from a charge; you meet it. I caught his wrist with my left hand, the impact jarring my bones, and drove my knife up under his ribs with my right.

He gasped, a wet, choking sound. I shoved him away, his body becoming a shield against the others behind him.

To my left, Tech was on the ground. He had been tackled by two fighters. He was fighting like a demon, using his empty pistol as a hammer, smashing it into a face.

“Tech!” I screamed, lunging toward him.

A heavy boot slammed into my side. I went down hard in the sand. I rolled, tasting blood and grit. An insurgent stood over me, raising an AK-47 like a club to crush my skull.

I braced for the impact. I braced for the end. I thought of my mom. I thought of the rain in North Carolina.

Then, the sky tore open.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a physical pressure, a vibration that liquefied my insides. A roar so deep, so massive, it felt like the earth itself was screaming.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT.

The sound of a 20mm Vulcan cannon is distinctive. It sounds like canvas tearing, amplified a million times.

The jungle line, fifty meters in front of us, simply evaporated.

Trees shattered into toothpicks. The earth erupted in geysers of dirt, fire, and red mist. The insurgents who had been charging us froze, their heads snapping up toward the heavens.

Two shadows, darker than the night, shrieked over the treetops at five hundred miles per hour. The afterburners of the F/A-18 Super Hornets glowed like the eyes of angry gods.

“Danger Close! Danger Close!” Tech was screaming into the broken radio, laughing and crying at the same time.

The jets banked hard, pulling Gs that would crush a normal human, and came around for a second pass.

WHOOSH. BOOM.

Rockets. They slammed into the tree line and the river where the boats were flanking us. The concussive force knocked me flat on my back again. The heat washed over us, a sudden, blistering wind.

The boats on the river vanished in columns of water and flame. The jungle was burning.

The insurgents didn’t retreat. They routed. The terror of modern air power is absolute. One second you are the hunter; the next, you are facing the apocalypse. They dropped their weapons. They ran. They scrambled into the darkness, desperate to get away from the death raining down from the sky.

Silence rushed back in, ringing in my ears louder than the explosions.

“Sound off!” Ror’s voice cut through the ringing. He was on one knee, his pistol still raised, scanning the smoke.

“Hart, up!” I gasped, scrambling to my feet. I checked myself. I was covered in sand and blood—some mine, mostly not.

“Vega, up!” Nora was pulling Tech to his feet.

“Tech, up!”

“Doc?” Ror turned.

Doc Walker was shielded over Mercer’s body, covering him with his own armor. He slowly sat up, shaking the sand off his helmet.

“Package is secure,” Doc coughed. “He’s still breathing. Barely.”

“Cobra 1-1 to Ground Team,” the radio crackled. The voice was clear, calm, almost bored. “Good effects on target. We are Winchester on ordnance. Remaining on station for show of force. Your ride is inbound. ETA two mikes.”

“Copy, Cobra,” Tech croaked. “You are a beautiful, beautiful human being.”

“Two minutes,” Ror said, standing up. He holstered his pistol. His hands were steady, but I saw the tremor in his jaw. “Check the package. Prep for extract. If anything moves in that tree line, you kill it.”

I retrieved my rifle. It was empty, useless, but I held it anyway. It was my comfort blanket.

We formed a tight circle around Mercer. The jungle was burning in patches, casting flickering, demonic shadows on the sand. The smell was awful—burning jet fuel, cooked meat, and ozone.

Then we heard it. The most beautiful sound in the world.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

The rhythmic beat of rotor blades.

“Visual!” Vega shouted, pointing west.

A black shape detached itself from the stars. The UH-60 Blackhawk came in low and fast, nose down, aggressive. It flared hard over the river, the rotor wash kicking up a blinding storm of water and sand.

The door gunner on the side facing the jungle opened up with his minigun, spraying the tree line just in case anyone was left thinking about being a hero. BRRRRRRT. The tracers looked like a solid laser beam of red light.

The bird touched down, one wheel in the water, one on the sand. The Crew Chief was waving frantically.

