Zubair had seen real training fields before.
He had stood on packed earth that still held the heat of the day, watched men run drills until their legs shook and their vision tunneled, and learned the difference between exhaustion that made you sloppy and exhaustion that made you lethal.
He knew what preparation looked like when people honestly wanted to prepare.
And what it looked like when people were playing soldiers.
This was the second one.
The open area beyond the inner perimeter had been cleared into a wide expanse of sand and compacted dirt, surrounded by observation platforms and temporary barriers that suggested this 'arena' had been thrown together instead of a permanent thing.
Targets dotted the field at uneven intervals. Obstacle structures rose in places that made no tactical sense, as if someone had designed them to look impressive from a distance instead of functional up close.
Or just functional in general.
