The Night Belongs to Me

PART 1

The time was 2138 hours. That specific combination of numbers is burned into my retinas, glowing in the harsh, green phosphor of my night vision display.

From my perch on the jagged ridgeline overlooking Shadow Valley, I wasn’t just watching a patrol; I was watching a massacre in slow motion. And the worst part? I had known it was coming. I had tried to stop it. I had sent the reports, flagged the intel, and screamed into the void of the chain of command until my throat was raw. But the bureaucracy is a beast that moves slower than a glacier, and tonight, Alpha Company was paying the price for that lethargy in blood.

Through the amplified lens of my spotting scope, I saw the first round hit.

It didn’t sound like a gunshot. From this distance, suppressed fire just sounds like a heavy book falling in the room next door—a dull thud. But the result was catastrophic. Private First Class Landon Shaw, a nineteen-year-old kid who had been in-country for less than three weeks, crumpled. The thermal overlay on my optics turned the horrific spray of arterial blood into a bright, white-hot fan against the cooling gray rocks.

He didn’t make a sound. He just dropped.

“Contact! Front! Scatter!”

The voice of Captain Colton Hayes cracked over the comms, distorted by panic and static. Through my scope, I watched the fourteen Marines of Alpha Company scramble, diving for cover that wasn’t there. They were fighting blind. The Afghan night in the Helmand Province is a physical weight, a suffocating blanket of absolute black. Without the right gear, you might as well be walking on the surface of the moon with your eyes closed.

The enemy, however, wasn’t blind.

A second shot cracked through the silence, missing Corporal Brennan Morgan’s head by inches, shattering a rock near his ear. Then a third Marine went down, his femur obliterated.

I gritted my teeth, the muscles in my jaw popping. My heart rate, usually a steady drumbeat, threatened to spike. I forced it down. Control. Calm is a choice.

They were being herded. Systematically eliminated. I had been tracking this specific cell of eight snipers for five days. They were pros—likely former Afghan National Army commandoes turned rogue. They had discipline, they had overlapping fields of fire, and most dangerously, they had thermal optics. They could see the body heat of the Marines glowing like neon signs in the dark.

Hayes had maybe ten minutes before his entire company was wiped off the map.

I shifted my weight, and a sharp, grinding bolt of lightning shot up my left leg. My knee. The titanium pins and surgical wire holding the joint together throbbed in the cold mountain air. It was a hateful, familiar pain—the reason I was currently sitting on a ridge designated as a “non-combat intelligence observer” instead of being down there with a rifle squad.

“You’re broken, Staff Sergeant,” Colonel Brennan had told me back at Camp Lejeune. “You’re a liability.”

I looked through my scope again. Below me, fourteen good men were dying because they couldn’t see what was killing them. I could.

I keyed my radio, bypassing the standard protocols. I didn’t care about rank anymore. I didn’t care about the inevitable court-martial.

“Overwatch to Alpha Company,” I said. My voice surprised me. It wasn’t shaking. It was flat, cold, the voice of someone ordering a coffee at a drive-thru. “I can hunt them. Send coordinates and stay low.”

There was a pause on the line. A beat of stunned silence amidst the chaos of screaming men and cracking gunfire.

“Overwatch, this is Alpha Six,” Captain Hayes yelled, his voice ragged. He was pressed flat against a boulder, blood running down his cheek from rock fragments. “Who the hell are you? We need actual support, not—”

“Captain,” I cut him off. I didn’t have time for his ego. “I am four hundred meters northwest of your position on Ridgeline Alpha. I have been tracking enemy movement for ninety minutes. You are facing eight snipers in coordinated positions with thermal capabilities and PAS-13 weapon sights. I can eliminate them, but you need to trust me and keep your people down.”

Below, the chaos was absolute. Corporal Dawson Clark was trying to tourniquet a shattered leg in the dark, his hands slick with blood that looked black under the starlight. Another shot rang out. Sergeant Travis Holden screamed—a high, guttural sound—as a round took two fingers off his left hand.

“Overwatch, you’re one person!” Hayes shouted, the desperation bleeding through the radio. “These snipers have us in a killbox! We need air support, we need a platoon, we need—”

“Captain, you are out of time,” I said, my voice dropping an octave, becoming almost gentle. “I am moving now. Keep your IR strobes off. Do not shoot at muzzle flashes; you will only give away your positions. I’ve got this.”

