Ryan Caine earned his place among the elite. As a Green Beret trained in the secretive art of source operations and intelligence work, he operates in the shadows of Afghanistan and Syria-recruiting informants, gathering intelligence, and doing the work that wins wars before the first shot is fired. But excellence comes at a cost. Every source he recruits is a life he manipulates. Every piece of intelligence he gathers is paid for in blood-sometimes his own, sometimes theirs. And when operations go sideways and brothers fall, Ryan confronts the question that haunts every operator in the shadows: How much of yourself do you sacrifice to serve? The Strawman Profiler is a gripping military thriller that pulls back the curtain on the moral complexities of intelligence work. For fans of The Terminal List and The Gray Man, this is a story about the cost of duty, the weight of secrets, and the thin line between hero and handler.