The Ghost in the Grey Coveralls
Part 1: The Art of Invisibility
The air inside the Naval Special Warfare training facility in San Diego didn’t smell like freedom. It smelled of cordite, stale sweat, and the sharp, chemical sting of industrial floor cleaner. To most people, it was the scent of heroism in the making. To me, it was just Tuesday.
My name is Ren Talivic. To the world, and specifically to the United States Navy, I am a fifty-eight-year-old widow, a refugee from a dissolved Eastern European state, and a woman whose primary contribution to national security is ensuring the latrines are spotless and the firing range floor is free of brass casings. I am the furniture. I am the background static. I am the invisible woman in the grey coveralls pushing a mop bucket with a squeaky wheel.
And that is exactly how I survived the last twenty-five years.
The morning light streamed through the high, reinforced windows, cutting through the lingering gun smoke in golden shafts. It was a beautiful illusion, hiding the dust motes dancing in the air. I moved methodically across the polished concrete, my mop leaving perfect, damp swaths that evaporated almost instantly in the dry California heat.
Left to right. Twist. Rinse. Repeat.
My body, lean and weathered by time and secrets, moved on autopilot. My slate-grey hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it pulled at my temples, accentuating cheekbones that hinted at a Slavic ancestry I had spent two decades burying under a generic American accent. The name patch on my chest, simply reading TALIVIC, was fraying at the edges.
I was cleaning the perimeter of the 800-yard indoor range when the heavy steel doors swung open with a metallic clang that echoed like a prison gate.
They walked in with the swagger of gods. Eight of them. They moved with that distinctive, rolling gait of men who had survived the hell of BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training) but hadn’t yet earned the Trident pinned to their chests. They were lean, tanned, and radiated a terrifying amount of testosterone.
Leading the pack was Chief Petty Officer Thaddeus “Thad” Evercraft. He was a specimen, I’d give him that. Square-jawed, shoulders broad enough to block out the sun, and possessing the easy, unearned confidence of a man who has never truly been humbled by life. He held his rifle not like a tool, but like a scepter.
“Gentlemen,” Commander Riker Blackwood called out from the observation deck, setting his coffee mug down. He gave me the same glance he’d give a traffic cone—an obstacle to be noted and ignored. “Range is hot in five. Today’s precision exercise determines who leads the next phase of training. Best marksman gets command privileges.”
Blackwood paused, his eyes scanning the young men. “I suggest you make it count.”
I didn’t look up. I kept my eyes on the wet concrete, but my peripheral vision was wide open. I saw the way Thad smirked, a quick twitch of the lips that said, This is already mine.
But I also saw the one standing apart.
Callum Marsh. He was leaner than the others, his movements deliberate rather than performative. When Thad barked orders to set up the shooting stations, the other six recruits responded with a synchronized, enthusiastic “Hooyah!” that rattled the walls. Callum just moved. He unpacked his gear with a quiet efficiency that made my skin prickle. It was familiar. It was the way we used to move.
Quiet. Lethal. unseen.
Thad noticed it, too. He didn’t like it. Leaders like Thad needed an audience; men like Callum didn’t even need a stage.
“Move it, Marsh,” Thad snapped, throwing a sandbag onto the bench. “You’re moving like molasses. We’re burning daylight.”
“On it, Chief,” Callum replied, his voice steady, devoid of the alpha-male posturing that saturated the room.
I worked my way closer to the benches, my mop bucket rattling softly. The recruits adjusted their paths to avoid me without even looking at me. I was an automaton. A non-player character in their video game.
The shooting began. The crack-thump of the M4 carbines filled the cavernous space. The sound was rhythmic, almost hypnotic. I could tell who was shooting just by the cadence. Thad fired with aggressive speed—crack, crack, crack—muscling the weapon back onto the target. Callum fired with a slower, heartbeat rhythm. Breathe. Crack. Pause. Breathe. Crack.
