Blueprint - Chapter 3

 

Chapter 3

2010

Helmand Province. Kajaki

 

The day came on slow and colorless.

From inside the hide, dawn announced itself not with light but with the gradual thinning of darkness. The black under the netting turned charcoal, then a muted gray. Shapes emerged—ridges, shadows, the faint square of the compound walls in the distance.

Mack lay prone, the earth cold and unforgiving beneath his ribs. Pressure points burned where elbows met dirt. His right cheek rested against the stock, the familiar hard curve pressed into his face. The rifle felt like an extra bone in his body.

Hawk lay just off his right shoulder, spotter’s scope already pointed downhill. Their shoulders nearly touched, their world narrowed to glass and angles.

Neither spoke.

The hours that followed were the real work.

Final observation phase.

The compound sat almost two kilometers away, a mud-brick cluster framed by a low wall and a single, sun-bleached gate. Beyond it, the valley stretched barren and exposed, broken only by scrub, old wadi cuts, and a distant dirt track running toward a village smudge on the horizon.

As the sun climbed, Helmand baked. Shadows shortened, edges sharpened. Heat shimmer began to rise from the valley floor, a dancing distortion like invisible fire.

Mack watched through his scope, not staring at any one thing too long. His gaze moved in a deliberate sweep—the compound gate, the roofs, the courtyard, the outbuildings, the surrounding approaches, then back again.

On the second pass he saw the first man appear at the gate.

Guard. AK over the shoulder. Moving with practiced boredom. He paced out a slow circuit, stopped at the corner of the wall, looked down the track, turned, walked back. Ten minutes later, he traded places with another man, same rifle, same lazy circuit.

Pattern-of-life, live and in motion.

“Guard rotation confirmed,” Hawk murmured, barely audible. “Ten-minute intervals.”

Mack gave a tiny nod that Hawk could feel more than see.

They had agreed on radio silence unless something mission-critical happened. Inside the hide, words were rationed even more tightly. A whisper at the wrong moment could draw a curious eye.

Bishop’s scheduled check-ins came as faint clicks in Mack’s earpiece at the prearranged times—no voice, just confirmation that the net was live. Mack double-clicked his mic in response, then went back to watching.

Time blurred. The sun climbed, then held its position like it had changed its mind.

Men moved in and out of the compound—two carrying crates, one dumping a bucket, another leading a goat across the courtyard. No women. No children. That’s what intel had said. That’s what Mack’s glass showed.

He logged everything silently in his head.

0934: two men cross courtyard, both armed, exchange nothing, enter separate doorways.
1020: truck passes on road, does not slow near compound.
1055: dust devil crosses wadi, obscures line-of-sight for twelve seconds.

The hours felt both thick and razor-thin. His body wanted to shift, scratch, adjust. He denied it all. Movement killed hides.

Hawk’s voice came occasionally, a low hum in the narrow space.

“Mirage starting… light boil… heat building across valley floor.”

Mack could see it too now, even without the glass—the air just above the ground rippling, bending light in ways that made the compound look like it was under water.

“Target window’s still hours out,” Hawk murmured.

“I know,” Mack whispered back.

He thought of nothing. He thought of everything.

This was the part most people didn’t understand when they talked about snipers—the waiting. The absolute stillness. The way the mind could become your enemy if you let it wander too far into what-ifs and remember-whens.

He tried not to think about how many times he’d done this. About how many faces he’d watched without them ever knowing he existed. About the lines between lawful killing and murder and whether there really was a line at all, or just a lot of carefully chosen words.

Instead, he watched.

A buzzard circled lazily high overhead, wings tilting in small course corrections. A single shepherd and a kid moved along a path a half-mile beyond the compound, silhouettes wavy in the shimmer. They never looked up toward the ridge.

Doc and Rowe rotated security just outside the hide, trading positions every hour to avoid fatigue. One watched the rear arc, the other the flanks. Bishop stayed slightly downhill, comms gear spread around him like some electronic altar.

Inside the hide, it might as well have been just Mack and Hawk and the scope. The rest of the world had narrowed to a rectangle of glass.

By midday, sweat had glued Mack’s shirt to his back despite the relative cool inside the shade. His eyes ached. He blinked deliberately, letting his focus soften in tiny breaks before snapping it back.

“Guard just scratched his ass,” Hawk muttered once. “Write that down.”

“Shut up,” Mack breathed.

The sun drifted past its zenith, sliding west. Shadows lengthened again, creeping back across the valley floor. The mirage began to change—slower, heavier distortions, no longer the frantic boil of noon.

Hawk adjusted the spotting scope’s focus, tracking the subtle shift. “Heat shimmer easing. Still thick in the low spots.”

Mack’s mind ticked through the coming calculus.