“GO! GO! GO!”

“Doc, Tech, grab Mercer!” Ror ordered. “Vega, Hart, cover!”

I turned my back to the helicopter, scanning the burning jungle one last time. My heart was hammering a frantic rhythm. Don’t get shot now. Not now. We made it.

Doc and Tech hauled Mercer up. They sprinted for the open door. The Crew Chief grabbed Mercer by the vest and hauled him in like a sack of potatoes. Doc scrambled in after him. Tech followed.

“Vega, move!” Ror yelled.

Nora broke from her position and ran for the bird. She dove in, rolling to the back wall.

“Hart! Ror! Move!”

I turned and ran. The sand sucked at my boots. The rotor wash pushed against me like a physical hand. I reached the door and the Crew Chief grabbed my vest, yanking me inside. I fell onto the diamond-plate floor, gasping for air.

Major Ror was the last one. He walked backward, pistol raised, covering our exit until the very last second. He holstered his weapon, turned, and leaped onto the step.

“Clear!” the Crew Chief screamed into his headset.

The pilot pulled pitch. The Blackhawk lurched upward, stomach-churning fast. We banked hard, swinging out over the river, away from the burning shore.

I sat on the floor, my legs hanging out the door for a second before I scooted back. I watched the jungle recede. The fires looked like small campfires from up here. The place where we had almost died, where we had left blood and brass and terror, was just a spot on a map again.

I looked around the cabin.

The red tactical light bathed us in a hellish glow. We looked like monsters. Our uniforms were shredded, caked in mud and blood. Our faces were blackened with camo paint and soot.

Doc was already working on Mercer, hooking up an IV bag to a carabiner on the ceiling. Mercer’s eyes were open, glassy, staring at the ceiling of the helicopter. He was alive.

Tech was leaning back against the transmission well, his eyes closed, his chest heaving. He held the laptop bag against his chest like a teddy bear.

Nora Vega was staring out the open door at the passing jungle, her face a mask of stone.

And Major Ror. He sat opposite me. He looked at me. He didn’t smile. He just gave me a nod. A slow, heavy nod.

We did it.

The adrenaline crash hit me then. It wasn’t a slow fade; it was a cliff. My hands started to shake. Violent, uncontrollable tremors. My teeth started to chatter. I felt cold, freezing cold, despite the tropical heat.

I leaned my head back against the vibrating wall of the helicopter and closed my eyes. Tears leaked out, hot and stinging, cutting tracks through the grime on my face. I didn’t sob. I just leaked.

I was alive.

I reached down and touched the receiver of my rifle. Alive.

The flight back to the Forward Operating Base (FOB) took twenty minutes. It felt like twenty years.

When we landed, the reception was professional, sterile, and swift. There was no brass band. There were no parades.

The Blackhawk touched down on the concrete pad. Before the rotors even stopped spinning, a medical team was there. They swarmed the aircraft, taking Mercer from us. They moved with efficient urgency, transferring him to a gurney and rushing him toward the surgical trauma tent.

Then, two men in polo shirts and cargo pants—CIA SAD officers—stepped forward. They didn’t look at us. They looked at Tech.

“The bag,” one of them said.

Tech handed over the laptop bag. The man checked the contents, nodded, and walked away without a word.

“Clear your weapons,” Ror ordered us. His voice sounded raspy, foreign.

We walked to the clearing barrels. I dropped my magazine—empty. I pulled the charging handle—empty. I dry fired into the sand barrel. Click.

“Gear to the team room,” Ror said. “Showers. Chow. Debrief at 0800. Dismissed.”

We walked toward our hooch. We walked like old people, stiff and disjointed.

The shower was the strangest part. I stood under the stream of lukewarm water for a long time. I watched the water swirl around the drain. It was brown at first, then red, then finally clear.

I scrubbed my skin until it was raw. I was trying to wash off the smell of the jungle, the smell of the fear. I watched the blood from the insurgent I stabbed wash away. It wasn’t my blood, but it felt like a stain on my soul.