I moved to the brass collection point, bending down to sweep up the spent casings. Thad had finished his round and was pacing behind the line, watching Callum shoot. Callum’s shots were drifting slightly to the right. Not much—maybe an inch at two hundred yards—but in this world, an inch was the difference between a hostage rescue and a diplomatic incident.
“Exhale completely before you squeeze,” Thad lectured, loud enough for Blackwood to hear in the booth. “Your breathing is pushing your barrel. Those are housewife hands you got there, Marsh. Soft. You need to toughen them up if you want to control the weapon.”
Laughter rippled through the group. It was the cruel, easy laughter of a wolf pack identifying the runt.
Callum lowered his weapon, his jaw tight. He said nothing, just adjusted his stance and wiped his palms on his fatigues.
I was close now, barely three feet from the bench where Thad had rested his weapon while he critiqued the others. It was an M40A6 sniper rifle, the long-range precision instrument of the Marine Corps, adopted here for specialized training. It was a beautiful machine.
Without thinking, my eyes slid over the weapon. I wasn’t looking at it like a janitor looks at a cool object; I was looking at it like a surgeon looks at a scalpel. My eyes checked the bolt closure, the seating of the magazine, and finally, the optics.
I lingered on the scope for a fraction of a second too long.
“Hey!”
The voice was a whip crack. I froze, my grip tightening on the mop handle. I slowly raised my head. Thad Evercraft was staring at me, a sneer curling his lip. He nudged the candidate next to him.
“Careful, sweetheart,” Thad called out, his voice booming in the momentary silence of the range. “You’ll scratch the barrel, lady.”
The pack laughed again.
“These aren’t your household cleaning supplies,” Thad continued, stepping into my personal space. He smelled of gun oil and expensive cologne. “Go wax the hallway. leave the heavy machinery to the men.”
Rage is a funny thing. For twenty-five years, I had suppressed every instinct I had. I had buried Eila Reeves—my real name, my true self—under layers of floor wax and silence. But in that moment, looking at this arrogant child who thought war was a sporting event, I felt a spark of the old fire.
I looked him in the eye. For one second, I let the mask slip. I let him see the cold, dead assessment of a woman who had spent three days lying in a pile of camel dung in the Iraqi desert waiting for a single target to walk onto a balcony.
Thad blinked. He saw something, but he was too young and too arrogant to understand what it was. He likely just saw a crazy old cleaning lady staring him down.
“Sorry, sir,” I mumbled, my accent thickening on purpose, reverting to the submissive posture of the help. “Just looking. Very shiny.”
I turned and shuffled away, the laughter of the SEALs following me like a bad smell. Commander Blackwood watched me go from the booth, his brow furrowed. He was sharper than the others. He had seen the exchange. He had seen that I hadn’t flinched.
Two weeks passed. The heat in San Diego spiked, turning the training facility into a convection oven. Tensions among the cohort rose with the temperature.
Thad had been designated temporary Team Leader based on his cumulative scores. He wore the title like a crown. His harassment of Callum had shifted from casual insults to something more targeted, more malicious. Callum was the only threat to Thad’s dominance, and Thad knew it.
I was invisible, but I saw everything. I saw the way Thad would “accidentally” bump Callum during mess, spilling his tray. I saw the extra duty assignments that somehow always fell on Callum’s shoulders.
And then, I saw the rifle.
It was early morning, before the official start of training. I was in the armory cage, emptying the trash bins. The armory officer was on a smoke break. The room was empty, save for Thad.
He was at the workbench with Callum’s assigned rifle. He wasn’t cleaning it. He was working on the windage knob of the scope with a small screwdriver.
I stopped breathing. He was adjusting the zero. He was dialing it a quarter-turn off. At close range, Callum wouldn’t notice. But at 800 yards? That quarter-turn would send the bullet drifting six inches off target. It would look like shooter error. It would look like Callum couldn’t handle the pressure.
Thad looked up, hearing the rustle of the trash bag. He saw me.
“Just… checking the mounts,” he said, his voice smooth, daring me to challenge him. “Maintenance.”
I nodded, keeping my head down, and hurried out.