Late afternoon would bring dropping temperature, shifting wind patterns. The density altitude would change. Barometric pressure would edge downward with the evening cool. All of it mattered when your bullet had almost two kilometers to travel.

Intel said Durrani—Naiad—would appear between 1900 and 1930.

All of this lead-up, all of this waiting, for a thirty-minute window.

He checked his watch.

1638.  

Three hours and change until the expected showtime.

Hawk spoke again, barely above the sound of the breeze. “Wind’s backing off a hair.”

Mack rolled his fingers off the stock and whispered, “Call it.”

“Kestrel reads eight-knot average, left to right, gusting to twelve. Mirage confirms moderate full-value. At two klicks, that’s point-eight mil hold.”

“Copy.”

They had ballistic tables scribbled in waterproof notebooks and etched into both their memories. .300 Win Mag, 190-grain OTM, zeroed at a hundred. At this distance, with this air, with this wind, the bullet would drop meters and drift more.

Hawk angled his body slightly, letting a faint strand of dust run from his fingertips. It drifted right.

“Wind’s layered,” he murmured. “Light at our position, stronger mid-flight, calmer near the compound.”

“Adjust?”

“Point nine mil hold left at current. Maybe one point zero if it picks up.”

Mack didn’t argue. Hawk lived and died on those calls. Literally.

He let his mind picture the ballistic curve in the air—bullet leaving the muzzle at over 2,800 feet per second, arcing upward slightly, decelerating, pulled down by gravity, nudged sideways by wind, kissed by humidity and air pressure and the Earth’s rotation. Time of flight: around two seconds.

At 2,000 meters, Coriolis wasn’t a theory; it was a measurable drift. Eastern hemisphere, firing north—tiny but real.

“Coriolis?” he asked.

Hawk had already done the math. “Slight right drift at this azimuth. Counter with an extra one-tenth mil hold left.”

“So point nine plus point one,” Mack murmured.

“Call it a clean one-point-oh mil left hold,” Hawk said. “We’ll refine closer to time.”

Mack settled his cheek back onto the stock, the rubberized comb warm now from his skin. He watched the compound gate. Watched the guards. Watched the patterns.

He thought about Durrani, not as a target but as a man. Somewhere, if intel was to be believed, Durrani had sat in a room and made decisions about where guns would go, who would receive them, which roads they’d take, which villages would feel the weight of that iron. Maybe he’d signed off on ambushes. Maybe he’d just taken his cut.

It didn’t matter now. The decision to end him had been made somewhere far up the chain, in language about “disruption of logistics” and “force protection” and “long-term strategic effect.”

Mack’s job was to make sure the bullet landed where that language said it should.

The afternoon stretched. His fingers tingled once; he flexed them slowly, one at a time, careful not to transmit any movement to the rifle.

Bishop’s faint double-click came again in his ear. Scheduled check.

Mack answered with his own double-click. All good. Still in position. Still waiting.

The colors of the valley shifted as the sun slid lower—tan to gold to a kind of faded, almost-brown hue. Shadows from small rocks and scrub stretched long, like fingers reaching toward the compound.

Hawk whispered, “Wind’s calming. Mirage thinning further. Temperature dropping.”

The Kestrel’s faint plastic creak sounded as Hawk checked it again in the small space.

“Seven-knot average now,” he said. “Full-value left to right. Density altitude down a notch.”

Mack’s lips barely moved. “Revised hold?”

“Point eight mil left,” Hawk said. “Maybe point-seven-five by the time we’re at nineteen hundred. Call it point-eight and we’ll refine at shot.”

Mack nodded almost imperceptibly.

He could feel his own heart ticking faster now, a subtle increase as the window approached. Years of missions, but the physiology never really changed. His body knew when the abstract planning was giving way to the concrete.

He checked his watch.

1852.  

The light over the valley had turned soft and flat, shadows long but gentled. The compound sat half in sun, half in shade, its walls glowing faintly orange.

Hawk shifted his weight and brought the spotting scope tighter against his eye. “Guard rotation unchanged. No unusual movement. No unplanned traffic.”

Mack’s world collapsed further. Nothing but the gate.

The next seven minutes stretched.

At 1859, a dust plume appeared on the track to the east.

“Vehicle,” Hawk breathed. “Single. Approaching.”

Mack watched through his scope as the shape resolved—an old Toyota pickup, white paint stained by years of dirt, rattling slowly toward the compound. A single driver. Passenger. No visible guns in the back.

The gate guard stood straighter, adjusted his rifle, and stepped forward. He knocked twice on the gate and it opened inward just enough to admit the truck.

The vehicle rolled inside and disappeared from view.

Hawk’s breath touched Mack’s ear. “We’re in the window. Could be him.”

Mack’s right hand settled more firmly around the pistol grip. His trigger finger lay alongside the guard, not yet inside.

