The rain wasn’t just falling; it was a presence, a weight. It pressed down on the bill of Captain Rain Kesler’s patrol cap, beaded on her eyelashes, and traced cold, familiar paths down the back of her neck. She stood on the exposed instructor platform at Fort Trenton, watching the world dissolve into shades of gray and olive drab. The rich Carolina clay had already surrendered, turning to a slick, grasping mud that sucked at the soles of her boots. The sky was a bruised, exhausted thing that had forgotten how to do anything but weep.

Thirty meters away, sheltered beneath the corrugated metal roof of the equipment shed, four Army Ranger candidates were laughing. The sound carried across the wet air, sharp and distinct, cutting through the steady drumming of the downpour. They were dry, comfortable, certain. Their world was a simple, well-ordered place, and she, apparently, was an anomaly that didn’t fit.

She was twenty-nine years old. The capacity for surprise, for expecting much from the casual cruelty or ignorance of others, had been ground out of her years ago, somewhere between a frozen cattle ranch in eastern Montana and the bone-dry valleys of Afghanistan.

The range stretched out before her, a long, empty corridor of churned earth and stubborn grass. In the hazy distance, steel targets waited like silent, impartial judges. They didn’t care about gender, or rank, or the opinions of men in a shed. They only cared about physics and precision.

She’d driven the government pickup from the main compound, the engine rattling a rhythm she knew by heart. She’d arrived fifteen minutes early, because that’s what professionals did. Her rifle case, a hard-sided vault of black polymer, sat in the truck bed, indifferent to the weather. Her range bag, heavy with magazines, a weather meter, and the tools of her trade, rested against the tailgate. Everything was in its place. Everything was ready.

The candidates didn’t know she could hear them. They thought the rain was a blanket, swallowing their words. But it wasn’t. It was a conductor.

“Someone needs to tell her the real instructor’s probably running late.” That was Specialist Garrett Bradock. She’d pegged him the moment she’d walked up. Tall, with the kind of broad-shouldered confidence that comes from a life of never having to truly fight for a place at the table. His presence was his resume, or so he believed. “Maybe she should wait in the vehicle while the adults handle this.”

A murmur of agreement. Sergeant Davis Merik, twenty-six. A combat deployment to Kandahar under his belt. A father who’d served in Desert Storm and filled his son’s head with stories of a mythical past, a time when warriors were warriors and everyone knew their place. He was clinging to a world that had never really existed, a world where the lines were clean and the rules were simple.

The third man, Private First Class Ethan Collier, said nothing. He just shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his gaze fixed on the muddy ground. His silence was louder than their laughter. He was uncomfortable in a way that spoke not of weakness, but of a dawning clarity, a recognition that the scene playing out was somehow wrong. Youth, she’d learned, sometimes saw the truth more clearly, before experience taught you to look away.

The fourth stood furthest back, half-swallowed by the shed’s shadows. Corporal Nash Donovan. He was silent, too, but his was a different kind of quiet. It wasn’t conflicted; it was calculating. He watched her with an unnerving stillness, his eyes tracking her as if she were a complex equation he was trying to solve, and failing. His doubt was the most dangerous kind, the one that didn’t need to be spoken. It lived in the cold, analytical set of his jaw.

Rain adjusted the brim of her cap, a small, useless gesture against the deluge. The cold water felt like a penance. It reminded her of home. She’d grown up in a corner of eastern Montana where winter was an eight-month siege and the nearest hospital was sixty miles down roads that vanished in the first blizzard. Her father, a Marine scout sniper forged in the quiet tensions of the Cold War and the searing heat of Desert Storm, had put a rifle in her hands when she was seven. He hadn’t done it for sport. He’d done it for survival. On their land, when something went wrong, help wasn’t coming. You were the help.

The lesson had been etched into her bones. By twelve, she could read a crosswind at 400 meters by watching the dance of heat mirage on a summer day. She could correct for a ten-degree temperature drop without a chart, just by the feel of the air on her skin. She learned patience in the frozen stillness of a deer blind and trigger control on the coyotes that stalked the herd, their eyes gleaming like malevolent embers in the twilight.