“Maintenance,” I whispered to myself in the hallway. My hands were shaking, not from fear, but from the adrenaline of a moral dilemma I hadn’t faced in decades.
Stay dead, Eila, the voice in my head warned. Interfere, and you expose yourself. You expose everything.
But later that morning, during drills, I watched Callum struggle. His rifle jammed. Then his shots went wide.
“Problem with your equipment, Marsh?” Thad barked, playing the role of the concerned leader perfectly. “Or is it operator error?”
“Scope feels off,” Callum muttered, sweat stinging his eyes. “I’m holding dead center.”
“It’s the wind,” Thad dismissed him. “You’re not reading the mirage. You’re choking.”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t watch a good soldier be destroyed by a petty tyrant.
During the lunch break, the range emptied out. The recruits went to the mess hall. I waited until the coast was clear. I left my mop bucket at the door and slipped into the firing line.
I moved to Callum’s rifle rack. My hands, usually rough from bleach and labor, became instruments of precision. I checked the windage. Sure enough, quarter turn left.
I pulled a small multi-tool from my pocket—my one piece of non-issued contraband—and reset the dial. I didn’t stop there. I field-stripped the bolt carrier group in twelve seconds flat, found the burr on the extractor that was causing the jams, filed it down, and reassembled the weapon.
I was back at my mop bucket before the door clicked open.
When the afternoon session began, Callum’s rifle sang. Crack. Ping. Steel target at 600 yards. Crack. Ping. 800 yards.
Thad watched, his jaw unhinged. He looked from Callum to the rifle, then his eyes darted around the room. They landed on me. I was diligently scrubbing a scuff mark on the floor, humming a folk song from a country that no longer existed.
The next day, in the cafeteria, I was eating my sandwich alone in the far corner. It was a tuna sandwich on dry wheat bread. It tasted like cardboard.
“Mind if I join you, ma’am?”
I looked up. Callum Marsh stood there, tray in hand. He was tall, lanky, with eyes that held a depth of sorrow unusual for a man of twenty-four.
“It is a free country,” I said, gesturing to the chair.
He sat. He ate in silence for a few minutes, peeling an orange with methodical precision.
“I know it was you,” he said quietly.
I didn’t look up from my sandwich. “I do not know what you mean. I am just janitor.”
“My rifle,” he said. “The windage was reset. The extractor was filed smooth. That wasn’t the armorer. The armorer is lazy. That was… professional.”
I chewed slowly. “Maybe you have guardian angel.”
Callum smiled, a faint, fleeting thing. “Maybe. My grandmother used to talk about guardian angels. She served in Desert Storm. Supply officer. Adeline Marrow.”
The name hit me like a physical blow. Adeline. Addie.
I fought to keep my face neutral, but my heart hammered against my ribs. Adeline was the one who smuggled us our specialized ammunition. She was the one who erased the logs when we came back from missions that officially never happened. She was the only one outside the unit who knew the ghosts were real.
“I have heard name,” I said, my voice tight. “Many people served.”
“She died last year,” Callum said softly. “Before she passed, she gave me this.”
He reached into his pocket and placed a coin on the table.
It wasn’t a standard challenge coin. It was heavy, silver, and unadorned except for a single engraving: An eye inside a crosshair.
I stared at it. I could feel the weight of it in my own memory. We didn’t have coins. We didn’t have patches. But Addie… she had made six of these. One for each of us. And one for herself.
“She told me,” Callum whispered, leaning in, “that if I ever found someone who looked at a rifle the way a mother looks at a child, I should show them this. She said the Watchers are always there.”
I looked at the boy. Really looked at him. I saw Addie’s chin. I saw her stubbornness.
“Your grandmother was a wise woman,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. “Put that away, boy. Before you scratch it.”
Callum stared at me, his eyes widening as he recognized the echo of the phrase Thad had used. He pocketed the coin.
“Thank you,” he said. “For the rifle.”
“I did nothing,” I said, standing up and grabbing my tray. “Eat your fruit. You need the Vitamin C.”
