Returning from a classified military assignment, I found my five-year-old daughter kneeling on the cold floor. A strange woman stood over her, saying, “This is the only way spoiled children learn.” She didn’t know I was a special operations officer, and she was about to find out…

the distant wail of a siren—caused her small body to violently convulse. If I walked into a room unexpectedly, without announcing my presence loudly from the hallway, she would instantly freeze, her eyes darting around frantically for an escape route.

But the nights were the true crucible. Sometimes, in the dead, quiet hours of the morning, she would continue reading …