Her father never told her she was good. He never offered praise. He just handed her harder shots. A smaller target, a longer distance, a trickier wind. His approval wasn’t in his words; it was in his trust.

She’d enlisted at eighteen, chasing a standard she wasn’t even sure she could name. She’d gone to the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, and her scores were so high the drill sergeants checked the paperwork twice, hunting for the clerical error that would make sense of it. There was no mistake.

She attended the Special Operations Target Interdiction Course right here at Fort Trenton, mastering the science and art of the long shot. She’d spent three years with a Ranger Rifle Company, rotating through the high, thin air of Afghanistan, through the dusty, contested ground of the Ardan Valley. She’d earned her Expert Infantryman Badge through lane testing that broke men far bigger than her. Her Ranger tab was on her shoulder by twenty-four.

At twenty-seven, in the chaos of a compromised patrol in Sangin Province, she had saved two teammates. An enemy machine gunner had them pinned, chewing up their cover, the rounds cracking inches over their heads. They had seconds. Her spotter called corrections, his voice tight but steady in her ear. The distance was 1,130 meters. The wind was a fickle, swirling thing. She felt the shift, a subtle pressure on her cheek, a whisper of movement in the dust. She trusted her read, not the instruments. She adjusted, breathed, and sent a single round of MK 248 Mod 1 match-grade ammunition downrange.

The world held its breath for a heartbeat. Then, the distant, beautiful ping of steel. The machine gun went silent. Her squad had an eight-second window to break contact. Every single one of them made it home.

She didn’t talk about it. The people who mattered already knew. The people who didn’t wouldn’t believe it anyway.

Rain Kesler believed in standards. She believed in discipline. She believed, with a ferocity that bordered on faith, that competence was the only currency that should matter. For eleven years, she had been proving it, over and over, to men who had already made up their minds before she even walked into the room.

The four candidates had been told a senior instructor would be running their final certification, a gateway to the Joint Special Operations Command screening. When she’d walked onto the range, patrol cap low, rifle case in hand, Garrett Bradock had looked her up and down as if she were a tourist who’d taken a wrong turn.

“You lost, ma’am? The admin building’s back that way.”

The condescension was as thick and cloying as the humidity. She’d simply stated her name and rank. Told them she’d be running their qualification. The temperature in the shed had seemed to drop ten degrees.

Davis Merik had shaken his head, a small, dismissive gesture. “Real instructor’s probably stuck in traffic. No disrespect, ma’am, but maybe you should wait for him.”

“There is no him,” she’d said, her voice carrying the flat, unyielding certainty of a Montana winter. “The range is reserved under my name. My credentials are on file with Range Control. You can shoot, or you can pack up and leave.”

Davis had exchanged a look with Garrett, a silent, fluent conversation between two men who believed they were the sole proprietors of the world’s true workings.

“We’ll shoot,” Davis had finally said, the challenge clear in his tone. “But only if you prove you can do it first. Otherwise, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

Rain had given a single, sharp nod. “Set up the targets.”

As she turned and walked back toward her truck, Garrett muttered something under his breath. It was low, but not low enough. It made Ethan Collier stare so hard at the mud it was a miracle he didn’t drill a hole through the planet. Nash Donovan’s expression remained a mask of stone, but his eyes followed her, measuring, judging, and finding her wanting before she’d even unsheathed her rifle.

What they didn’t know was that their little performance had an audience. Their conversation, their petty challenge, had been broadcast across the unencrypted OIC channel on the range operations net. It was a frequency open to anyone monitoring.

Twenty miles north, in a darkened radio room overlooking another firing line, someone had heard every word. And twenty meters beyond that, in a humming Tactical Operations Center, a Navy SEAL Commander named Dex Harlo had paused, listening to a group of Ranger candidates dismiss a sniper he had worked with in the Ardan Valley. A woman who had provided overwatch for his SEAL team during a direct action mission, a woman who put rounds exactly where they needed to be, with a surgical precision that silenced rooms full of professional warriors. He remembered. Oh, he remembered very well.