His breathing slowed.

In. Out. In. Out.

They’d spent all day confirming patterns. This was the deviation that mattered.

Through the scope, he saw figures move in the courtyard—shadows at first, then clearer as they stepped into the open stretch.

Hawk’s voice was a low thread. “Two dismounts. One driver, one passenger. Driver going to the truck bed. Passenger headed toward main door.”

Mack dialed the scope’s magnification a touch higher. Glass pulled the details closer.

The passenger was of average build, wearing a dark shalwar kameez, a pakol cap pulled low. Beard neat, not wild. His posture had the self-contained authority of a man used to others making room for him. No hurry. No wasted motion.

He took something from inside his vest and handed it to a man who’d emerged from the main house. The receiver tucked it away, head slightly bowed.

“That’s him,” Hawk whispered. “Profile matches Durrani. Height, build, gait. Facial hair pattern consistent with ISR stills.”

Mack saw it too. The foreigner’s slight arch of the neck. The way the men around him deferred by half a step.

“Confirm,” Mack murmured. “Positive ID.”

“Positive,” Hawk said. “We are green on target. Repeat, we are green.”

The words were for Mack and for the invisible chain of command listening on delayed review days later. But right now, it was just two men in a hole on a ridge and a figure in a compound who had no idea death was already in the air.

Mack’s heart rate ticked up another notch.

He adjusted the rifle minutely, settling the crosshairs just above the center of Durrani’s chest. The man was angled slightly, speaking to the other. The distance, confirmed, sat at 2,015 meters.

“Range locked at two-zero-one-five,” Hawk whispered. “Wind seven, full-value left to right, trending lighter. Mirage minimal. Hold point-seven five mil left. Elevation eleven-point-two mils for drop. Coriolis correction point-one left already built in. Atmospherics stable.”

Mack absorbed the numbers like an incantation.

Point-seven-five mils left. Eleven-point-two up.

He didn’t need to touch the turrets; they’d pre-dialed the macro adjustments. The fine hold was on him.

He slid his finger into the trigger guard, feeling the familiar curve of steel under the pad. Not too high, not on the joint. Just where it needed to be.

Below, Durrani—Naiad—laughed at something. A small gesture of the hand. A sliver of teeth.

The part of Mack’s brain that still thought in words whispered, He has no idea.

The rest of his brain turned into math.

“On you,” Hawk breathed. “I’m solid on glass.”

Mack settled deeper. His breathing slowed even more.

In. Four-count inhale. Out. Six-count exhale.

He let his body weight sink into the earth, merging with it, trusting the rifle to become a fixed point.

The crosshairs danced with his heartbeat—microscopic, but there. Up-down, up-down.

He rode it, not fighting, just watching. Waiting for the natural lull between beats, the brief stillness when the body paused at the bottom of an exhale.

Below, in the compound, a boy appeared suddenly in the courtyard, thin and barefoot, carrying a metal pitcher.

Mack’s jaw tightened. The crosshairs wobbled for a fraction of a second as his focus widened.

“Kid,” Hawk whispered instantly. “Left side of courtyard. Age maybe twelve. No proximity to target yet.”

Abort? The word floated unspoken in the hide.

Mack tracked the boy quickly, then shifted back to Durrani. The child walked toward another doorway, eyes down, pitcher balanced. No path led near the kill zone. At least not yet.

“Hold,” Hawk murmured. “No civilians in backstop. Kid’s vector is lateral.”

Mack’s finger eased off a gram of pressure he hadn’t realized he’d added. He pushed doubt aside.

Focus.

Durrani shifted his stance, now standing in a clean lane between two pillars, upper torso unobstructed.

“Cleaner shot,” Hawk breathed. “You’re good. Backstop remains clear. No women, no kids, no unidentifieds. This is as good as it gets.”

Mack exhaled slowly, let the crosshairs settle just off Durrani’s sternum, adjusted for the calculated drift.

Point-seven-five mil left. Eleven-point-two mils of elevation already dialed.

He found the bottom of his breath and held it, lungs empty but not screaming.

The world narrowed to a single point where three lines intersected—him, the rifle, the man in the valley.

He began the squeeze.

No jerk. No conscience. Just steady pressure applied to a sear until physics woke up.

The shot broke like an exhale he never took.

The suppressed rifle still barked with a dull, heavy thump inside the hide. The recoil pushed back into his shoulder, familiar, contained. The sight picture jumped, then snapped back.

The bullet was already in flight, carving an invisible arc through chilled evening air.

Time stretched. Instinct, not math, told him how long it took.

One Mississippi. Two—

Hawk’s voice cut through, sharp and certain.  “Impact.”  Through the scope, Mack saw it.

