Collateral Damage Read Online Free PDF

slow, the earth’s rotation sluggish in its daily movement, the heat only slightly diminished by the afternoon thunderstorms that prowled the state, regular as a Swiss timepiece, bringing the deluge that caused the pavement to steam and the air to hang ever more heavily over the sweltering peninsula.
    I looked out over the bay, a flat gray expanse of still water, not a puff of wind to disturb its quiet surface.
Recess
sat quietly in her berth, no movement, the lines holding her to the dock were slack. A brown pelican sat in repose on a piling, still, as if not daring to move for fear that the heat would overcome him. A fish jumped nearby and the pelican took no notice. A kind of torpor had settled over the island, bringing with it a stillness of body and mind. I sat and watched and tried to summon the energy to head for the beach and my morning jog.
    My doorbell rang, a strangely discordant note in the early morning quiet. I looked at my watch. Not yet seven o’clock. It was either bad news or a friend who knew I was an early riser dropping by for a cup of coffee. That is not as unusual as it sounds. It’s part of the island rhythm that we have adapted to, friends visiting at odd hours, knowing that if you didn’t want to be disturbed you’d simply ignore the doorbell. Feelings would not be hurt.
    I left my coffee and paper on the table and walked barefoot to the front door. I was wearing a white T-shirt with the Grady-White boat logo on the breast pocket. The back of the shirt featured a picture of a twenty-eight-foot boat and the name of the dealer, Cannon’s Marina, owned by myfriends David and Lucille Miller. Khaki cargo shorts completed my skimpy summer attire.
    I opened the door to find a stranger fidgeting uncomfortably on my front stoop. He was about six feet tall, lean and fit, a head of gray hair, the planes of his face sharp and creased by years of tension, bright blue eyes, good teeth showing when he smiled. He was wearing a pair of taupe slacks, white golf shirt with the logo of an Atlanta country club on the pocket, cordovan loafers. I could tell by the contours of his body that he was younger than his face and hair made him appear.
    He smiled, and held out his hand. “Long time, L.T.”
    L.T. The universal appellation given by soldiers to the young lieutenants with whom they serve. I’d once been a nineteen-year-old lieutenant, back at the tail end of the Vietnam War, back when I wore a green beret and killed people who were trying to kill me. I’d led some of the toughest men on earth, an A team of U.S. Army Special Forces, the storied Green Berets, as we prowled the jungles seeking our human prey. We became closer than family, closer than anyone who hasn’t been part of a small group of young men engaged in mortal combat can understand. It has often been said that soldiers do not fight wars for honor, or country, or policies dictated by governments in faraway capitals, but for their buddies, the ones who share their danger and their fear and their disgust, who understand the emotional damage done to one who kills another human being whose only crime was wearing the uniform of the opposing army, who identifies with the necessity of the kill, because that other soldier would have killed you or your buddy for the same reason.
    My mind flashed back to a time when flies buzzed in the heat of a quiet day, the high sun baking the plain on which I lay, the sound of gunshots in the distance giving substance to the combat that was about to come. I lay in the tall grass near a line of trees that marked the beginning of another jungle-like expanse of Southeast Asia. My left leg was afire, the result of the bullet that had gone through my calf, fired by some scared kid in the Viet Cong unit ensconced in the trees.
    My men had moved on, attacking, going forward to clear the area of the enemy. Our medic had stayed with me, wrapped my leg, and told menot to try to stand. He thought