But the four candidates didn’t know any of that. They didn’t know about Sangin Province. They didn’t know she’d worked with SEALs. They didn’t know that her rifle had spoken for her in places where words meant nothing and results were the only language understood. They only knew what they had decided to know.

Rain lowered the tailgate of the pickup, the metal cool and wet beneath her hands. She unlatched the rifle case. Inside, nestled in custom-cut foam, lay her M2010. It was broken down, cleaned with the kind of obsessive care that separates the professional from the amateur. The rifle had been her constant companion for six years. She knew its soul. She knew its precise weight, the perfect balance point just ahead of the magazine well. She knew the exact moment the trigger would break, a crisp snap at three and a half pounds of pressure. She knew how it behaved in blistering heat and arctic cold, in driving rain and shifting wind, at sea level and in the thin, unforgiving air of the mountains.

She assembled it with a slow, deliberate grace. Her hands moved on their own, a ballet of muscle memory, freeing her mind to drift. She checked the torque on the scope mounts, ran a thumb along the cold, fluted barrel, feeling for imperfections she knew weren’t there.

Her thoughts went to her father. To the man who taught her that respect wasn’t a participation trophy handed out at the door. You earned it. One shot at a time.

She was twelve again, lost in the whiteout of a February blizzard. Her father had been moving the last of the herd to the south pasture when his horse spooked, throwing him hard. Three broken ribs and a punctured lung. He’d managed a broken, gasping transmission on the radio before he passed out, a small voice swallowed by the howling wind and the endless snow. He was lying somewhere in a drift, the snow falling so thick you couldn’t see your own hands in front of your face.

Help wasn’t coming. The roads were closed. The county plows were fifty miles away.

She was the help.

She’d grabbed the rifle, the one her father trusted, and followed the faint tracks of the spooked horse. The snow was trying to erase them, but she found him. And she wasn’t the only one. Wolves. They’d smelled the blood. Three of them, gray shadows against a world of white, circling at 400 meters. They were moving closer, testing, their confidence growing with every passing second. Her father was a broken shape in the snow, unable to move, unable to defend himself.

She was twelve years old, and she was all he had.

She made three shots. Four hundred meters in a blizzard, with the wind gusting to twenty knots, trying to tear the rifle from her small hands. Three wolves. Three hits. Her father lived because she did not miss.

The next day, wrapped in bandages and moving with the careful agony of his injuries, he hadn’t told her she’d done well. He’d simply handed her the clean rifle and said, “Now you know why we train.”

She thought of the eleven years in uniform. The proving. Always the proving. The skeptical looks, the assumptions that she was a box to be checked, a quota to be filled, a political statement to make some general in Washington feel progressive. She thought of the bone-deep exhaustion that came not from the missions, not from the rucks or the sleepless nights, but from the constant, grinding necessity of justifying her own existence, day after day.

She didn’t feel anger toward the four candidates. Anger was a luxury. It was a hot, messy emotion that clouded judgment, tightened muscles, and pulled shots off target. What she felt was something colder, sharper, more pure.

She felt ready.

She slid five rounds into the magazine, the click of the last round seating itself a final, definitive sound. She chambered one, the bolt sliding home with a smooth, oiled authority. With the rifle in her hands and the rain on her face, she walked back to the firing line.

The weather had shifted. The deluge had faded to a persistent drizzle, but the wind had woken up. It was blowing a steady twelve knots, gusting unpredictably, left to right. The kind of wind that would take a bullet and shove it a meter off course if you didn’t give it the respect it demanded. The temperature had dropped a few degrees. The air felt heavier, denser.

The target was a thousand meters downrange. A standard steel torso plate, its shape blurred and indistinct through the rain and the low clouds clinging to the North Carolina hills. It wasn’t an easy shot. It wasn’t supposed to be.

She dropped behind the rifle, her body settling into the mud with a familiar squelch. She let her form collapse into the earth, becoming part of the landscape. Every point of contact was deliberate. Bipod legs biting into the mud. Left hand cupping the stock. Right hand on the pistol grip. A solid cheek weld, her eye finding the scope. The world outside the rubber eyepiece ceased to exist.

