Chapter 4 - The Colonel Remembers
Hayes went pale. Not embarrassed. Pale. There is a difference. Embarrassment is missing in front of peers. Pale is realizing the old man with the broom just did with one shot what your computer could not do in six. Decker slowly removed his cap, wiped sweat from his forehead, and put it back on without speaking. Behind them, the Marines who had been smirking at the janitor stood completely still.
Colonel Hughes stepped forward. “Stand down… all of you.” His voice was quiet, but nobody mistook it for a suggestion. Hayes lowered his eyes. The spotter turned off the tablet as if the machine had become suddenly disrespectful.
Gabriel opened the bolt and cleared the rifle with careful, practiced hands. Then he pushed himself up from the mat. The limp returned only after he stood, as if the shot had borrowed him from an older version of himself and then handed him back to age. Hughes watched that too. “Callahan,” he said. Gabriel looked at him. “Sir.” Hughes’s eyes moved again to the blue mark near Gabriel’s thumb. “Where did you serve?”
Gabriel picked up his broom. “Maintenance, mostly.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “It wasn’t.”
The answer traveled through the range like a locked door. Hughes did not push in front of the men. That was the first respectful thing anyone had done all afternoon. Hayes, however, still had not learned how to stop digging. “One lucky shot,” he muttered.
May you like
Gabriel turned toward him. His expression did not change. “No shot at that distance is lucky unless luck spent fifty years learning wind.” Hayes had no reply. The men around him looked away, and that hurt him more than the miss. A minute earlier, they had been waiting for him to humiliate a janitor. Now they were watching him shrink beside one.
Hughes stepped between them. “Sergeant Hayes, you will apologize.” Hayes’s jaw tightened. “Sir—” “Now.” Hayes looked at Gabriel, the words barely leaving his mouth. “I apologize.” Gabriel nodded once. “Apology accepted. Learn faster.”
