Chapter 1: Foundation

The first time Shira Abrams killed someone, she was nineteen years old and the target was 847 meters away.

But the training for that moment began when she was seven, in the rocky hills of the Golan Heights, Israel where the Syrian border was close enough to hear the mortars on bad days.

Her father, Simon Abrams, believed in preparation. Not hope—preparation.

“Again,” he said, watching her sight picture through binoculars. The Negev sun beat down on the improvised range he’d carved from the hills behind their home. Below them, their settlement sprawled across the volcanic plateau, a cluster of white houses and security fences against the brown earth.

Shira adjusted her position behind the rifle—too big for her small frame, but Simon believed in training with real weight. Her finger found the trigger. Breath in. Half out. Hold.

The crack echoed across the valley.

“Low and right,” Simon said. “Wind?”

“Eight kilometers per hour, west to east.” Her voice was steady despite her racing heart.

“And you calculated for it?”

“Yes, Abba.”

“Then why did you miss?”

She knew better than to make excuses. Simon had been Mossad—she wasn’t sure what he did exactly, only that he left for weeks at a time and came back different, quieter, like something had been scraped out of him. When he taught, he taught the way men teach when they know the cost of failure.

“I pulled the shot,” she admitted.

“Why?”

“The siren.”

An air raid siren had begun wailing from the settlement two minutes into her shooting sequence. Not close enough to require the shelter—just a reminder that nowhere was truly safe.

“The siren doesn’t pull triggers,” Simon said. “You do. Again.”

She was seven years old, and she did it again.

By the time she was ten, she could fieldstrip an IWI Tavor in under a minute. By twelve, she understood ballistics tables the way other children understood multiplication. By fourteen, she could move through the hills without sound, read weather patterns in cloud formations, and calculate holdover for a shot at 800 meters.

But she was still a child in other ways. She loved her younger brother, Ari, with the fierce protectiveness of an older sister. He was eight years younger, bright-eyed and quick with jokes, the kind of kid who made everyone smile. He hadn’t inherited their father’s intensity—he took after their mother, Miriam, who somehow maintained warmth in a place built on concrete and razor wire.

Shira taught Ari to identify birds. He taught her card tricks. They were normal, in the small ways that mattered.

Then came 2008.

Simon’s injury happened first.

The details were classified, but the result was visible: a shattered hip, nerve damage in his left leg, burns across his back that took three surgeries to repair. He came home from the hospital different—not just wounded, but finished. The Mossad didn’t need operatives who couldn’t walk without a cane.

Medical discharge. Retirement at forty-two.

He tried to hide his bitterness, but Shira saw it in the way he gripped the cane, the way he stared at maps of Syria like they were personal affronts. He’d given his career, his body, and now he was just another veteran in a country that had too many of them.

The training intensified.

“You’ll serve soon,” he told Shira, who was seventeen and trying to finish high school while her father drove her harder than any drill instructor. “Two years mandatory. You need to be ready.”

“I am ready, Abba.”

“No,” he said, and there was something desperate in his voice. “You’re not. Not yet.”

Three weeks later, Ari died.

It was a Tuesday. Ari’s school bus, route 74, heading back from Jerusalem to the settlements. Afternoon sunshine. Twelve-year-old boys laughing about football scores.

The bomber boarded at a checkpoint that had waved him through. Twenty-three people died. Ari was identified by his shoes.

The funeral was held on a Thursday. Shira stood between her parents in the military cemetery—because in Israel, even children’s funerals felt like military operations. Miriam sobbed into Simon’s chest. Simon stared at the small grave with the expression of a man watching his world collapse.

Shira felt nothing. Not yet. The grief would come later, in waves that nearly drowned her. But in that moment, standing over her brother’s grave, she felt only a terrible, clarifying focus.

Someone had done this. Someone had looked at a bus full of children and decided they were acceptable casualties.

That night, she found her father on the porch, staring toward the Syrian border.

“Abba,” she said quietly.

He didn’t look at her. “I couldn’t protect him.”

“No one could.”

“I should have been there. Should have been working. Should have—” His voice broke.

Shira sat beside him. For a long time, neither spoke.

Finally, Simon said, “We’re leaving.”

“What?”

“Israel. As soon as you finish your service. Your mother can’t ... we can’t stay here. Not anymore.” He looked at her, and his eyes were hollow. “I’ve already made contact with American intelligence. They want me. They’ll fast-track us.”

“But this is home.”

“Home is where we don’t bury children,” Simon said, and that was the end of the discussion.

Shira entered the IDF three months after Ari’s funeral. She was eighteen, grief-hollowed and laser-focused. While other recruits stumbled through basic training, she excelled. The skills her father had drilled into her for eleven years made her exceptional.

She qualified as a marksman. Then a sniper.

And she met Saul Levinson.

He was a year older, infantry, with an easy smile that seemed impossible in a combat zone. They were stationed near the Lebanese border, where Hezbollah made incursions and Israeli forces pushed back in a rhythm as old as the conflict itself.

Saul made her laugh. She’d forgotten she could.

They had six months together. Stolen hours between patrols, whispered plans for after service—maybe university, maybe travel, maybe just peace.