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and his men that Hawk thought best not to refuse even though the dead last thing he wanted to do was “bond” with frigging Task Force Zeta and “discuss the exercise”. At least they’d gotten to eat some chow first. Hawk definitely could not have faced this on an empty stomach.
    “Losing is more important than winning, if you learn from your mistakes,” Commander Jimmy Gordon had told him in a southern accent so thick Pennsylvania-born Hawk had nearly needed a translator to interpret for him.
    “Come on. We’ll go over with you exactly what you did wrong,” Gordon had the nerve to say when they’d arrived at the bar while smiling and truly looking like he meant every frigging friendly word.
    But the beer was German, dark and strong, and the pool table actually had all of its balls. All in all, since they couldn’t fly out until morning, this might not be such a bad way to spend an evening, if he hadn’t had to sit there and listen to Zeta recap what he and his men had done wrong.
    They didn’t do anything fucking wrong, he wanted to shout at them. They were outmaneuvered by technology, nothing more and that sucked, but worse, it scared the shit out of him.
    “Hawkins?”
    Leaning against the pool table, sighting his next shot, Hawk didn’t even look up at Miller when he bit out a most likely less than polite, “What?”
    Hawk finally glanced up in time to see the training commander’s smirk. “Nothing. Just you’re about to sink a striped ball.”
    “Yeah, so?”
    Miller raised a brow. “So, you’re solids, not stripes.”
    Shit. With a deep sigh, Hawk stepped back from the table, planted the cue stick on the ground and hung his head.
    “What’s wrong, son?”
    The last thing he wanted to do was admit to Miller what he was about to, but he was a real man and so he would face reality. “That loss to Zeta today shook my confidence, sir. I mean, when I said I wanted Zeta to play full out I didn’t realize what that meant. The implants, the computers… We’re not ready, sir.”
    He looked up at Miller and told him, with as much conviction as he could put into his voice, the absolute truth. “We’re not ready for Afghanistan. If the insurgents come at us with anything like Zeta did today…”
    Hawk shook his head and continued his confession. “What if I can’t bring them home alive? What happens when all that red in the snow isn’t paintballs but our blood? What if my men fall in those mountains in Afghanistan just like they all fell to Zeta today?”
    “They won’t,” Miller said simply with a confidence Hawk could only wish he felt.
    “But…”
    “No but about it. Do you really think the Taliban has access to the kind of training and equipment our teams have?” Miller asked.
    “They might.”
    “They don’t.”
    “How do you know?”
    “It’s my job to know. And besides that, we’ve faced them, right there in their own backyard. I can’t tell you much more except that I haven’t always been a training commander, son. A few years ago, I took Zeta into those exact mountains where you’re headed, and I brought them all back out again. Alive. And if you repeat what I just told you, I’ll deny every word.”
    Hawk couldn’t care less that Miller and his SpecOps had sometime in the past most likely trespassed in a country they shouldn’t have been in. He was more worried about his guys and keeping them alive. But at least now the strangely close camaraderie between Miller and Zeta made more sense. Miller obviously used to be their commander, sometime before Gordon took over.
    “No disrespect, sir, but with those men and that equipment, I’m not surprised you and Zeta all came out alive. Unfortunately, I’ve only got my normal, human men and crap for equipment.”
    “First, Hawkins, the guys on Zeta are regular guys, just like you, and when you stop wallowing and get to know them better, you’ll find that out,” Miller chastised, pulling no punches.
    Hawk bit his tongue to