She ranged the target with her laser rangefinder. 1,002 meters. She entered the data into her Kestrel weather meter. Wind speed, direction, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity. The tiny computer inside did its work, spitting out a firing solution. 9.3 mils of elevation, 0.8 mils right for wind.

But the gusts were restless, shifting every ten seconds. The computer could tell her what the wind was doing. Her experience, her gut, the feel of the air on her skin—that told her what the wind was going to do. In that difference lay the razor’s edge between the glorious ring of steel and the hollow thud of a round wasted on dirt.

Behind her, she could feel their presence. Davis Merik, arms crossed, the judgmental parent. Garrett Bradock, a smirk playing on his lips, confident in the outcome he expected. Nash Donovan, leaning against the shed, his skepticism a palpable force. And Ethan Collier, shifting his weight, uneasy and silent.

She filtered them out. They were noise. Other people’s doubt was their problem, not hers. Her problem was 1,002 meters of wet, turbulent air. Her problem was gravity, and the Coriolis effect, and the subtle ways moisture changed the ballistic coefficient of a bullet.

She adjusted her scope. Two clicks right, one click up from the computer’s solution. The correction felt right in her hands, a deep, cellular knowledge born of ten thousand repetitions.

Her breathing slowed. Inhale through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. Her heart rate settled, each beat a slow, powerful drum. The world shrank until nothing existed but the reticle, the target, and the space between. Her finger found the trigger. She began to apply pressure, a slow, steady increase so gradual it felt like nothing at all, as if the rifle itself were deciding when to fire. Smooth. Inevitable.

The shot broke, clean as shattering glass.

The M2010 recoiled into her shoulder, a familiar, solid punch. The suppressor tamed the roar to a hard cough, but she felt the power of the round leaving the barrel at 2,900 feet per second. Through the scope, she watched the trace, a fleeting shimmer in the rain, tracking the bullet’s flight. It took just over a second to cross the distance, a graceful arc of descent and drift, obeying the immutable laws of physics.

PING.

The sound arrived a moment later, delayed by distance but clear, sharp, and utterly unmistakable.

She worked the bolt, the motion fluid and economical. The spent casing ejected, a small brass flower tumbling through the rain to land in the mud. Another round chambered. She found the target again, breathed, and fired.

PING.

Again.

PING.

Again.

PING.

And again.

PING.

Five shots. Five hits. Center mass. Ninety seconds from start to finish.

She stood, cleared the rifle, engaged the safety, and turned to face them.

The smirk was gone from Garrett Bradock’s face. His jaw was tight, a muscle twitching in his cheek as if he were chewing on something bitter. Davis Merik looked like he’d just swallowed a mouthful of broken glass. Nash Donovan, the calculator, stared downrange at the distant target, then back at her. His face was unreadable, but the dismissal in his eyes was gone, replaced by something else. Reassessment. Ethan Collier, the quiet one, finally found his voice, the words a raw mix of awe and disbelief.

“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

“Montana,” Rain said, her voice flat. “Fort Trenton. Downrange. Now, if you want to pass your qualification, you need to stop talking and start listening.”

The words landed in a profound silence. Even the rain seemed to have paused, its downpour softening to a whisper. The wind still gusted, but it was gentler now, as if it, too, had said what it needed to say.

That’s when the radio on her belt crackled to life, breaking the spell. The voice that came through was calm, clipped, and deeply professional. It was the kind of voice that gave orders in places where mistakes were measured in lives.

“Captain Kesler, this is Commander Harlo, SEAL Team Three. Are you still on the Fort Trenton Range Complex?”

Rain unclipped the radio. “Affirmative.”

“I have a problem, and I need your help. Twenty miles north at a classified training site. Tactical scenario is unfolding. Our primary sniper was injured during insertion. A live-fire interdiction exercise starts in ninety minutes. I need someone who can shoot reliably at extended range under pressure. Someone who won’t freeze when things get messy.” He paused. Through the speaker, she could hear the background noise of an operation spinning up—radio chatter, shouted orders, the controlled chaos of professionals at work.