A small, dark red flower blossomed at the center of Durrani’s chest, just above the heart. The man jerked, staggered as if confused someone had shoved him. His mouth opened, but no sound reached the ridge. His legs folded, body crumpling backward in a boneless collapse.

He hit the ground hard, arms splayed, pakol rolling away.

“Target down,” Hawk said, tone flat with professional finality. “Double-checking…”

He tracked the still body through the spotter’s scope, watching for any sign of movement beyond the residual twitches of nerve death.

“Zero voluntary motion,” Hawk reported after three seconds. “No attempt to rise. Blood pooling under torso. That’s a confirmed kill, Gunny. Naiad is neutralized.”

The compound exploded into motion.

Men shouted, rifles raised. The boy with the pitcher dropped it, water flashing in the low light as it spilled across the dirt. One man ran to Durrani’s body and skidded to his knees, pressing hands uselessly against the wound. Another fired a burst into the air, rounds sending small puffs of dust into the sky.

Mack didn’t move.  His finger slid off the trigger. The muzzle lowered a fraction on its bipod, but his mind stayed locked in.  “Scan for secondaries,” he whispered.

“Already on it,” Hawk said.

The spotter swept the scope across the compound—rooflines, walls, access points—then beyond it, looking for the faint glint of glass, the telltale unnatural straight line, the shadow that didn’t belong.

“No counter-sniper glint,” Hawk reported. “No muzzle flash. No outgoing fire toward our quadrant. All fire is celebratory or panic, not directed. No flanking movement toward our ridge.”

“Overwatch from village?” Mack asked.

“Negative,” Hawk said after a sweep. “Zero hostile movement our way. They’re spinning in place down there.”

Mack watched a man grab Durrani’s arms and roll him to his side. The body flopped without resistance. More blood. More shouting.

“You see that?” Hawk breathed. “That right there? Logistics disruption.”

Mack didn’t answer. His throat felt oddly tight.

He’d done this so many times it should have been just another mark in a logbook. But every shot was its own universe. Behind the neat phrase “target neutralized” was a ripped node in the web of human lives. Somewhere, a man’s family would get word. Somewhere, someone would step up to fill his slot.

And somewhere, some Marine convoy weeks from now might pass through a stretch of road and not get hit because this man wasn’t there to sign off on it.

That was the hope, anyway.

Bishop’s double-click came soft in his ear—heard the shot, waiting for status.

Mack tapped back once, slow, then again—signal for target eliminated, no immediate compromise.

He kept watching.

One minute. Two. Five.

Still no sign of anyone looking uphill. They had the range, the angle, the position. The shot might as well have come from God’s own blind spot.

Hawk finally exhaled fully, a sound he’d probably been holding back without realizing. “That was clean,” he said quietly. “Dead-center. Textbook.”

Mack’s cheek pressed harder into the stock. “Textbook doesn’t bleed.”

Hawk turned his head slightly, just enough that Mack could feel his gaze in the shadows. “We don’t write the book, Gunny. We just show up for the test.”

Mack let that hang in the air unacknowledged.

He watched the courtyard a little longer, letting the reality of Durrani’s stillness settle into his bones. This was what they were. What he was. A distant hand on a distant trigger, moving the world a millimeter at a time.

Finally, he eased his eye away from the scope, the rubber eyecup releasing his face with a faint tacky pull. The world outside the glass looked wider, less sharp, almost unreal in its lack of magnification.

“Pack it,” he whispered.

Hawk nodded once, already breaking the spotting scope down with efficient, gentle movements. Outside the hide, Doc and Rowe shifted, sensing the change in the air without even being told.

Below, panic and anger still swirled, men yelling, gestures wild, but it was already entering the phase Mack knew all too well—the aftermath they’d leave behind.

They’d come here to do one thing.  They had done it.  Now it was time to disappear.

 

 

Mack woke with a sharp, dragging inhalation, lungs pulling air like he’d just broken the surface of deep water. His eyes snapped open to the dark, but the rest of him stayed perfectly still.

No flinch. No jerk upright. Years of training held him pinned to the mattress, muscles coiled but motionless, senses reaching outward.

The ceiling above him was a dim rectangle, faint orange leaking around the edges of the blinds from the streetlights outside. Shadow lines from the window frame cut across it. The hum of the HVAC unit in the hallway blended with the distant whisper of a car passing on the street.

His heart pounded against his ribs, too fast, too hard.

He focused on his breathing.

In. Out. In. Out.

The images clung to him for a moment—ridge, rock, the compressed darkness of a hide, the weight of the rifle stock molded to his cheek. The crosshairs climbing and settling with each heartbeat. A man in a compound courtyard dropping straight down, as if someone had cut his strings.

Kajaki. Always Kajaki.

He let his chest rise and fall slowly until the tempo eased from emergency to manageable. Sweat cooled along his spine, the sheet beneath him damp.