The day before final qualifications, the atmosphere in the facility was toxic. Thad was prowling the hallways like a caged tiger. He knew he was losing his grip. Callum’s scores were matching his, and Callum’s leadership during the tactical simulations had been superior—quiet, effective, bloodless.
I was restocking the cleaning cart in the narrow supply corridor when a shadow fell over me.
“You think you’re clever, don’t you?”
Thad Evercraft blocked the exit. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked dangerous.
“Excuse me, Chief,” I said, trying to push past.
He slammed his hand against the wall, blocking my path.
“I know you touched that rifle,” he hissed. “I don’t know who you are, or who you’re sleeping with to keep this job, but you need to learn your place. There is a natural order to the world. Warriors fight. And old women clean up the shit.”
He leaned in, his face inches from mine. “Interfere tomorrow, and I will make sure Immigration takes a very close look at your file. I have friends in low places.”
He expected fear. He expected me to cower.
Instead, I felt a shift in my center of gravity. My feet adjusted, distributing my weight. My breathing slowed. My hands, hidden in the pockets of my coveralls, curled into specific shapes. I could incapacitate him in three seconds. A throat strike, a knee to the peroneal nerve, a shattered orbital socket. It would be so easy.
I looked up at him. The mask was gone.
“You understand natural order, Chief?” I said, my voice dropping an octave, losing the fake accent entirely. “The natural order is that the loud ones die first. The quiet ones survive.”
Thad blinked, confusion clouding his anger. He stepped back instinctively, his lizard brain recognizing a predator.
“What did you say?” he stammered.
“I said,” I replied, forcing the accent back, slumping my shoulders, becoming the janitor again, “I am out of bleach. Please move.”
Before he could process the whiplash, Commander Blackwood turned the corner at the end of the hall.
“Everything alright here?” Blackwood asked, his eyes darting between us.
“Fine, sir,” Thad said, straightening up, but he looked pale. He cast one last, bewildered look at me and hurried away.
Blackwood walked up to me. He studied my face.
“You okay, Ren?”
“Just fine, Commander,” I said, gripping the handle of my cart. “Just taking out the trash.”
“Tomorrow is the big day,” Blackwood said. “Admiral Preston is coming to observe. Old school Navy. Sharp eyes.”
“I will make sure the windows are clean,” I said.
“See that you do,” Blackwood said enigmatic. “I’d hate for anyone to miss the show.”
He walked away.
I stood alone in the hallway. My heart was pounding. Thad had threatened my cover. He had threatened the only safety I had known for half a lifetime.
Tomorrow was qualification. The 1000-yard shot.
I reached into my pocket and touched the photograph I kept there—me and the girls, twenty-five years ago, standing in the dust.
Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow, the janitor takes the day off.
Part 2: The Echo of the Ghost
The morning of the final qualification was breathless. The air in the facility felt thin, sucked dry by the collective anxiety of twenty men.
Admiral Preston arrived at 0800 hours. He didn’t walk; he occupied space. He was a man carved from granite and regulation, his silver hair cropped close, his eyes scanning the facility with the predatory boredom of a lion looking for a limp.
I was scrubbing the observation glass when he entered. He paused, his gaze sweeping over me. For a second, I felt a flicker of recognition—not of my face, but of my type. The unseen. The utility. He moved on.
“Carry on,” he muttered to no one in particular.
The range was set for the “Long Walk”—a grueling sequence of stress shoots culminating in the 1000-yard cold bore shot. This was the SEAL equivalent of a final exam, but with live ammunition and careers on the line.
Thad Evercraft was in his element. He moved through the obstacle course like a machine, double-tapping targets with terrifying efficiency. He was fast, aggressive, and loud. He finished the physical portion three minutes ahead of the curve, his chest heaving, a grin plastered on his face as he high-fived his sycophants.
Callum Marsh was different. He was slower on the obstacles, conserving energy. Where Thad smashed through doors, Callum picked the locks. Where Thad sprinted, Callum flowed. But the stopwatch didn’t care about style, and Thad was winning.
