[From Max] I woke in a daze, curled up meekly beneath my motel sheets.  It took a moment for the outside world to register, and I fumbled for my phone. No messages. I reached for the TV remote and thumbed my way to the news without crawling out from under the covers.  I needed food and...

[From Max] I slept through the afternoon.  Ten hours straight.  The sleeping pills keep me down despite the helos that whip overhead all day, every day.  I took my first shot of caffeine as soon as I woke.  I rolled into the Operations Center, groggy and squinting, and fumbled with the...

[From Max] I spent a week in limbo.  The transient tent was a windowless time warp cluttered with metal bunks and duffle bags.  The other occupants were a motley group; there was a line squad, a couple of interpreters, and a team of Guardsmen from rural Alabama. The night I arrived we were...

[From Max]  I kicked rocks around the FOB for a few days.  I had no job.  No hard times to meet.  I was an Army of One.  I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. I decided to do nothing. I went to chow.  I went to the gym.  It was a makeshift little building stuffed with ropes...

[From Max]  It was freezing when I stepped off the back of the chopper.  There was no snow, but mountains loomed in every direction.  If it was cold when we left, an few thousand more feet weren’t helping. It took two trips to move my gear through an ancient looking gate in a...

[From Max] The Chinooks staged on the hammerhead in a staggered pair.  My guys piled their gear to one side as we waited to manifest.  People scurried in every direction.  Air crew.  Ground crew.  Soldiers. I checked my kit one last time and counted off my guys by touching each of them on...

[From Max] I rolled into Portland just after sundown on a Friday.  The Occupy movement was in full swing, and Stanhope was in town.  Two unrelated events with potential entertainment value.  I threw a change of clothes and one of my pistols in my gym bag and hit the road. I don’t...

[From Max] I’m still at the airfield.  I’m never going to leave this fucking dump. My timeline gets pushed right every other day.  The captain in charge of scheduling the movement mentions it casually, in passing, and shrugs at me. “Oh, you’re leaving on the . ....

The night I met Jerome, they took him away in cuffs. He was in town for a Genitorturers show.  I knew him from message boards. We met for a drink and I tagged along to Dante’s. At some point he wandered into the crowd. Some dummy was trying to start a mosh and slammed his elbow into...

[From Max] It was sunny and pleasant when I pulled up to the old man’s trailer. Unseasonably warm for early November. Leaves still clung to the trees, or skittered across the street and stuffed themselves into the grassy little corners of unkempt lawns. “This can’t be it,” I...

[From Max] The last two weeks have dragged by.  I spent most of it working, hoofing it back and forth across KAF.  This place is short on charm. The wind picks up for days at a time and the air is thick with dust.  It has the texture of talcum powder.  We are not authorized to wear scarves...

[From Max] Message from the JDOC: There will be a controlled detonation to the southeast of KAF in five minutes . . . I say again . . . Five minutes . . . End of message. The big voice echoes through the compound.  It happens periodically – followed by a  distant TH-WUMP!  Yesterday...