“Damn,” he whispered.

Same dream. Same mission. Same shot. Same exfil. Night after night like a rerun.

He’d had bloodier missions. Messier ones. Ones that had gone sideways and left scars on more than just the body. Kajaki, by contrast, had been textbook—clean intel, clean hide, clean shot, clean extraction.

So why this one? Why did this one hold on?

His breathing steadied. The hammering softened. When the tightness in his chest eased, he rolled slowly onto his side and swung his legs off the bed, planting his feet on the cool laminate. He sat there a moment, elbows resting on his thighs, head hanging.

The room smelled of sleep and detergent. The faint ticking of the cheap clock on the nightstand marked a slow, steady rhythm now that his pulse had stopped drowning it out.

He scrubbed his face with both hands, dragged his fingers through his short hair, then pushed himself up.

In the bathroom, the light hit him like a small explosion. He squinted reflexively, then turned the shower handle all the way to hot. The pipes shuddered in the walls and then the steady rush of water filled the small room.

Steam started to creep up the mirror in thin veins as he reached for his toothbrush. Mint foam and the mechanical, familiar back-and-forth motion started sanding down the last edges of the dream. He spat, rinsed, and watched the swirl disappear down the drain.

His reflection in the fogged glass was blurred at the edges—ghostly. He wiped a strip clear with his palm.

Forty two. Short hair going more silver at the temples. Lines where eyebrows pulled hard too often. Eyes that looked like they never quite stopped scanning.

He looked like a guy who’d gotten a bad night’s sleep and woke up early. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“Still here,” he muttered to the mirror.

He lathered his jaw and neck and shaved, the razor dragging clean lines through the foam. The steam thickened, turning the bathroom into a clouded box. His skin flushed pink from the heat.

When he was done, he rinsed the razor, set it aside, and opened the shower door. The stall was filled with white mist and the water coming from the showerhead was as hot as the old heater could manage.

He stepped in.

The first strike of heat made him hiss through his teeth, but he turned his back into it, letting the water pound knotted muscle. Scalding streams hit the scars along his lower spine, the stiff band across his shoulders, the old pull in his right hip. For five, six long minutes he stood there, eyes closed, palms flat against the tile, letting the temperature bleed tension out of muscle and bone.

Under the roar of the water, he could still hear echoes of the dream—the dull suppressed bark of the rifle, the imagined thud of a body hitting dirt two kilometers away, Hawk’s calm voice in his ear: Target down.

He let them play once and then pushed them aside.

When the hot started to feel too comfortable, he reached up and twisted the cold all the way open.

The water shifted instantly from punishing heat to knife-cold. It hit him like a slap, stealing his breath for a second. His skin prickled, muscles tightening under the sudden assault.

He wanted to step back, dodge out of the stream. He didn’t. He stood in it, counting off slow seconds in his head.

Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty.

By the time he shut the water off, there was no room left in his nervous system for dreams. Just the immediate, undeniable fact of the present.

He towel-dried briskly, the coarse fabric rasping against his skin, and padded back into the bedroom. Jeans. Belt. Dark blue polo. Socks. Sneakers. Clothes that blended into the background.

He checked the digital clock on the nightstand—0831.

Morning appointments at the VA meant he didn’t have time to crawl back into bed and pretend he’d get another hour. Probably for the best.

In the kitchen, he poured coffee from a fresh pot. The smell of dark roast filled the small space, cutting through the last lingering scents of soap and steam. He wrapped his hands around the mug, feeling the warmth settle into his fingers.

Out the front window, the light was pale but growing stronger. Clouds were breaking apart into ragged patches. The wet sheen from the previous night’s rain still clung to asphalt and leaves. A delivery van rolled slowly down the row, brakes hissing softly. A neighbor wrestled a trash can toward the curb.

He took a long, hot swallow, letting the caffeine seep into the cracks.

In his mind, the ridge at Kajaki hovered just out of frame, like a file open in the background of a computer. He pushed it aside, at least enough to get through the morning.

He finished the mug, set it in the sink, and grabbed his wallet and keys from the bowl by the door. VA card. Driver’s license. Old habits ran checks: phone in pocket, wallet secure, keys in hand.

Outside, the air had that cool, washed smell the world gets after rain—the wet metal scent of cars, damp soil, the faint sweetness of leaves. He locked the townhouse door, gave the knob a quick tug, then walked out to his silver sedan.

The drive in toward D.C. was the usual slow-rolling convoy—commuters, cabs, contractors, everyone inching forward toward their respective bureaucracies. Mack sat with his hands steady on the wheel and the radio low, news voices droning about polls and foreign crises and a new bill stuck in committee.

At the exit for the VA medical center, he signaled and slid off, following the familiar access road up toward the complex.