They reached the final stage. The 1000-yard line.
Two M40A6 rifles sat on the mats. The targets were steel plates the size of a dinner plate, painted white with a black center. At this distance, they were barely visible to the naked eye.
Thad went first. He dropped into the prone position, confident. “Wind is three miles per hour, full value from the left,” he called out. He didn’t even check his Kestrel meter. He just dialed and fired.
CRACK.
Three seconds later—DING.
“Center mass,” the spotter called. “Dead center.”
Thad stood up, dusting off his knees. He looked at Callum. “Top that, housewife.”
Callum approached the mat. He looked pale. He got down behind his rifle, adjusted the bipod, and peered through the scope. He froze.
He pulled back, rubbed his eye, and looked again.
“Sir,” Callum said, raising his hand. “Issue with the optic.”
Thad snorted. “Here we go. Excuses.”
Commander Blackwood stepped forward. “Report, candidate.”
“Reticle is ghosting, sir,” Callum said, his voice steady but strained. “And there’s a hairline fracture in the forward objective lens. It’s refracting the light.”
“Impossible,” Thad interjected, stepping into the circle. “That rifle was cleared by the armorer this morning. If you can’t make the shot, Marsh, just ring the bell.”
Blackwood looked at the rifle, then at Thad. He hesitated. Equipment failure was rare, but Thad’s sudden defense of the weapon was suspicious.
I was cleaning the brass trap, about ten feet away. I couldn’t help myself. I knew that rifle. I knew what a hairline fracture looked like—it usually happened when someone overtightened the scope rings on purpose to stress the glass.
“Sir,” I said. My voice was quiet, but it carried in the acoustic perfection of the range.
The Admiral turned. Blackwood turned. Thad spun around, his face flushing red.
“If I may,” I continued, clutching my mop like a staff. “The fracture… it is likely from torque stress. If the rings were tightened past twenty-five inch-pounds… the glass cracks.”
The silence was absolute.
Thad laughed. It was a nervous, jagged sound. “With all due respect, Commander, are we taking ballistics advice from the cleaning lady? I told her yesterday to stick to the toilets.”
He walked over to the bench, picked up the rifle Callum had claimed was broken, and shoved it toward me. It was a challenge. A bluff. He expected me to recoil. He expected me to drop my eyes and apologize.
“You think you know so much?” Thad sneered, playing to the Admiral now, trying to show his dominance. “Show us. Go ahead. Show us the ‘torque stress.'”
He mocked me, holding the weapon out like he was offering a bone to a dog. “Careful, sweetheart. Don’t scratch the barrel.”
The phrase hung in the air. Scratch the barrel.
I looked at the rifle. Then I looked at Admiral Preston. He was watching me with intense curiosity. He gave a barely perceptible nod.
I leaned my mop against the wall.
I wiped my hands on my coveralls.
I took the rifle.
The weight was familiar. It was like shaking hands with an old lover. My body remembered the geometry before my brain did. My thumb checked the safety. My pinky hooked the stock.
I didn’t drop to the prone position. I didn’t have time for the theatrics of getting comfortable.
I walked to the firing line and stood. Standing position. 1000 yards. It was technically impossible. The sway of the body, the beat of the heart—at that distance, a heartbeat moves the barrel six feet.
I shouldered the weapon.
The world narrowed. The smell of floor cleaner vanished. The sound of the ventilation system faded. There was only the scope.
I saw the target. It was a blurry white speck. Callum was right; the lens was cracked. The image was fractured. But I didn’t need a clear image. I needed geometry.
I felt the wind on my cheek. Four miles an hour, not three. Gusting. Thad was wrong.
I shifted my hips. I exhaled. I waited for the pause between heartbeats. That tiny, infinite silence where the body is dead still.
One. Two.
I squeezed.
CRACK.
The recoil punched my shoulder, a solid, reassuring thud. I didn’t blink. I stayed on the scope, watching the vapor trail of the bullet slice through the stagnant air of the range.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
SPLIT.