I didn’t wait for his permission.

I adjusted the straps on my helmet, the weight of the AN/PSQ-20 Enhanced Night Vision Goggles settling over my eyes. This was experimental tech—a fusion of traditional light amplification and a thermal overlay. It was better than what the enemy had. They could see heat; I could see everything. I could see the heat signatures of their bodies, yes, but I could also see the cold, crisp detail of the terrain, and crucially, the faint electromagnetic emissions from their own scopes.

I pulled my SR-25 closer. The rifle was an extension of my body, a work of art with a suppressor that reduced the acoustic signature to a whisper. Subsonic ammunition. No supersonic crack. No muzzle flash.

I was a ghost. And it was time to haunt them.

The pain in my knee flared as I crawled twenty meters to my left, dragging my body over razor-sharp shale. Pain is information, I recited the mantra Master Sergeant Bishop had drilled into me at Quantico. It tells you something is damaged. It doesn’t tell you to stop.

Target One.

He was positioned 520 meters northeast, tucked into a rocky outcrop. A classic sniper’s nest. Through my enhanced optics, his thermal signature was a bright blob against the cold stone. He was prone, comfortable, scanning the valley floor for another Marine to maim. He thought he was safe because of the distance. He thought the night belonged to him.

I settled the crosshairs. My heart rate dropped to 58 beats per minute.

Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

I squeezed the trigger.

The rifle coughed—a soft, metallic chuff. The recoil was negligible.

Through the scope, I watched the bullet impact. The thermal signature went limp instantly, the heat blooming slightly as blood pooled, then the body slid sideways.

“One down,” I whispered to myself. “Seven to go.”

I didn’t celebrate. The fundamental rule of night sniping is paranoia. You never shoot twice from the same position. Even with a suppressor, sound travels. Even in the dark, there are clues.

I grabbed my gear and scrambled. My knee screamed in protest, a hot poker twisting in the joint. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to move, crab-walking thirty meters west, sliding into a depression behind a slab of granite.

Below in the valley, the silence was heavy. The enemy fire had stopped. They were confused. They were communicating, trying to figure out why their man on the northeast ridge had stopped checking in.

Target Two.

This one was 640 meters south, concealed in a dried riverbed. A smart position. It gave him cover and a clear line of sight to the pinned Marines. I saw the muzzle flash through my optics—he was firing blind, trying to provoke a reaction.

He was using a flash suppressor, but it wasn’t enough to hide from me. I waited. Patience is the weapon that kills more men than bullets.

He fired again. I saw the thermal bloom of the barrel heating up. He was working the bolt, ejecting a casing, loading another round. His focus was entirely downrange, his eye glued to his scope, his brain processing the shot he just took.

He never saw me.

My subsonic round covered the distance in 1.4 seconds. It arched through the dark air, silent and deadly.

The enemy sniper collapsed forward over his rifle.

“Two down. Six to go.”

“Overwatch… Alpha Six,” Hayes whispered over the comms. The skepticism was gone, replaced by a stunned, fragile hope. “What… what is your status?”

“Two enemy snipers eliminated,” I replied, keeping my voice devoid of the adrenaline coursing through my veins. “Six remaining. Stay in position. This is going to take time.”

“Who are you?” Corporal Morgan asked in the background, his voice barely audible. “She sounds… bored. She just killed two of them in ninety seconds.”

I wasn’t bored. I was in the zone. This was a state of being I hadn’t felt in eighteen months. Not since the IED. Not since the hospital.

My mind flashed back to that sterile white room in Germany. The doctor holding up the X-ray of my knee. “Staff Sergeant Barrett, the structural damage is extensive. You’ll walk again, but your days of carrying a ruck, of climbing mountains, of being a sniper… those are over. We’re recommending a medical discharge or reassignment to admin.”

I remembered the rage. It wasn’t a hot, fiery anger. It was cold. It was a block of ice sitting in my chest. I had spent eight months in rehab, screaming into a pillow while physical therapists bent my leg in ways that felt like torture. I passed the physical fitness test. I shot a perfect score on the range.

And still, Colonel Brennan had looked at my limp and put me on the bench. “Observer status only. No combat operations.”

Well, Colonel, observe this.

Target Three and Four.

I had to move again. My knee was throbbing with a dull, sickening ache that radiated up to my hip. I ignored it.

