Diaz’s eyes flicked past him, toward the far corner of the TOC where Melvin stood, shoulders squared, speaking quietly to Barnes over a stack of laminated maps. He wasn’t doing anything unusual. Aman didn’t have to do much to draw attention when other men had decided he was a story.
Diaz’s gaze returned to Mac’s face. It was brief, professional, but Mac caught the question under it.
How loud is the world going to get now that the end is near?
“We good?” Mac asked him.
Diaz gave a single nod. “Yes, sir.”
He left. Mac watched him go, then looked back to Melvin without moving. Melvin’s head tilted slightly, as if he felt Mac’s eyes, and for a split second the room narrowed to that quiet thread between them. Not touch. Not display. Recognition. A practiced steadiness neither of them had to name.
Melvin finished what he was saying to Barnes and turned as he gathered his paperwork. He crossed the TOC at a normal pace and stopped beside Mac like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“You look like you’re about to fight a stapler,” Melvin said.
Mac exhaled once, almost a laugh. “Pen’s dead. It started it.”
Melvin’s mouth twitched. He leaned in just enough to keep his voice low. “Incoming?”
“Tomorrow.” Mac tapped the clipboard. “They want packets.”
“They’ll want everything.”
“Yeah.” Mac glanced toward the TOC door. “They always do.”
Melvin’s gaze softened by a fraction, not sentimental, just human. “We’re almost there.”
Mac didn’t answer immediately. Almost there didn’t mean safe. Almost there was when men stopped checking themselves because they could smell home through the dust.
He looked down at Melvin’s hand as it shifted on the paper edge. The silicone band was visible. Not flashy. Not hidden either. It sat where it belonged.
Mac felt something in his chest ease and tighten at the same time.
Melvin noticed where he was looking and flexed his hand once, the dark silicone band catching the morning light before his fingers closed again around the coffee cup.
Neither of them said anything about it.
Mac didn’t trust himself to yet. Seeing it out in the world felt like a line drawn in the dirt. For too many years other people had decided where that line belonged.
Not anymore.
Mac lifted his eyes from Melvin’s hand and let his attention settle back into the room. Sergeant Willoughby had been too quiet lately. Not the disciplined kind of quiet that meant competence. The observant kind. The kind that gathered moments like they were evidence.
Mac had seen it in the motor pool. The way the man positioned himself where he could watch without looking like he was watching. His eyes tracking patterns instead of tasks.
He’d served with enough snakes to recognize one before it struck.
“Baxter’s got our backs,” Melvin said.
Mac nodded once. “He does.”
They stood together a moment longer, shoulder to shoulder, the TOC moving around them like a river. People crossed the room. Radios murmured. The mission board held steady under the fluorescent lights.
Mac let himself accept the moment for what it was.
Not peace.
But alignment.
