“That too.” She traced circles on his chest. “But mostly scared. Now I’m just…” She searched for the word. “Tired, I guess. Tired of goodbyes. Tired of explaining to the kids why Daddy missed another Christmas, another birthday.”
He winced at the comment. It stung, but he knew it was true. It was an unfortunate part of being a soldier. “I know. Maybe I should have gotten out six years ago when I hit the midway point, but now with sixteen years in…” He sighed. “Hell, the sergeant major says I should make master sergeant once they post the cutoffs. That bump in pay will be nice.”
She sighed too. “Money doesn’t do us any good if you’re not here.” She propped up on an elbow. “Ramon, we’re not eighteen anymore. I see what’s happening over there. This isn’t like Afghanistan or Syria. This is—”
“Different. I know,” he finished for her.
“Do you? Russia, China, this isn’t like Afghanistan, Syria, or Iraq.” But her anger deflated as quickly as it had come. “I’m sorry. I just—” Tears came then.
He held her while she cried for a moment, releasing the anxiety and fear she felt.
“Hey.” He tilted her chin up. “Remember what you told me before my first deployment?”
“That if you died, I’d kill you?” she replied through a watery laugh.
“Ha-ha. No, not that. You said you’d be here. No matter what happened. That this” — he gestured to the space between them — “doesn’t break.”
“Sixteen years, four kids, five deployments.” She wiped her eyes. “I’m still here.”
“Me too,” he answered, leaning in to kiss her.
They made love then, desperate and tender, knowing he would be gone soon. Afterward, she fell asleep curled into him, one hand fisted in his shirt like she could anchor him home.
Ramon lay awake, thinking of her, the sound of her breathing, the faint scent of her shampoo, and how lucky he was to have found his soulmate. Down the hall, he heard one of the kids cough. In the kitchen, the ice maker in the freezer churned out another batch of ice cubes into the tray. These were the ordinary sounds of home. The sounds and smells he’d carry with him to Poland, and whatever the future held.
On the nightstand, his phone buzzed. He reached for it and found an email from the battalion S3.
Ramon thought about the Ripsaw systems arriving tomorrow. They were autonomous killing machines, but they still needed men to guide them. The irony wasn’t lost on him. They could build robots to fight, but they couldn’t build robots to say goodbye.
Maria stirred, murmuring something in her sleep. He pulled her closer.
Outside, a siren wailed somewhere in El Paso. The world spun on, oblivious to one family’s countdown to goodbye. Ramon closed his eyes and tried to sleep. Tomorrow would come soon enough. It always did.
A white-hot flash lit the tree canopy for a fraction of a second — like a camera strobe on full burn. A beat later, thunder rolled across the hills, low and steady. The first fat drops of rain fell, pattering against pine needles and striking Mercer’s gear with soft, hollow taps.
The forest stank of churned loam, ozone, and cordite from the blank rounds fired in earlier drills. Wet bark. Sweat. Pine oil. The layered scent of training.
Captain Alex Mercer lay prone beneath a tangle of low-hanging branches, rain bleeding off the brim of his boonie hat. A thin flicker danced across the bottom of his visor as his AR-HUD recalibrated for low light. His view lit up in a pale green overlay — terrain lines, unit icons, and simulated hazard markers.
He didn’t blink.
Ahead, the gravel road twisted through a natural cut in the ridge. First Platoon’s kill zone. Everything about the approach screamed textbook, which made him more interested in what they couldn’t see.
“They’ll be in position any second now,” murmured Sergeant First Class Victor “Vic” Santana beside him. The Bronx native spoke low, the mic on his chin strap picking up just enough to route to their fireteam net.
Vic flicked water off the laminated terrain sheet mounted to his forearm. His gloved hand hovered near a tablet — connected wirelessly to the TES-X training network, the Army’s next-gen combat simulator that synced their weapons, sensors, and helmets into one real-time kill grid.
“Shame about the rain,” he muttered.
Mercer’s eyes didn’t move. “If it ain’t raining, we ain’t training.”
Vic grunted. “Yeah, well. I’d kill for one op where my ass stays dry.”
The radio on the wet ground between them chirped.
“Valkyrie-7, Valkyrie-13. Movement on the road. I count six. Over.”