The sound wasn’t a ding. It was a tearing noise.
Through the spotting scope, Commander Blackwood gasped. “Holy…”
“Report!” Admiral Preston barked.
“Sir,” Blackwood’s voice shook. “She… she split the bullet hole. She put her round through Candidate Evercraft’s previous shot. It’s a keyhole. Perfect bisection.”
I lowered the rifle. I cleared the chamber, catching the unspent brass in mid-air, and set the weapon gently on the bench.
I turned to Thad. He looked like he had seen a ghost. His mouth was open, his skin the color of ash.
“Proper breathing controls lateral drift,” I said, my voice dropping the heavy accent, revealing the sharp, clipped tone of a woman who had been trained to kill before she was trained to cook. “And you were wrong about the wind. It’s four miles an hour. You were compensating with luck. Luck runs out.”
I picked up my mop.
“Wait.”
Admiral Preston’s voice stopped me. He walked onto the firing line, ignoring safety protocols. He stood two feet from me, staring into my face. He looked at my cheekbones, the scar above my left eyebrow, the way I stood at parade rest without realizing it.
“I know you,” he whispered.
“I am just the janitor, Admiral,” I said, turning to leave.
“No,” Preston said, his voice rising, commanding the room. “You’re not. Yugoslavia, 1992. Kuwait, 1991. Operation Desert Storm.”
He turned to the stunned SEALs.
“Gentlemen,” Preston said, pointing at me. “You are looking at a ghost. Literally.”
He looked back at me. “Ghost Echo. That was the call sign. An experimental unit. Six women. Deployed behind lines to do the jobs we couldn’t officially authorize. They were dismantled. Erased. Records burned.”
He stepped closer. “You’re Eila Reeves. You were Echo Four.”
The name hit the room like a grenade. Callum gasped. Thad just stared, his arrogance evaporating, leaving behind a terrified boy.
I stood there, the mop handle slippery in my sweating palms. The camouflage of twenty-five years had just been stripped away.
“Eila Reeves is dead, sir,” I said softly. “She died when her country decided she was inconvenient.”
“She seems pretty alive to me,” Preston said, a slow smile spreading across his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a challenge coin. It matched the one Callum had shown me. “And she just outshot my best candidate standing up with a broken rifle.”
He held out his hand. “Welcome back to the Navy, Chief.”
Part 3: The Ghost Teacher
The office was quiet. It was Commander Blackwood’s office, but Admiral Preston sat behind the desk. A man in a suit sat in the corner—Mr. Harrington from the Department of Defense. He looked like a shark in Italian wool.
I sat in the chair, still in my coveralls. I refused to change. It was my armor.
“We want you back,” Preston said. No preamble.
“I am fifty-eight,” I said. “My knees click when it rains. I have arthritis in my trigger finger.”
“And you just made a shot that ninety-nine percent of active-duty snipers couldn’t make on their best day,” Harrington interrupted. “We don’t need your knees, Ms. Reeves. We need your brain.”
They laid it out. The world had changed. The threats were different now—asymmetric, embedded, requiring patience and extreme precision rather than brute force. They were restarting the specialized marksmanship program, but this time, they wanted it done right.
“We tried to copy what Ghost Echo did,” Preston admitted, looking tired. “We failed. We focused on the shooting. We forgot the mindset. The patience. The invisibility.”
“Thad Evercraft is a prime example,” Blackwood added. “Incredible physical specimen. morally bankrupt. He sabotages his own teammates to win. We built a warrior, but we forgot to build a human.”
“And you want me to fix them?” I asked.
“We want you to teach them,” Preston said. “Full reinstatement. Back pay for twenty-five years. A pension. And… recognition.”
He slid a folder across the desk. It was marked OPERATION STILLWATER.
“We’re declassifying the unit,” Harrington said. “Slowly. But the records are being unsealed. You won’t have to be a ghost anymore.”
I touched the folder. The paper felt cool. Inside were the names of my sisters. Raisa. Koska. The ones I had lost touch with. The ones who were still hiding.
