HE SH.OT ME AT MY OWN MEDAL CEREMONY—THEN STILL CLAIMED I WAS ‘UNSTABLE.’”

The boat drifted free of the slip, caught in the swift, outgoing tidal current that pulled toward the open sound.

Arthur was sixty-two years old, but he was possessed by the terrifying, wiry strength of a man who realized his world was ending. His fingers clawed at my throat, digging into my windpipe, his thumbs searching for the soft tissue behind my jaw—the same move he had used on me when I was a child.

"Die!" he choked out, his spit hitting my face. "Die like your mother did! You were always broken! You were always trash!"

My vision began to swim. The black marsh water churned around the drifting hull, and the pain in my hip felt like fire ants eating through the bone.

*You’re not ten years old anymore,* a voice whispered through the dark. *You’re a combat officer of the United States Air Force.*

I stopped fighting his hands on my throat.

I brought my right hand up, open-palmed, and drove the heel of my hand with the full weight of my shoulder straight into the bridge of his aristocratic nose.

The crunch of cartilage was loud and wet.

Arthur shrieked, his grip breaking as blood exploded across his lips. He rolled backward, clutching his face, stumbling against the aluminum T-top frame of the boat.

I dragged myself up using the console rail, my left leg dragging uselessly behind me, my uniform coat torn at the shoulder, soaked in salt water and mud.

Nora scrambled toward me on her knees, her arms wrapping around my waist, anchoring me. "Maya! The throttle! We’re heading for the old pilings!"

Downriver, three hundred yards ahead, the black skeletal remains of the old railroad trestle rose out of the water like iron teeth. The current was dragging the boat straight toward the center pylon at fifteen knots.

Arthur wiped the blood from his eyes with his sleeve. He saw the iron cleat on the deck. He scooped it up, his face twisted into an expression of pure, demonic rage, and lunged toward us.

"If I don't get the money," he screamed, "none of us leave this swamp!"

I pulled the Sig Sauer from beneath my coat.

I didn't hesitate. I didn't shake.

I brought the weapon up, two-handed, my front sight post settling directly between the buttons of his bloody linen shirt.

"Stop," I said.

The word was not loud. It was cold. It was the voice that had brought thirty tons of high explosives down on mountain bunkers with five seconds left on the clock.

Arthur froze.

The heavy iron cleat hovered six inches above his head. He looked down the dark, cavernous bore of the nine-millimeter barrel. He looked into my eyes—eyes that had seen the gates of hell in Sangin, eyes that had survived the deepest darkness of his parlor rooms.

He saw that I would pull the trigger. And he knew that if I did, no court in the world would ever convict me.

The silence on the boat was broken only by the rushing hiss of the river and the thrum of the idling engines.

"Drop it," I whispered.

Arthur’s chest heaved. His shoulders slowly, pathetically collapsed inward. The iron cleat slipped from his manicured fingers, clattering loudly against the deck before rolling into the scupper.

He dropped to his knees, his hands covering his broken face, weeping not for the lives he had destroyed, but for the loss of his own power.

"Nora," I said, my voice steady, my weapon still locked on his chest. "Cut the starboard engine and grab the helm. Turn us forty degrees into the eddy."

Nora didn't hesitate. She stepped over Arthur’s trembling body, took the stainless-steel wheel, and yanked the throttle back with the practiced confidence of a girl who had spent her childhood watching the river.

The boat leaned hard into the current, sliding smoothly past the iron teeth of the trestle into the calm, quiet water of the marsh cove.

Across the water, the searchlights of Luke’s tactical boats were already sweeping across the marsh grass, their sirens wailing in the humid night.

"We’ve got them!" Luke’s voice boomed over a loudhailer. "Landing team, move in!"

Nora stepped back from the helm. She stood beside me, her shoulder pressing into mine, her hand reaching down to grip the sleeve of my torn dress uniform.

"Is it over?" she whispered, her voice trembling.

I lowered the weapon, flicked the safety on, and slid it back into its holster.