I looked at myself in the small, cracked mirror over the sink. My eyes looked different. The pupils were blown wide, dark holes that had seen too much. They say eyes are the window to the soul. Mine looked like the shutters had been pulled down.

I put on clean PT gear. I sat on the edge of my cot.

Tech was sitting on his, staring at a picture of his kids taped to the inside of his locker. Vega was cleaning her fingernails with a knife, meticulously scraping away the dirt.

Nobody spoke. What was there to say? ‘Did you see that guy’s head explode?’ ‘Man, that was close.’ It all seemed trivial.

Ror walked in. He held a clipboard.

“Update on Mercer,” he said quietly. “Collapsed lung, three broken ribs, ruptured spleen, orbital fracture. He’s in surgery now. Doctors say he’ll make it.”

A collective breath let out in the room. We hadn’t failed.

“And the intel?” Tech asked.

“Already encrypted and sent to Langley,” Ror said. “They’re rolling up the network tonight. Because of what we did, a lot of bad people are going to wake up in handcuffs tomorrow morning. Or they won’t wake up at all.”

He looked at us.

“Good work,” he said. “Get some sleep.”

He turned off the light and left.

I lay in the dark, listening to the hum of the base generators. I closed my eyes, but every time I drifted off, I was back at the river. I heard the screaming. I felt the sand in my teeth. I saw the machete coming down.

I didn’t sleep that night. I just lay there, waiting for the sun to rise, grateful that I was there to see it.

Beep.

The sound was sharp and electronic.

I blinked. The jungle vanished. The smell of burning jet fuel was replaced by the smell of rotisserie chicken and floor wax.

I was back in the grocery store in Fayetteville.

“Ma’am?”

I looked up. The cashier was a teenage girl with bright blue braces and a bored expression. She was holding a carton of almond milk, scanning it.

“Did you find everything okay?” she asked, popping her gum.

I stared at her. My hands were gripping the handle of the shopping cart so hard my knuckles were white. My heart was racing, pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I was sweating, a cold, clammy sheen on my forehead.

For a second, I wanted to scream.

I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. I wanted to scream, Do you know what I did? Do you know what we went through? Do you know that three days ago I killed a man with a knife so you could stand here and chew gum and scan almond milk in safety?

I wanted to tell her about the river. About the silence. About the way Ror looked when he thought we were all going to die.

But I didn’t.

Because she wouldn’t understand. Nobody understands. Unless you’ve been there, unless you’ve felt the mud suck at your boots and heard the air split open with gunfire, it’s just a story. It’s a movie. It’s a video game.

But for me, it’s the ghost that stands in the corner of the room. It’s the shadow that follows me down the cereal aisle.

I took a deep breath. I uncurled my fingers from the cart. I forced the metal boxes in my mind to slam shut. I locked the jungle away. I locked the fear away.

I put on the mask. Staff Sergeant Noel Hart. Neighbor. Jogger. Shopper.

“Yes,” I said, my voice steady, though it sounded distant to my own ears. “I found everything just fine.”

I paid for my groceries. I walked out the automatic doors into the parking lot.

It was raining. A soft, gentle rain. Not the angry torrent of the tropics.

I walked to my car, loaded the bags, and sat in the driver’s seat. I didn’t start the engine. I just sat there, listening to the rain tap against the roof.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I opened the gallery. There, buried deep in a hidden folder, was a photo.

It was blurry, taken with a burner phone in the back of a C-130 transport plane a year ago. It was the five of us. Me, Ror, Tech, Vega, Doc. We were dirty, exhausted, holding beers we weren’t supposed to have, grinning like idiots.

We looked invincible.

I traced the faces on the screen with my thumb.

We aren’t invincible. We are broken. We are scarred. We are carrying weights that no one can see.

But we are here.

And if the call comes tonight? If Ror sends that text? Gear up. New op.

I know exactly what I’ll do.

I’ll put the groceries away. I’ll clean my rifle. And I’ll go.

Because that’s the job. And someone has to do it.

THE END.