I spotted them 400 meters west. A shooter and a spotter team nestled in a cluster of boulders. This was dangerous. A spotter meant two sets of eyes. If I took out the shooter, the spotter would radio my position or return fire. If I took out the spotter, the shooter would react instantly.

I had to be faster than human reaction time.

I adjusted my scope. The wind was picking up, swirling through the valley. I watched the dust kick up on the rocks near them. Quartering wind, maybe four miles per hour. I dialed the adjustment into my scope.

I took the spotter first. He was the one with the binoculars, the one scanning for threats.

Crack.

The spotter’s thermal signature went dark as he slumped backward.

The shooter reacted. I saw his head snap toward his partner. He realized something was wrong. He started to lift his rifle, scanning the darkness, panic setting in.

It took me four seconds to cycle the bolt and reacquire the target.

Crack.

The shooter dropped before his rifle ever reached his shoulder.

“Three down. Four down,” I murmured. “Halfway there.”

I rolled onto my back, gasping for air. The pain in my leg was becoming a problem. It wasn’t just pain anymore; the joint felt loose, unstable. I reached down and tightened the strap of my knee brace until I lost circulation. It would have to hold.

“Alpha Six, this is Overwatch,” I radioed. “Four enemy snipers eliminated. Four remaining. They know they’re being hunted now. This next part gets harder.”

“Just you?” Hayes asked. “You’re doing this alone?”

“Just me, Captain.”

“You’re one person and you’ve killed four snipers in…” I heard him check his watch. “…fourteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes,” I corrected gently. Accuracy mattered. “Keep your Marines down. The remaining snipers are going to panic soon. When they panic, they move. When they move, they die.”

I dragged myself up to a crouch. The adrenaline was starting to mix with the pain meds I had taken earlier, creating a strange, lucid clarity. I wasn’t just Sydney Barrett, the “broken” Staff Sergeant. I wasn’t the woman with the limp.

I was the predator.

The remaining four snipers had gone silent. They were smart. They realized that their thermal optics, their greatest strength, were useless against something they couldn’t see. They were realizing that somewhere in the black rocks above them, there was a monster that didn’t play by their rules.

But they had made a mistake. They assumed I was just another shooter. They didn’t know I had been watching them for five days. I knew their fallback positions. I knew their escape routes. I knew where they would go when the fear took hold.

I limped toward the eastern ridge, my eyes scanning the darkness. The hunt wasn’t over. In fact, it was just beginning.

PART 2

The silence that followed the fourth kill was heavier than the gunfire. It wasn’t a peaceful silence; it was a vacuum, a pressurized void where the remaining enemy snipers were realizing that the math had changed. They had started the night as the hunters, apex predators with thermal eyes, picking off terrified Marines in a barrel. Now, the barrel was open, and something else was looking in.

“Overwatch, Alpha Six,” Captain Hayes whispered. “It’s been two minutes. What are they doing?”

“They’re realizing they’re mortal, Captain,” I replied, shifting my position again. “Give me a moment.”

I needed to move. My knee was throbbing, a deep, rhythmic pounding that felt like a hammer striking bone with every beat of my heart. I gritted my teeth, dragging my body through a patch of scree. The loose rocks dug into my elbows, tearing through the fabric of my uniform, but I welcomed the stinging sensation. It was sharp. It was immediate. It distracted me from the deep, structural ache in my leg that screamed you don’t belong here.

I found a new vantage point, wedged between two slabs of granite that still held the day’s heat. Through my enhanced optics, the valley was a wash of green phosphorescence and white-hot thermal signatures.

Target Five.

He made a mistake born of panic. He used his radio.

The enemy snipers were disciplined, but fear makes people stupid. He was probably trying to coordinate with the others, trying to understand why half his team had gone dark. Through my headset, which was tuned to scan a broad spectrum of frequencies, I heard the burst of static—an encrypted squawk. But more importantly, my detection equipment picked up the electromagnetic spike.

It lit up on my HUD like a flare.

I traced the signal to a cluster of thick brush 310 meters north. To the naked eye, it was just a dark patch of scrub. Even with standard night vision, it would have looked like nothing. But through my thermal overlay, I saw the anomaly. The brush was camouflaging him visually, but it couldn’t hide the heat of a human body completely. There was a faint, ghostly glow emanating from the center of the bush—a temperature variance of maybe two degrees against the surrounding rocks.

