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I don’t remember how I got there, and I don’t remember much of what happened in the hours afterwards…
But what happened on the bridge is seared into my memory.
I was enraged – with Rachel, with San Vittore, with Alistair, with the entire world – and I was about to throw the ring into the water.
FUCK her – FUCK this –
When a quiet voice in the back of my head said, She would’ve said yes if you’d asked her three and a half years ago.
You had the shot. You just didn’t take it.
My hand was pulled back in the air, ready to throw the ring away – but when I heard the voice, I froze.
Back in the military, we sat down after every mission and figured out what had gone right, what had gone wrong, and what we could have done better. It was the best way to understand your mistakes so you hopefully didn’t repeat them.
For snipers, it was an especially helpful process. Unlike soldiers – who had to deal with random occurrences like lucky shots from the enemy, or twisting your ankle as you ran for cover – snipers didn’t have nearly as many variables to deal with.
Sure, there were variables. Wind speed… whether your target was walking behind other people… the window of time you had to take the shot…
But the variables were minuscule compared to what other soldiers had to deal with.
With snipers, it almost always came down to one thing: the choices you made.
The calibrations on your scope. Whether you took a break to eat. Whether you gave in to scratch that itch – because as soon as your hand was off the trigger, your target might appear and just as quickly be gone.
And the most important choice of all:
Did you hesitate?
You had the opening, but you waited – and then the shot was gone.
Did you have the shot, and you just didn’t take it?
I realized that the voice was telling me I’d made a bad choice three and a half years ago…
And I had no one to blame for it but myself.
It was no use blaming Rachel, or the Italian judicial system, or Alistair.
Actually, the jury was still out about Alistair. I would figure that one out soon enough.
But if I blamed anybody other than the person who was ultimately responsible, I would fail to learn the lesson.
You had the shot… and you didn’t take it.
I held the ring in my open palm and stared at it.
If I didn’t remember this lesson, I was doomed to repeat it…
So I swore I would carry the ring with me everywhere to remind me:
When you have the shot, TAKE THE FUCKING SHOT.
I’m sure it was a lot more dramatic in my memory because I was drunk off my fucking ass.
But there was a moment of crystal clarity where I knew who was to blame…
And I saw the only way forward that made any sense to me at that moment.
