By the time she reached the perimeter under cover of night, the compound was a skeleton of lights and smoldering vehicles. Men in loose dark fatigues patrolled like wolves; lanterns swayed, sending veins of orange across clay walls. She counted forty fighters with her scope. She counted one life she would risk.

A child’s voice — recorded, manipulated — was due to open the broadcast. Intelligence said the enemy planned a public execution at dawn to draw a force and a headline. Grace aimed to make sure there would be no audience.

Her plan was not a plan so much as a string of truths: silence was her friend; speed was her blade; surprise would be the only ally she could keep. She crawled along the windbreak of a ruined building, rolled into a shadow, and watched two guards trade cigarette smoke in the glow of a firepit. When they turned their backs, she struck — a single, muffled blow, the snap of a neck like a twig. She dragged the body away, dressed him in a scarf to pass as one of them if needed.

Entering the compound was a choreography of lies. She slipped past a checkpoint by walking like she belonged: shoulders relaxed under a stolen jacket, a slurred phrase muttered in halting Arabic that she’d practiced in the mess until it tasted like bile. Nobody looked twice at a man who smelled of smoke and fear. They looked twice at a lieutenant moving in a calculated silence.