The hospital itself was a spread of beige and brick, squared-off wings around courtyards, lined with uniform windows. A big flag snapped on the pole out front. Rows of parked cars filled the lot—sedans, pickups, vans, a few bikes clustered together like something out of another life.

He pulled into an open spot near the middle, shut down the engine, and sat for a second with his fingers resting on the steering wheel.

Veterans moved in and out of the sliding glass doors—some walking with purpose, some limping, some leaning on canes or helpers. A man with an airborne hat held the door for a woman pushing an older vet in a wheelchair.

Mack drew a breath, let it out, pocketed his keys, and stepped out of the car. The air was cooler here, the breeze a little stronger, carrying the smell of cut grass from a strip of lawn near the building.

Inside, the lobby was all too familiar—polished tile floors, worn in places; walls a neutral off-white; posters about flu shots, smoking cessation, PTSD. A TV mounted high on the wall played a morning show with the volume down low. The chairs were arranged in islands around low tables cluttered with old magazines.

He went straight to the self-check-in kiosk, slid his plastic VA ID card into the slot, and tapped through the prompts. Name. Date of birth. Appointment type.

The machine whirred and spat out a small slip.

MENTAL HEALTH – 3B
CHECK-IN TIME: 0907

He took it to the secondary desk, where a clerk with a buzzcut and tired eyes scanned it and glanced at his screen.

“Got you, Mr. O’Rourke,” the man said. “You’re checked in. You can have a seat. They’re runnin’ pretty close to on time today.”

“Appreciate it,” Mack said.

He sat in an open chair with his back to the wall and a clear line of sight to the hallway door. Habit, not paranoia. The older guy in the Vietnam hat beside him was working a crossword with a chewed pencil. Further down the row, a woman with a military spouse ID badge scrolled on her phone, lips tight. Somewhere a kid laughed in a way that didn’t belong in this room and then was shushed.

Mack tracked the seconds by the slow sweep of the wall clock and by the slight build-up of restlessness in his legs. He kept his hands flat on his thighs, fingers spread, making himself stay put.

After several minutes, a side door opened with a soft click.

“O’Rourke?” a woman’s voice called.

He looked up.

Dr. Elena Park stood in the doorway, chart in hand. Early forties, Korean-American, dressed in black slacks and a simple dark green blouse, hair pulled back into a low ponytail. Her ID badge swung slightly on its lanyard. Her expression was focused but not severe.

“Hey, Gunny,” she said with a small smile. “Come on back.”

He stood, slipping the appointment slip into his pocket out of reflex, and crossed the room. “Morning, Doc.”

They walked down the short hallway together, past closed doors with nameplates, muffled voices behind some of them, silence behind others. The carpet deadened their footfalls. The smell here was a mix of disinfectant and coffee.

She opened her office door and gestured him inside.

The room was small but had more personality than the lobby. Bookshelves held texts on trauma, neurology, and counseling, mixed in with a couple of paperback novels. A framed photograph of a foggy pine forest hung beside a print of a city skyline at night. The blinds were half-open, letting in a slice of daylight and a view of the parking lot trees.

Two chairs faced each other—one slightly larger, with a bit more cushioning, where he always sat, and a standard office chair where she did. Between them sat a small table with a box of tissues and a ceramic mug loaded with pens.

Mack settled into his spot, leaning back just enough to ease his back without looking like he was trying to escape. She closed the door softly and took her seat across from him, flipping open her notebook.

“How are you, Gunny?” she asked.

He gave a short, unsurprised snort. “You already know the answer or I wouldn’t be here.”

“I know you’re here,” she said. “I don’t know how you are. That’s your line.”

He scratched his jaw, feeling the smoothness from the recent shave. “I’m upright. Breathing. Coffee on board. And I had the dream again.”

She nodded once. “What dream?”

“The same one,” he said. “Kajaki. The mission.”

She didn’t write immediately. “Walk me through it like it’s the first time you’ve told me. You know the drill. Sometimes the details change.”

He blew out a breath and let his head rest lightly against the chair back. “Okay. I drop into it already in the hide. We’re on the ridge, above the compound. I can feel the ground under my ribs. Rifle stock against my cheek. I can smell dust and oil. Hawk’s right next to me on glass.”

“Same position as the actual mission?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s a straight replay,” he said. “At least at the beginning.”

“And the mood?” she asked. “In the dream, are you anxious? Calm? Detached?”

He thought. “Focused. Edges are sharp. Brain’s running math and patterns. Heart’s up a little, but controlled. It feels like… game time. No panic.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Sun’s dropping,” he said. “Light’s going soft. We’ve been there all day. Guard rotations steady. No surprises. Vehicle rolls up—Toyota. Durrani gets out. Everything lines up like the brief said it would.”

His hands moved as he spoke, fingers making small unconscious motions, like he was adjusting an invisible rifle.

