Breakfast had come back up twice already. Nothing left in him but dread.
The Atlantic tossed them side to side as he clutched his rifle. 400 feet to shore.
He’d seen battle before. He was trained for this. But training didn’t prepare you for the bow door groaning open or for the cold slap of salt water as you jumped into the Atlantic, 3,500 miles from the boardwalk where he’d held his wife’s hand and eaten cotton candy last summer.
Now, the ocean was in his mouth, in his eyes. He blinked and saw the sky explode over the dunes.
There was a letter tucked inside his chest. It had arrived a few days ago. His wife wrote to tell him their daughter had learned to say “da-da.”
His boot caught on something—a body, maybe a helmet, maybe just the earth fighting back. A bullet ripped past his ear.
She would be eight months old next week.