Two degrees was all I needed.

“I see you,” I whispered.

He was curled up, thinking he was invisible. I adjusted for the angle. The shot was close, almost too easy. I felt a flicker of something that wasn’t quite guilt, but a recognition of the unfairness of it. He was fighting a war with 20th-century tactics against 21st-century technology.

I squeezed the trigger.

The bullet punched through the brush. The thermal signature didn’t just go limp; it jerked violently, then collapsed. The radio signal cut out instantly.

“Five down,” I said. “Three to go.”

The remaining three didn’t wait to be picked off. They broke.

Targets Six and Seven.

“Movement!” Hayes shouted over the comms. “They’re running! I have visuals on the ridge!”

“Do not engage!” I snapped. “You’ll miss and give away your position. Let them run.”

Movement is death in night combat. As long as they stayed still, minimized their heat signature, and used the terrain, they had a chance. But by running, they turned themselves into fireworks.

Through my scope, they looked like glowing white stick figures sprinting across a lunar landscape. They were terrified, abandoning their tactical spacing, just trying to get to the fallback position three hundred meters south.

I tracked the lead runner. He was fast, scrambling over rocks with a desperate agility. I led him by three meters, calculating the flight time of the subsonic round. It was simple geometry.

Crack.

The lead runner folded mid-stride, tumbling down the shale slope like a discard doll.

His partner, the seventh sniper, didn’t stop to check on him. He veered right, diving behind a large boulder about 430 meters away. He pressed himself against the rock, his chest heaving. I could see the rapid pulse of his heat signature, the blood pumping hot with adrenaline.

He thought the boulder protected him. And it did, from the Marines in the valley. But he had forgotten about the angles. I was higher up, positioned on a parallel ridge. From my vantage point, the boulder only covered his front. His back was exposed to the sky.

And to me.

I took my time. I checked the wind again. It had died down, the night air settling into a breathless stillness. I aligned the crosshairs with the center of his thermal mass.

“Go to sleep,” I breathed.

The rifle kicked gently. The seventh sniper slumped against the rock, sliding down slowly until he was just a dark heap at the base of the boulder.

“Seven down,” I reported. “One left.”

My leg was on fire now. The adrenaline that had sustained me for the first twenty minutes was starting to curdle into exhaustion. I wiped sweat from my eyes, careful not to dislodge the heavy goggles.

The last one. Target Eight.

He was different. He hadn’t panicked. He hadn’t run. He hadn’t used his radio. He had gone completely dark.

I scanned the ridges, my eyes burning. Nothing. No thermal bloom. No electromagnetic spike. No movement.

“Overwatch,” Hayes whispered. “We’re clear? Can we move?”

“Negative,” I said sharply. “One remains. And he’s the smart one.”

I closed my eyes for a second, visualizing the terrain. I had spent five days mapping this valley. I knew every cave, every crevice, every potential hide site. If I were him—if I were the last survivor of a massacre, knowing there was a predator on the high ground—where would I go?

I wouldn’t run. I would burrow.

There was a deep crevice about 600 meters southeast. It was a geological scar in the earth, narrow and deep. It offered excellent protection from aerial surveillance and blocked thermal signatures from almost every angle. I had noted it two days ago as a “Grade A” hide site.

I swung my scope toward the crevice.

Nothing. It was just a black tear in the gray landscape.

But he had to be there. It was the only logical place.

I focused on the mouth of the crevice. The rock around it was cold, cooling rapidly in the night air. If he was in there, his body heat would eventually warm the air inside, creating a faint plume, a thermal chimney effect.

I waited. One minute. Two minutes.

My knee screamed. Just give up, a voice in my head whispered. It sounded like Colonel Brennan. You’ve done enough. You saved most of them. Call in an airstrike and go home.

No. An airstrike takes twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, that sniper could reposition. He could kill another Marine.

I watched the crevice.

There.

It was barely visible—a wisp of heat, like smoke, curling up from the darkness of the crack. It was his breath. He was panting, trying to control his fear, and the warm air from his lungs was betraying him.

I couldn’t see his body. He was deep inside. But I knew where he had to be lying to watch the valley. I visualized his position through the rock. I calculated the penetration capability of my rounds.

No, I couldn’t shoot through that much stone. I had to make him move.