“I’ve been monitoring the shared range operations net,” Harlo continued, his voice dropping slightly. “The OIC channel. Unencrypted. I heard your conversation with those candidates. I heard everything they said.” Another pause, shorter this time, but heavy with meaning. “I worked with you in the Ardan Valley, Captain. I remember. I trust you to do this right. Can you be here in forty minutes?”

Rain didn’t hesitate. There was no decision to make. “On my way.”

She ended the call and turned back to the four candidates. They stood frozen, their expressions a mixture of confusion and dawning comprehension. Davis had started to say something, but Nash cut him off with a sharp look.

“Your qualification is postponed,” Rain said, her tone all business. “Reschedule through Range Control. If any of you have a problem with that, you can call the Range OIC and explain why you spent thirty minutes questioning my credentials instead of shooting.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She walked to the pickup, broke down her rifle with swift, practiced movements, secured her gear, and started the engine. Through the rain-streaked windshield, she saw them. Four men standing in a loose, uncertain cluster. Garrett, his arms hanging limp at his sides, all the swagger drained out of him. Davis, staring at his boots as if they held the answers to the universe. Nash, nodding slowly, as if the last few pieces of a very confusing puzzle had just clicked into place. And Ethan, his face a portrait of shame and bewilderment.

Rain didn’t care about their reactions. She had a ninety-minute clock ticking in her head. She had a classified site to find twenty miles north. She had a mission brief to absorb, a rifle to prep, and a thousand variables of wind and weather to calculate. She had a job to do.

But as she pulled away, the truck’s tires spinning in the mud, she thought about what would have happened if she’d packed up and left. If she’d let their doubt win. She thought about a SEAL team running a critical exercise without proper overwatch. She thought about the commander who had heard those men dismiss her, and had called anyway. Not out of pity. Not to make a point. But because he remembered the Ardan Valley. Because he knew what she could do.

She thought of her father’s words, spoken almost twenty years ago in a Montana blizzard while wolves circled in the snow. Help isn’t coming. Be the help.

The road north was a black ribbon cutting through a forest of pine and oak, every leaf and needle still dripping. Rain drove with both hands on the wheel, her mind already shifting gears, leaving the range and the four candidates and their small, self-contained drama behind. Her focus was narrowing, sharpening. Wind calls. Target distances. Rules of engagement.

Behind her, back at the Fort Trenton range, Ethan Collier pulled out his phone. His fingers, still damp and cold, fumbled on the screen as he logged into the military personnel system. He searched for Captain Rain Kesler.

Her service record filled the screen. Deployments: Afghanistan, Ardan Valley, Kandahar. Awards and Decorations: Expert Infantryman Badge, Ranger Tab. And there, buried three paragraphs down, was a citation for actions in Sangin Province. Engaged and neutralized enemy machine gun position at 1,130 meters. Adverse conditions. One shot. Two friendly casualties prevented. Squad successfully extracted.

Ethan showed the screen to Nash Donovan. Nash read it, his eyes scanning the text twice, three times. He wordlessly handed the phone to Davis Merik. Davis read it once, his face going slack. Garrett Bradock looked over Davis’s shoulder, and his face, already pale, went the color of ash.

“We screwed up,” Nash said, his voice quiet, devoid of all emotion except a simple, damning fact.

No one disagreed.

Thirty miles away, in a range tower that offered a god’s-eye view of the entire Fort Trenton complex, a man in his late sixties lowered a pair of high-powered binoculars. Master Sergeant Wade Garrison, USMC, Retired, was now a civilian training advisor, a living library of institutional knowledge. He had watched the entire exchange. Watched Rain stand in the downpour, unmoving. Watched her put five rounds on a target a thousand meters away as if she were swatting flies. Watched the four young rangers realize exactly how profoundly, monumentally wrong they had been.

Wade picked up his own radio, switching to a secure command frequency. “Range Tower to Operations. This is Garrison. Captain Kesler just departed your location, northbound. Estimate her arrival at Site Seven in thirty-five minutes.”

The voice that answered belonged to a full-bird colonel. “Copy that, Wade. We’re tracking her. How’d she handle the candidates?”