“In the dream,” she asked, “are you aware that you’ve done this before? Or are you back in that exact moment for the first time?”

“Feels like I’m back there,” he said. “But some part of me knows the outcome. It’s like watching live footage when you already know how the story ends.”

“And you take the shot.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Same as always. Hawk feeds me the wind, temp, density. I make the hold. I ride my breathing down, squeeze on the pause. Recoil. Scope lift. Reset. Durrani goes down. Perfect center mass. No glitches. No hang-ups. No misfire. Clean.”

She watched him carefully. “Do you see the exfil in the dream?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Last night, yeah. We call it in. Confirm. We break the hide down, move off the ridge. Slow, disciplined, no contact on the way out. Helo picks us up at Blackjack. The whole thing is by the book. No drama. No surprises.”

“How do you feel in the dream when it goes that way?” she asked.

He frowned. “Tight. Wired. But… correct. Like we did what we were supposed to do.”

“And how do you feel when you wake up?” she said.

He glanced at the window. The trees beyond the glass moved in a slight breeze, branches swaying.

“Like I’ve been wearing body armor in my sleep,” he said. “Heart pounding. Muscles braced. Takes a while to remember I’m in Virginia and not on that ridge.”

“Any words in your head when you wake up?” she asked. “Any thoughts right on the surface?”

“Usually just ‘damn,’” he said. “And sometimes ‘again.’”

She nodded, jotting something down. “You’ve told me before that Kajaki wasn’t your worst mission in terms of casualties or chaos. Why do you think your brain replays that one on a loop instead of the others?”

He shifted, the chair creaking slightly. “Because it was clean,” he said. “Because nothing went wrong.”

“How does that make it more likely to come back?” she asked.

He rubbed his palms against his jeans. “You tell me.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. “My guess? The ones where things went wrong come with obvious reasons to feel anger, grief, even self-blame. You can point at what happened. The brain likes reasons. With Kajaki, there’s no operational failure to hang anything on. You did your job exactly as defined. That leaves more room for questions.”

“Questions like ‘what the hell does that make me,’” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she said.

He stared at a spot on the floor between them.

“Look,” he said, “we had solid intel. Durrani was pushing weapons and fighters. He was getting people killed. We take him out, maybe some patrol doesn’t get hit three weeks later. Maybe someone’s kid sees their dad come home who wouldn’t have.”

He lifted his hands, palms up, then let them fall. “On paper, that’s a good trade.”

“On paper,” she echoed. “But you weren’t on paper. You were behind the rifle.”

He gave a short nod. “I was behind the rifle.”

“In the dream,” she said, “are you inside your own body? Or can you see yourself from outside?”

He thought. “Mostly inside. My cheek on the stock, my finger on the trigger. Sometimes I get flashes where it’s like I’m hovering behind and above, like ISR footage, but last night? It was me looking through the glass.”

“And when you watch yourself take the shot—either way—how do you feel about that man?” she asked.

He swallowed. “He’s good at his job.”

“That’s a performance review,” she said.

“He’s… effective,” Mack added. “Reliable. He’ll do what he’s tasked to do.”

“And is that praise?” she asked.

“It was, once,” he said. “The Corps likes guys like that.”

“And you now?” she pressed.

He was quiet for a long few seconds.

“I don’t know what else to be,” he said finally. “That’s the problem.”

She nodded slowly. “You’ve been working on that novel, the political one, right?”

He exhaled. “Yeah.”

“Tell me where that is right now,” she said.

“Still in my head mostly,” he answered. “I’ve got the Afghanistan stuff on paper—the sniper team, the mission. The D.C. part is coming together in pieces. A president. A fictional assassination attempt. A writer who gets blamed for scripting it with his book.”

“A writer with a background like yours,” she said.

He gave her a look. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” she said.

He smirked faintly, then let it fade.

“Is Kajaki in the book?” she asked.

“The bones of it,” he said. “Different names. Adjusted details. But yeah. Same ridgeline. Same kind of mission. It was the cleanest template for what I’m trying to build.”

“So you’re writing the dream,” she said.

“Writing what I know,” he countered.

“Both can be true,” she said. “How do you feel when you’re writing those scenes?”

He thought about last night at the desk, fingers flying, the way the words had come in a straight line from memory to screen.

“Alive,” he said. “Dialed in. And… exposed.”

“Exposed how?” she asked.

“Like I’m confessing to something without knowing the charges,” he said. “Like I’m handing somebody all the evidence and trusting them not to use it.”

“Who’s ‘somebody’?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Take your pick. Readers. Government. God. Myself.”

She made a small note. “The dream’s been more frequent since you started writing, yes?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Before, it was once in a while. Then I started putting it down in prose and suddenly my brain decided we needed the director’s cut every other night.”