I adjusted my aim, targeting a loose cluster of rocks directly above the crevice opening. If I couldn’t hit him, I could bury him. Or at least scare him into the open.

I fired. The bullet struck the rock face, shattering a chunk of granite that rained down into the opening.

It worked.

A figure scrambled out of the crevice, coughing, rifle raised, looking wildly for the source of the falling rock. He stepped out into the open, fully exposed, outlined against the cold ground like a target on a range.

He froze, perhaps sensing the crosshairs on him. For a split second, looking through the green-tinted optics, I felt a strange connection. Hunter to hunter. He knew it was over. He lowered his rifle slightly.

I didn’t hesitate.

The shot took him in the chest. He fell backward, disappearing into the dark, his thermal signature fading as he hit the ground.

“Eight down,” I said. My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “Alpha Company, this is Overwatch. All eight enemy snipers eliminated. The valley is yours.”

I slumped back against the rock, the rifle slipping from my hands. I grabbed my knee, gasping as the pain finally washed over me in a tidal wave. I was shaking. Not from fear, but from the crash.

I had done it. The “broken” observer, the liability, had just cleared the board.

PART 3

Getting down from the ridge was harder than the climb up. My leg had stiffened, the scar tissue tightening like a vice. Every step was a negotiation between willpower and biology. By the time I reached the valley floor, the sun was threatening to breach the eastern horizon, painting the sky in bruises of purple and gray.

The Marines of Alpha Company were still in their defensive positions, though some had started to move, checking bodies, securing the perimeter. As I limped out of the shadows, rifles swung toward me before lowering.

Captain Hayes stood near a Humvee, his face caked in dust and dried blood. He looked exhausted, aged ten years in a single night. Beside him, Corporal Morgan and the medic, Clark, were packing up their gear.

I walked toward them. I wasn’t wearing a standard infantry kit. My uniform was torn, my specialized headset bulky and alien-looking compared to their standard-issue helmets. And I was limping—badly. I couldn’t hide it now.

Hayes watched me approach. His eyes traveled from my face to the rifle slung over my shoulder, then down to my leg, and back up.

“Staff Sergeant?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Captain,” I nodded, stopping a few feet away. I extended a hand. “Sydney Barrett. Sorry about the radio protocol earlier. It seemed… inefficient given the circumstances.”

Hayes took my hand. His grip was firm, but his expression was one of total bewilderment.

“You…” He shook his head, looking past me at the ridge I had just descended. “You took out eight of them? Alone? In the dark?”

“Darkness is just a lack of photons, Captain,” I said, leaning my weight onto my good leg. “It’s not a barrier if you have the right tools. And the patience.”

“I thought…” He paused, looking uncomfortable. “When you first radioed, I thought you were some intel jockey who didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t think…”

“You didn’t think a woman with a bum leg could save your company,” I finished for him. My tone wasn’t accusatory, just factual.

Hayes looked me in the eye. “Yeah. That’s exactly what I thought. And I was wrong. I was dead wrong.”

Corporal Morgan stepped forward. “Ma’am, with all due respect, who the hell are you?”

“I’m the person who watched you walk into this ambush for three days and couldn’t get anyone to listen,” I said, the frustration leaking out. “I’m glad I didn’t wait for permission this time.”

I looked over at the casualty collection point. They had covered Private Shaw’s body with a poncho. The sight of his boots sticking out punched a hole in my victory. Eight kills. Fourteen survivors. But one dead kid who shouldn’t have died.

“We need to debrief,” Hayes said softly. “But first… thank you. My guys are alive because of you.”

The debriefing room at Firebase Sentinel smelled of stale coffee and impending discipline.

Colonel Brennan sat behind the metal table, her face a mask of stone. Lieutenant Fletcher, the intel officer, was typing furiously on a laptop. Hayes stood by the wall, arms crossed, looking like he was ready to fight anyone who raised their voice.

“Staff Sergeant Barrett,” Brennan began, her voice low. “Let’s review the facts. You were assigned as a non-combat observer. You were explicitly ordered to avoid engagement. Last night, you violated those orders, left your assigned sector, and engaged enemy combatants.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. I sat at attention, though my leg was throbbing under the table.

“You eliminated eight high-value targets,” she continued, looking at a report in front of her. “Targets that have been harassing our patrols for months. You saved an entire Marine company from probable annihilation.”

“I did my job, Ma’am.”