Wade allowed himself a small, private smile. “Same way her old man would have. Professionally. She let the rifle do the talking.”

“John Kesler’s daughter,” the colonel said. It wasn’t a question. “I trained him myself back in ‘89. Marine Scout Sniper School. Best student I ever had. She’s got the same instinct. Maybe better.”

“You heading north, too?” Wade asked.

“Already packing. Command asked me to observe the SEAL exercise. Figured I’d see what John’s girl can do under real pressure.”

“Keep me posted.”

Wade ended the transmission and began gathering his gear. He’d been observing training exercises for the better part of forty years. He’d seen them all. The naturals, the grinders, the ones who choked under pressure, and the rare few who got colder, calmer, and better when everything went sideways. He’d trained Rain’s father in 1989, right before the Wall came down and the world was supposed to change forever. He’d taught him to read wind by watching heat mirage, taught him the arcane science of ballistics, and instilled in him the inhuman patience that separated true snipers from everyone else with a scope.

John Kesler had been exceptional. Quiet, focused, with nothing to prove because the work was the proof. Wade had a feeling his daughter was cut from the same cloth. He was about to find out.

Rain reached the classified site thirty-eight minutes after leaving the range. The gate was nondescript, but the men guarding it were not. They were armed, alert, and their eyes missed nothing. One checked her credentials against a laminated list, made a quick phone call, and waved her through. The perimeter was lined with concrete barriers and razor wire. This was a place that didn’t appear on any public map.

She parked the pickup next to a windowless building that hummed with the sound of generators and climate control—the Tactical Operations Center. A staff sergeant, his face grim and purposeful, met her at the door as she was grabbing her gear.

“Captain Kesler? Commander Harlo’s waiting. Follow me.”

The TOC was a hive of controlled activity. Screens glowed with drone feeds, satellite imagery, and digital maps. Radios crackled with the clipped, coded language of military operations. Officers stood huddled around tables, their faces illuminated by the blue light of monitors. This was the nerve center.

Commander Dex Harlo stood at a central planning table. He was in his late thirties, lean and weathered, with the kind of sun-bleached hair and etched lines around his eyes that came from years spent in hard places. He looked up as Rain entered and extended a hand. There was no small talk in his eyes, only purpose.

“Captain. Thanks for coming on short notice.”

“Commander.”

They’d worked together two years prior in the Ardan Valley. A direct action mission against a high-value target. Rain, perched on a desolate ridge a kilometer away, had been his team’s guardian angel. She’d engaged and dropped three hostiles who were attempting to flank his assault element, firing at ranges between 600 and 800 meters. Her shots had been so precise, so timely, that it had felt like she was inside his head. The mission succeeded, and his team came home, because she had kept the wolves at bay. He hadn’t forgotten. Neither had she.

“Situation’s evolved since I called,” Harlo said, his voice low and urgent. He gestured to a topographical map spread across the table, marked with grease pencil and acetate overlays. “This isn’t a drill anymore, Rain. It’s gone live.”

His use of her first name was a subtle but significant shift. They were past formalities.

“We’ve got eight operators fifteen klicks north of here. A reconnaissance element. They hit a compromise, walked right into an enemy force. They’re pinned down. Can’t extract by helo because of heavy ground fire.” He traced a line on the map with his finger. “They need precision overwatch to suppress threats and create a corridor for exfil. You’d be shooting from this ridgeline here. Ranges will vary between four hundred and nine hundred meters. Multiple sectors. Moving targets. Rules of engagement are tight. We’ve got friendlies danger close.”

Rain’s eyes devoured the map. The contour lines showed the ridge was a solid hundred meters higher than the target area. It was good ground, a classic sniper’s perch with clear lines of sight. But the weather was a problem. The same system that had soaked her at the range was moving north. Visibility would be a nightmare. The wind, coming off those hills, would be a devil.

“Timeline?” she asked, her voice calm.

“Two hours before we expect significant enemy reinforcements. Maybe less. We’re spinning up the exfil package now, but the bird can’t land until you sanitize the landing zone.”

