“Form up!” Staff Sergeant Callahan bellowed. “Ammo count, now!” “Hazelwood, dry!” I yelled. “Magnuson, one round left!” came the reply. Before we could finish, enemy fighters charged across the jungle clearing–straight for us. “Alpha here,” Callahan barked into the PRC. “Target my position, now!” “Three-four, repeat that,” crackled the response. “Artillery on my coordinates!” Callahan…

When I was a kid, I thought church was about pinching my brother when Mom wasn’t looking and trying to stay awake through the preacher’s third use of the word “righteousness.” We’d sit in the third pew on the left side, the wood worn smooth from decades of fidgeting kids, behind Mrs. Lacy and her…

“Movement, eleven o’clock,” a voice called out. “Got it,” replied our SAW gunner. A short burst from his weapon dropped the target. “Cease fire, you bastards!” a familiar voice shouted. “Tony, that you?” “Yeah.” Scrambling forward, staying low, I feared the worst. Instead of bullet wounds, Tony had shattered both ankles. “Why didn’t you signal…

Late afternoon-early evening. I had wandered up the hill west of the house and settled into the scrub to take in the view of Spanish Springs Valley. It hadn’t always looked like this—so crowded, so filled in. Once, there had been more open land than rooftops. Somewhere nearby, I heard the sharp yips of coyotes.…

There’s winter, and there’s spring. Then there’s whatever is in between–something I like to call The Lying Season. It’s when the sun comes out just long enough to convince you you’re splitting wood no more, and then come morning, you’re waking to sleet slapping your kitchen window like a used car salesman trying to sell…

The gunfire erupts like a storm, a deafening roar that swallows everything else. Bullets snap past, tearing into the dirt and stone around us. Flat on my stomach, my heart hammering when I see Rodriguez—our radio operator—slump forward, his headset dangling, blood pooling beneath him. Bastards gone, just like that, in the opening seconds of…

My Cousin Elmo says, “My wife says she’s proud of me after I came home from the bar sober. I don’t have the heart to tell her it was a salad bar.”

I woke up this morning, shuffled past the coffee pot that don’t perk quite right anymore, and stared into the face of my past—plastered all over the walls like a museum curated by a sentimental raccoon. There’s an old Polaroid of Gerald “Tooth” Miller from when he tried to start a canoe rental business on…

The squad had been without coffee for a grueling 14 days, pounding through the dense trails of Central America in pursuit of the Hot Sauce Gang—code for the elusive Sandinistas who seemed to haunt every border from Nicaragua to Honduras. Our chase was relentless, and the absence of caffeine made each step heavier. It was…

You ever have one of those days, where the wind feels like it’s got a grudge against you? Like maybe it was a cousin of yours in another life that you wronged somehow—stole his girlfriend or dented his Ford Fairlane—and now he’s come back as a Western Nevada gust bent on payback. That’s the kind…