“No,” Brennan slammed the file shut. “You did a job I told you that you weren’t capable of doing anymore. I told you that you were broken. I told you that your injury made you a liability.”

The room went silent. I held her gaze. I wasn’t going to apologize for surviving. I wasn’t going to apologize for being good at what I do.

“Ma’am,” I said quietly. “My knee hurts. It hurts right now. It hurts when I walk, and it hurts when I sleep. But the bullet doesn’t care about my knee. The scope doesn’t care. The darkness doesn’t care. The only thing that matters is whether I can make the shot. Last night, I made eight of them.”

Brennan stared at me for a long, agonizing minute. Then, the stone mask cracked. She let out a sigh that sounded like a tire losing air.

“I was prepared to court-martial you this morning,” she admitted. “Disobeying direct orders. Going rogue.”

She stood up and walked around the desk, leaning against the edge, looking down at my leg.

“But then I read Hayes’s report. And I looked at the intel regarding those snipers. If you hadn’t acted, Alpha Company would be in body bags right now. And I would be writing fourteen letters to mothers explaining why their sons died while an intelligence observer sat on a ridge and watched.”

She looked me in the eye. “I was wrong, Barrett. I looked at the injury and I stopped seeing the Marine. That’s on me. I let my concern for your safety overshadow your capability.”

“So, am I being court-martialed, Ma’am?”

“No,” Brennan said, a small, grim smile touching her lips. “You’re being reassigned. Active combat status. We’re going to formalize your methods. If you can do this, you can teach others to do it. We can’t have just one ghost in the mountains. We need a legion of them.”

The weeks that followed were a blur of validation and exhaustion. I wasn’t just the “broken sniper” anymore. I was the architect of a new doctrine.

We called it the Nocturnal Counter-Sniper Program. I spent my days and nights teaching twelve hand-picked Marines how to see the world the way I did. I taught them to read thermal signatures, to track electromagnetic ghosts, to breathe in the rhythm of the wind.

But the real lesson wasn’t about the gear.

One afternoon, we were out in the sector, tracking a high-value target known as Khaled—the commander who had coordinated the ambush in Shadow Valley. We had set a trap, using the very darkness he relied on against him.

We caught him. We eliminated his security detail with surgical precision, dropping six fighters in under ten seconds. But then we found a straggler.

A young sniper, maybe twenty years old, wounded in the shoulder. He was scrambling up a shale slope, trying to escape. He had dropped his rifle. He was terrified, bleeding, and utterly defeated.

I had him in my crosshairs. 700 meters. An easy shot.

“Take him, Staff Sergeant,” Corporal Morgan whispered from beside me. “End it.”

I looked through the scope. I saw his fear. I saw the way he was clutching his arm. The mission was accomplished. The commander was captured. The threat was neutralized. Killing him now wouldn’t save a life; it would just be an execution.

“Negative,” I said, lowering the rifle.

“Ma’am?”

“He’s done. He’s wounded, unarmed, and running. We’re not butchers, Morgan. We’re professionals.”

I watched him disappear over the ridge. It was a moment of tactical mercy, yes, but it was also a message to myself. I hadn’t lost my humanity in the dark. I controlled the night, but I didn’t let the night control me.

Six months later, I stood in Arlington National Cemetery. The Virginia air was thick and humid, a stark contrast to the dry cold of Afghanistan.

I found the grave I was looking for. Private First Class Landon Shaw.

I stood there for a long time. I traced the letters of his name with my eyes. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I wanted to tell him that I should have shot sooner, that I should have broken protocol five minutes earlier.

But the dead don’t need apologies. They need meaning.

“Your death changed everything,” I whispered to the stone.

And it had. Because of that night, because of the “broken” Staff Sergeant who refused to stay on the bench, there were now over two hundred Marines trained in my tactics. Enemy sniper attacks at night had dropped by 70%. The darkness was no longer a sanctuary for the enemy; it was a trap.

I touched the patch on my shoulder—the new unit insignia for the night operations group. A scope reticle over a crescent moon.

People used to tell me that no one stops snipers at night. They were right. No one stops them. But we do.

I turned and walked away, my limp still there, a permanent reminder of the cost. But I didn’t try to hide it anymore. The pain was just information. And the information said I was alive, I was capable, and I had work to do.

The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the rows of white headstones. Soon it would be dark.

Good. I do my best work in the dark.