“What happened to your primary sniper?”

“Separated shoulder during insertion. Slipped on a wet rock. Can’t hold a rifle steady.”

Rain nodded, her mind a whirring computer. Calculating angles, distances, potential wind channels. Thinking about the effects of rain on a bullet’s trajectory. “I’ll need a spotter.”

“Already assigned,” Harlo said. “Chief Petty Officer Rodriguez. He’s one of my best. Never worked with Army before, but he knows his job.”

“When do we move?”

“Fifteen minutes. Helo’s spooling up now.” Harlo met her eyes, his gaze intense. “Captain, I’m not going to blow smoke. This is dangerous. It’s real-world. If you’re not comfortable…”

“I’m comfortable,” Rain said, cutting him off. Her comfort had nothing to do with feelings. It was a product of training, preparation, and confidence in her equipment and her skills.

Harlo’s expression didn’t so much soften as shift into one of recognition. He smiled, a quick, thin slash of a smile. He’d seen this look before, in the eyes of the quiet professionals, the ones who didn’t need a pep talk. They understood the stakes, understood the job, and did it without drama. “Welcome to the team,” he said.

Just then, the door to the TOC opened. Wade Garrison walked in, rain still dripping from the brim of his ball cap. He took in the entire room in a single, sweeping glance, his eyes landing on Rain standing at the map table with Harlo. His weathered face remained impassive, but his eyes held a flicker of approval.

“Master Sergeant Garrison,” Harlo said, acknowledging him. “Glad you could make it.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Wade’s voice was gravel, the product of too many cheap cigarettes in too many cold observation posts. He looked at Rain, and for the first time, she saw a ghost of her father in his eyes. He extended a hand. “Captain Kesler. Wade Garrison. I worked with your father, ‘89 to ‘91. Marine Scout Sniper School.”

Rain shook his hand. His grip was firm, dry, and economical. The handshake of a man with nothing to prove. “He mentioned you,” she said. “He said you were the best instructor he ever had.”

“Your old man was being generous,” Wade said, though his eyes twinkled. “But he was a hell of a shooter. Best student I trained in twenty-eight years.” He glanced at the map, then back at her. “Heard what happened at the range this morning. Five for five at a thousand meters in wind and rain. John would be proud.”

“Thank you, Master Sergeant.”

“I’m here to observe,” Wade said, shifting his tone back to professional. “Command asked me to evaluate training protocols. I’ll stay out of your way. This is your show.”

Rain appreciated that. Some advisors were meddlers, unable to resist second-guessing decisions in the heat of the moment. Wade Garrison seemed to understand that the best way to evaluate someone was to let them work.

The staff sergeant reappeared in the doorway. “Commander, helo’s ready.”

“Copy.” Harlo looked at Rain. “You good to go?”

“Ready.”

“Then let’s move.”

They walked out into the gray, misty afternoon. Fifty meters away, a UH-60 Blackhawk sat on a concrete pad, its rotors already turning, beating the wet air into a frenzy. The crew chief stood in the open door, his eyes methodically scanning the perimeter, his posture radiating the hyper-awareness of a man who’d seen too many hot LZs.

Rain climbed aboard, secured her rifle in the rack, and strapped herself into a canvas seat. The cabin smelled of jet fuel, hydraulic fluid, and old, damp canvas. It was the smell of getting to work. Wade Garrison took a seat up front, near the cockpit. Harlo sat across from Rain, already murmuring into his headset.

The helicopter lifted with a gut-wrenching lurch. The ground fell away. Through the open door, Rain watched Fort Trenton shrink, the neatly ordered buildings and ranges disappearing behind the rolling, tree-covered hills. She thought, for a fleeting moment, of the four candidates. She thought of their humbled faces, of the qualification they’d have to reschedule. She wondered if they’d learned anything more than a lesson in marksmanship.

Then she stopped thinking about them entirely.

Because fifteen kilometers to the north, eight men were trapped in a ravine, praying for a miracle. They were waiting for help that was coming in the form of a Blackhawk, a rifle, and the woman their comrades had left standing in the rain.

Help was coming. She was the help.