I had trained him.

I had trusted him with the daily life of my command, with the movement of soldiers and materiel, with a hundred small decisions where a disloyal man could have done real damage and I never once checked, because it did not occur to me to check, because he was inside the wire and inside the wire we do not check each other, that is the entire point of the wire.

The trust between soldiers is not sentimental.

It is structural.

It is the load-bearing wall of everything we do, the assumption that lets a person sleep while others stand watch, that lets you walk into danger certain that the people beside you will not sell you.

Rourke had taken that structure — the deepest trust I had, deeper in some ways than family, because family you choose with your heart and comrades you choose with your life — and he had used it as a door.