Dirty Christmas
The dim bar in Berlin's outskirts hummed with low chatter and clinking glasses. Coby Harlan, 42 now, nursed a whiskey at the corner table, his broad shoulders hunched under a worn leather jacket. Retirement had not softened him, scars from old wounds pulled tight across his knuckles, and his buzzed hair showed flecks of gray.
Ten years since that botched op in Kabul, the one that cost lives and shattered his world. He came here on a whim, chasing ghosts, not expecting to find one staring back.