Riggs smiled and made a spinning wheel motion with his hand. “To discuss such a high-level and crucial targeted assassination that never existed in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all know the talk. We’ve heard it before. Believe me, Stone, you’re not that important. Every man in this group has seen combat. Every man in this group is intimately aware of the—”

“What kind of combat have you seen, Riggs?” Luke said. “You were in the Navy. On a destroyer. In the middle of the ocean. You’ve been riding a desk in this hospital for the past fifteen years.”

“This isn’t about me, Stone. It’s about you. You’re in a VA hospital, in the psych ward. Right? I’m not in the psych ward. You are. I work in the psych ward, and you live there. But you’re not committed. You’re voluntary. You can walk out of here any time you want. Right in the middle of this session, if you like. Fort Bragg is five or six miles from here. All your old buddies are over there, waiting for you. Don’t you want to get back together with them? They’re waiting for you, man. Rock and roll. There’s always another classified FUBAR mission to go on.”

Luke said nothing. He just stared at Riggs. The man was out of his mind. He was the crazy one. He wasn’t even slowing down.

“Stone, I see you Delta guys come through here from time to time. You never have a scratch on you. You guys are like, supernatural. The bullets always miss you somehow. But you’re freaked out. You’re burnt out. You’ve seen too much. You’ve killed too many people. You’ve got their blood all over you. It’s invisible, but it’s there.”

Riggs nodded to himself.

“We had a Delta guy come through here back in oh-three, about your age, insisted he was fine. He had just come back from a top secret mission in Afghanistan. It was a slaughterhouse. Of course it was. But he didn’t need all this talk. Sound like anybody we know? When he left here, he went home, killed his wife, his three-year-old daughter, and then put a bullet in his own brain.”

A pause drew out between Luke and Riggs. None of the other men said a word. The guy was a button pusher. For some reason, he saw that as his job. It was important that Luke stay cool and not let Riggs get under his skin. But Luke didn’t like this kind of thing. He felt a surge building inside him. Riggs was moving into dangerous territory.

“Is that what you’re scared of?” Riggs said. “You’re worried you’re gonna go home and blow your wife’s brains all over the—”