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Hawk wasn't looking for a fight. He was just hunting. He probably would have shot a deer if the distance was long enough to satisfy his skillset, but he really didn't want the hassle of field dressing the carcass and hauling it out. The reality was he was just walking by habit in the desert. Only this was the Sonoran Desert near Nogales, Arizona, and not the Afghanistan desert where he had served in the Marine Corps. Hawk had become disillusioned with the war in the Middle East and had not re-upped. It was no longer his fight. He had been home for a couple of months and was still unsettled. There were moments of anger about how he had been used and by the death of a girl he had loved. He also had moments of sadness and remorse about things he had done. His mind was burdened with PTS and a belief that his life was all about combat ops, violence, and killing. He wondered how he was going to go forward in life. Depression had him in its grip. He was a shooter and did many dirty jobs for the US military and government. Some were face-to-face, and others were at a considerable distance. Then there came a time of being contracted out to a few foreign governments involved in the region because of his unique abilities. Mostly, the work was as a ghost operator: get in-do the job-get out-and no one would know he was ever there. Hawk could see that the jobs were becoming more political than they were militarily expedient or necessary for the protection of the US. He was basically deciding local, in-country leadership with rounds from a Lapua .338 or Creedmoor 6.5 sniper rifle, an M-9 Beretta, or a Sig Sauer M-17 semi-auto handgun, a Saiga 12-gauge shotgun, or (Hawk's favorite close-up handgun) a suppressed Ruger 22/45 that was almost noiseless. It became obvious that the preferred local leader could change far too often. Last week's enemy was this week's friend. It was maddeningly confusing. The final straw was the death of the girl he loved. It caused massive heartache.