“I don’t care about the medals,” I said. “But the boys… they need to know that being a soldier isn’t about being the loudest in the room.”
I thought of Callum. I thought of his grandmother, Addie, slipping us ammo crates labeled “Medical Supplies.”
“I have conditions,” I said.
Harrington narrowed his eyes. “Name them.”
“One: I answer to the Admiral, not the CIA. No more ‘off the books’ missions.”
“Agreed,” Preston said.
“Two: I pick my assistant instructors. If I can find them.”
“We’ve already located Raisa,” Harrington said, a smirk playing on his lips. “She’s running a private security firm in Seattle. She’s on a plane. She’ll be here at 1600.”
My heart leaped. Raisa.
“And three,” I said, standing up. “Thad Evercraft.”
“We can cut him,” Blackwood said immediately. “After the stunt with the scope? He’s done.”
“No,” I said. “Do not cut him.”
They looked at me, confused.
“Cutting him teaches him nothing,” I said. “It just makes him angry. It makes him a mercenary. Give him to me. I will break him down. And then, if there is anything worth saving, I will build him back up.”
The training range was different the next morning. The tension was gone, replaced by a heavy, reverent silence.
I walked in. I wasn’t wearing the coveralls. I was wearing standard Navy fatigues, no rank insignia yet, just a name tape that read REEVES.
Thad and Callum were waiting. The rest of the class had been dismissed for the day. It was just the three of us.
Thad looked at the floor. He looked smaller. The bully had been deflated.
“Chief,” Thad said. He choked on the word, then forced it out. “Chief Reeves. I… I owe you an apology.”
“You owe Candidate Marsh an apology,” I corrected him. “And you owe the Navy an apology for wasting its oxygen.”
Thad flinched, but he turned to Callum. “I’m sorry, Marsh. I messed with your gear. It was… I was scared. You were getting too good.”
Callum nodded, his face stoic. “Accepted.”
I walked over to the table where the rifles lay.
“Marksmanship,” I said, addressing them both, “is not about power. It is not about dominance. It is about submission.”
I looked at Thad. “You want to control the bullet. You cannot. You can only control yourself. You must submit to the wind. You must submit to gravity. You must become nothing. Only when you are nothing, can you hit everything.”
Thad nodded. He was listening. Really listening.
“Today,” I said, “we do not shoot. Today, we mop.”
Thad looked up, surprised. “Ma’am?”
I pointed to the bucket in the corner. “You want to learn patience? You want to learn detail? You will clean this floor. Every inch. If I find a single spec of dust, you start over. Callum, you take the windows.”
“Yes, Chief,” Callum said, grabbing the squeegee with a smile.
Thad hesitated. He looked at the mop. It was the symbol of everything he had mocked.
Then, slowly, he walked over. He picked up the bucket. He dipped the mop.
“Yes, Chief,” he said.
As they worked, the heavy steel doors opened. A woman walked in. She had short, spiky white hair and a scar running down her chin. She walked with a cane, but she moved like a panther.
Raisa.
She stopped next to me, watching the two young SEALs scrubbing the floor.
“You have them cleaning?” she asked, her Russian accent thick and warm like dark honey.
“Fundamentals,” I said.
Raisa laughed, a deep, rasping sound. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of gum. “Koska is coming next week. She brings vodka.”
“Good,” I said. “We have much to celebrate.”
I watched Thad. He was scrubbing hard, sweat dripping off his nose. He wasn’t swaggering. He was working. He was scratching the barrel, but this time, he was doing it to make it clean.
I touched the coin in my pocket. The eye in the crosshair.
For twenty-five years, I had been a ghost. I had hidden in the grey spaces of the world. But as the sunlight hit the wet floor, turning it into a mirror, I realized something.
Ghosts haunt the past.
I was ready to build the future.
“Miss it a spot,” I called out to Thad.
He jumped, scrubbed harder, and for the first time in his life, he smiled without malice.
“On it, Chief.”