“That tracks,” she said. “You’re stirring up a sealed memory. The lid was on tight. Now it’s not.”

He gave a humorless half-smile. “You could’ve mentioned that side effect up front.”

“I did,” she said. “You called it ‘therapeutic bullshit’ and started writing anyway.”

He huffed a small laugh despite himself. “Fair.”

She glanced at the clock on the wall behind him, then back at him. “When you had the dream last night, what did you do when you woke up?”

“Lay still until my heart stopped trying to punch out of my chest,” he said. “Then shower. Hot. Cold. Coffee. Drove here.”

“Did you write anything down?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I know the whole thing by heart. Didn’t feel the need to take minutes at the meeting.”

“Memory is not the same as processing,” she said. “I’m going to make the same suggestion I made last time, with a tweak.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“The next time you have the Kajaki dream, I want you to write down two things when you wake up,” she said. “Only two. First: one concrete detail that stands out to you from the mission in the dream. Something sensory—what you saw, heard, smelled, or felt. Second: the first thought you have after you wake up. Not the edited version. The raw one.”

He started to protest. “Doc—”

“Two lines,” she said. “In a notebook. Not in your novel. Not on your laptop. Just for you. You’re good at logs. Consider it after-action reporting for your subconscious.”

He shifted, then gave a small shrug. “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” she said.

They sat for a moment in a quiet that wasn’t quite comfortable but wasn’t hostile either.

She spoke again. “What do you make of the fact that the mission that won’t leave you alone is the one that went right?”

He rolled his shoulders, joints popping softly. “Means my head’s not satisfied with ‘right.’”

“What might satisfy it?” she asked.

He thought, really thought, before answering. “I don’t know if there is any. You either take the shot and carry that, or you don’t take it and carry something else. Either way you’re weighted.”

“You’re allowed to say that out loud,” she said. “You don’t have to minimize it because the order was lawful and the intel was solid.”

He met her eyes. “I don’t want a pity party.”

“You’re not getting one,” she said. “You’re getting acknowledgement that what you did for a living wasn’t just ‘a job.’ It rewired you. And now you’re living in a world that runs on softer problems.”

He looked away, out the small slice of window. Cars moved in slow patterns in the lot. Beyond them, the tops of trees swayed.

“That’s the part I can’t square,” he said. “Out there, everything was sharp. In here, everything feels… blurred. People get outraged over words. Over tweets. I took a man’s life from two klicks away and it was a line item. Now I’m thinking about writing a story and wondering who I might hurt with paragraphs.”

“And maybe part of you is trying to reconcile those two realities,” she said.   “Maybe part of me is just bored,” he said. “Or broken.”

She shook her head once, decisively. “You’re not broken, Mack. You’re adapted to a hostile environment. Now you’re re-adapting. That’s messy. It doesn’t mean you’re malfunctioning.”

He gave a faint, skeptical grunt. “Feels like malfunction at three a.m.”

“Three a.m. is when all brains lie,” she said.  He almost smiled.  She checked the clock again. They were close to the end of the hour.

“Okay,” she said, shifting slightly into that subtle, familiar cadence he recognized as the wrap-up mode. “Before we finish, I want to touch on one more thing. The novel.”

He made a mild face. “Yeah.”

“I want you to keep working on it,” she said. “But I also want you to notice when you’re writing Helmand versus when you’re writing D.C. Keep an eye on your body. Do your shoulders tighten more in one scene than the other? Does your jaw clench when you’re typing courtroom dialogue?”

“Feels like a lot of multitasking,” he said.  “You’re a Marine,” she replied. “You can chew gum and shoot at the same time.”  He snorted.  “Same time next month?” she asked.  He nodded. “Yeah.”

She scribbled his next appointment on a small card, tore it off, and handed it over. He glanced at the date and slid it into his wallet.

“Anything else you want to hit before we call it today?” she asked.  He thought briefly, then shook his head. “No. I think that’s plenty.”

“Good work,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

He stood. “Feels like talking about stuff I’d rather bury.”

“That’s usually where the work is,” she said, rising with him.  He moved to the door. She opened it and stepped back.

“Take care, Gunny,” she said.

“You too, Doc,” he replied.

The hallway outside was cooler, the acoustic tile ceiling and neutral walls absorbing their brief exchange.

He walked past the closed doors, past the waiting area with its TV and restless chairs, past the front desk where a clerk was explaining copay rules to a man with a cane. The glass doors slid open with a soft sigh.

Sunlight hit him as soon as he stepped out.  It was brighter than when he’d gone in, the sky cleared to a crisp blue. The flag out front snapped in a light breeze. Cars glittered in their rows. A bird landed on a lamp post, shook itself, and settled.

He paused for a moment at the top of the steps, feeling the warmth on his face, then walked down toward his car.