Weapons of choice

The morning was warm and fresh. A small, half-meter swell broke on the soft crescent of sand in regular sets of three waves at a time. A light onshore breeze ruffled the men's hair and cooled the sweat that slicked their bodies.

"Warlow, run up that big dune there and have a look around," said Hardy. "See if we got any company."

The marine took off with a stealthy lope. All of the backchat and sass were gone from him.

"They dead, Sarge?" asked a giant rifleman.

"What do you think, butthead?" said Hardy, his eyes traversing like gun barrels.

"Looks like," said Private Bukowski.

"They ours?" another man asked.

Hardy turned around. It was Snellgrove.

"What makes you think that, Smelly?"

The marine, a raven-haired boy from Kansas, inclined his head toward the bodies. Another wave washed over them.

"Looks like a mixed couple. And you can see their implant scars, I reckon."

Warlow yelled down from the heights of the dune. "All clear, Sarge!"

Hardy took in a deep draft of clean air. It was so much cleaner here. You simply couldn't deny it. Made a man wonder about the shit he'd been breathing all his life. He took another look at the empty beach. It was a pity to fuck up such a nice-looking place. The sea would be just about perfect for bodysurfing. The glassy green rollers crunched in with a nice hollow boom, and the sand was so white you just knew it'd blind you when the sun got higher. There wasn't a single piece of trash to be seen anywhere. No condoms. No broken glass. No discarded syringes.

"Okay," he sighed. "Y'all know the drill. We'll take it like any other atrocity site. Just pretend you're back in Yemen or Syria. Form a box, two hundred meters out. Bukowski, you come with me. We'll have to drag 'em up or else they'll get washed away. We'll walk over there through the surf. But keep your eyes peeled anyway. We might get lucky. Lazy fuckers might've tossed a weapon into the water.

"Okri, you get your ass back to town. Call our guys first. When they got their shit together, let them call the local yokels."

Private Okri, who could run the legs off the rest of the squad, nodded and took off, being careful not to intrude into the invisible box Sergeant Hardy had drawn around the scene.

USS KANDAHAR, PEARL HARBOR, 0612 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

Captain Francois and Colonel Jones regarded the body with a mix of sadness and disgusted anger. Second Lieutenant Myron Byers had killed himself with a single shot through the temple. The wall behind his body was still sticky with blood and matted hair. A letter, a photograph, and a wedding ring lay together in a ziplock bag on a fold-down bedside shelf. The lieutenant and his wife of eight months smiled out of the photo. It had been taken on their honeymoon.

The brief note apologized for the mess in the cabin and asked that his wife's family on her maternal grandmother's side be given the ring, the photograph, and all of his personal items. They were to keep his belongings in trust for her until her eighteenth birthday, many decades away. His savings were to be invested and held in trust for her until that time, as well.

"Jesus, what a fucking mess," Jones said, despondently.

Francois knew he was talking about the request, not the cleanup job.

"You gonna do it?" she asked.

"It's a man's dying wish," he said. He fell quiet for a few seconds. "I should have been paying more attention, seen this coming."

Captain Francois rubbed her burning eyes with the heel of one palm.

"Don't beat yourself up, Colonel," she said. "He won't be that last one we lose this way."

Jones had already accepted as much. He hadn't had time to think much of his own wife and family. There was just so much to do, although, if truth were known, he was probably avoiding the issue. There had been one or two quiet moments since Midway, but he hadn't sat down by himself to think through the personal implications of the Transition. If they were stuck here, he'd never see Monique or his niece again. It neatly inverted the burden of separation they always felt when he was away on active duty. Now he got to share in their sense of loss, and dread.

"Colonel?"

He returned from the unhappy line of thought. "I'm sorry, Captain. You were saying?"

"I said we might want to think about screening our personnel for acute depression. People are going to respond differently, but some will want to check out, like the lieutenant here. He's not the first, you know."

That surprised Jones. He leaned over, plucked the ziplock bag up between the tips of his fingers, and motioned Francois out of the cabin. She shut the door behind them.

"You've had more suicides?" he asked in a low voice.

"Four," said the combat surgeon. "This is the first on the Kandahar. Oddly enough, they've all been male so far, even though we've got about five hundred mothers serving on ships throughout the task force. You'd think this would have hit them the hardest."