“Come on,” Mac said. “We’ve got a rehearsal for handing off someone else’s headache.”
The motor pool was chaos in the way only a motor pool could be, organized chaos, built on muscle memory and profanity and men who could rebuild a vehicle with two tools and bad coffee.
Mac walked the incoming party through the lanes the next morning like he was giving a tour of a place he didn’t own but had kept alive. The incoming XO was a Lieutenant with clean sleeves and a careful smile, polite, sharp-eyed, the kind of officer who asked the right questions without looking like he was fishing.
Two platoon leaders followed him. Both young. Both trying not to look overwhelmed. One kept glancing at the Hesco line like the perimeter might move if he didn’t watch it.
“Your comms shack is here,” Mac said, nodding toward the structure. “Power redundancy is solid. We had a couple brownouts, logged. Generator maintenance schedule’s current. Barnes will brief your RTO on our local fixes.”
Barnes stood nearby, arms crossed, expression unreadable. She didn’t smile. Competence spoke for itself.
The incoming XO looked at Mac. “Appreciate it, Lieutenant.”
Mac returned the look. “You’ll appreciate it more when your first storm hits and the radios don’t die.”
The Lieutenant gave a short laugh that didn’t quite land, then nodded. “Fair.”
They moved on.
As they crossed the yard, Mac felt eyes on him, not from the incoming party, but from the edge of the compound where a small cluster of soldiers stood waiting for dispatch. He didn’t need to look to know who was among them.
Willoughby.
Watching.
Mac didn’t turn his head. He kept walking and kept talking, voice even, posture calm. But his wolf shifted under his skin, a low warning, the old instinct that said predator.
He hated that his body still had to do that calculation. Hate was too clean a word. It was more like fatigue, an exhaustion at the idea that even here, even now, men could decide they wanted to try and take something from you just because they thought they could.
When they finished the walk-through, the incoming XO shook Mac’s hand.
“See you at the RIP brief,” he said.
Mac nodded. “You will.”
The Lieutenant’s gaze flicked once, not obvious, but Mac caught it, toward Melvin, who was standing near the comms shack with a folder in his hand, speaking quietly with Diaz about frequencies and route names. The silicone band on Melvin’s hand flashed once as he turned a page.
The incoming XO didn’t say anything. His face stayed professional.
But Mac felt the weight of that glance anyway.
Thin ice wasn’t always a threat you could hear cracking.
Sometimes it was just a look.
The RIP brief was long and dry and necessary.
Mac sat at the table with the outgoing and incoming leadership, watching the handoff happen in real time, sections getting claimed, responsibilities assigned, route patterns explained. It was the kind of meeting that made a war feel like paperwork, and that was the lie that kept people sane.
Halfway through, a knock came at the door.
A runner leaned in. “Sir. Sergeant Willoughby requesting a word.”
Mac felt Melvin’s gaze shift to him. Baxter was at the head of the table, expression unchanged. The incoming XO looked mildly curious.
Baxter didn’t ask questions. He just said, “After. Tell him after.”
The runner left.
