The frightening, heartless bastard sort.

Welcome to Sniper School.

You’re given a perimeter of fire, a wedge of land with you and your trusty M1 at the very tip. Nobody is allowed in. Nobody. Those who manage to cross your line of fire have the potential of doing your comrades serious harm, and perhaps death. It doesn’t matter how young or how old the would-be trespasser is. 9 times out of 10, the uniform doesn’t even matter. Your buddies know where you are and they know what to stay away from. A mother chasing her child into your field of fire count as 2 targets, and the mother is high priority. Being the adult, she goes down first. The child is next.

2 shots = 2 kills.

It's a choice to be made on the spot. You’ve got less than a second to save your comrades, or not, possibly even save an allied mission you have no knowledge of, or not -- and there's no taking back that final, deadly decision. All I can promise is that I would aim to make it as painlessly quick as possible. I don’t need a tiny finger twitching on a detonator when my buddies come in.

The girl in the picture really has no idea what she's getting into, regardless of where she grew up or who has been teaching her -- but the man holding her does. Him, I could take down a lot easier.

Yes, I could, and would, pick the little bomber off. It would anger the hell out of me that she was placed in that situation, but there is nothing that I can do to change that, other than taking her down as quickly and cleanly as possible. I would also hope that my next target would be the bastard who put her up to it. Barring this, I can always hope he was taken out by another team member.

A lot of the psychology in the field is conducted through a kind of group therapy. Your team has gone through it, and you’re just one of them. A mismatched team, however, lives without conscience. They enjoy the job too much. These are the ones to watch for. These are the real killers that every army needs. Here, you’ll find the truly heartless -- the killers of men, women, and children.

The fear should not be whether or not I could do the job, but whether or not I would actually enjoy doing the job.

...

Does my family know this of me?

No, they do not.

Would it make a difference if they did?

To them, very likely. To me, at this moment, no. Eventually -- perhaps. Their knowledge, however, would not change me. This is a tool, one that I may one day need to save them. I don’t know, but I keep this ideal of mine clean, sharp, and ever ready.

Psyche-eval still calls me normal,
Dan
--ps--
People can be frightening as hell -- because you never know what's behind the mask.