Written by Fish

Memoir

Date of Writing: - 4 days

Date of Events: - 30 days

 

“The eagle has no fear of adversity. We need to be like the eagle and have a fearless spirit of a conqueror!”

-Joyce Meyer

          No matter how much my weary eyes begged me to give them the rest they reasonably deserved, I refused to give in to their temptation. If nothing else, Elias would be suffering with me. I thought he could squeeze in a nap on the chopper, but I probably wouldn’t. The adrenaline surge wouldn’t allow it. This was it.

          I stumbled through the dark corridors of the amphib until I found a Marine private, his eyes as weary as mine, shuffling around the ship. As I approached him, he stood straight up and straightened out his uniform. I don’t like to think of myself as intimidating, but clearly this kid and I disagreed.

          “Can I help you, sir?” he said with a weary but respectful voice.

          “Yeah. I heard that this is where I could find a certain Sergeant Bennett. You know him?”

          “Shit, man. I know him. He just went to sleep, like, ten minutes ago.”

          “Tell me which room. It’s important.” The Marine just stared at me like he was in a trance. I snapped my fingers in front of his face. “Where, Private?”

          “Oh! Uh, um… second room from the end on the right. Bottom bunk on the left once you go in, uh, sir.” I gave him a friendly nod and hustled to the room. I sneaked inside and checked the bottom bunk on the left.

          “Fish, bro,” Eli mumbled sleepily. “What the hell? It’s, like, three in the morning.”

          “It’s closer to… 2:23 A.M.,” I guessed. I have an uncanny talent of always guessing the time within two minutes. I looked at the dim glow of my watch. 2:21. Still got it. “Good, you’ve got your kit. Remember that thing I talked about?”

          Eli slid out of bed and ran his fingers through his dirty blonde hair, a shade or two lighter than mine. His blue eyes seemed dimmed, but maybe he was just tired. He yawned and straightened out the wrinkles in his camis. “Wait… you mean…”

          “The captain and I just got off the phone with the President.”

          “The President? Bro, are you hallucinating or somethin’?”

          “She called it in. We’re going and you’re coming with us.” That got his attention.

          “When?”

          “Mission briefing in 15. Let’s move.”

          We ran right into Big Chief, who’d come looking for Eli as well.

          “Fish, sir!” he called out to us. “This the Raider you were tellin’ me about?”

          “Sergeant Elias Bennett,” Eli said. Big Chief gave him a dismissive look. “I’m rested,” he lied. “And I’m ready to kick ass,” he added, the truest thing said since the Hong Kong crisis had resumed.

          “Hm,” he said dismissively, then turned towards me and waited for my defense.

          “I worked with him in Nigeria and North Korea,” I said, sticking up for my best friend, “and I’ve known him for a decade and a half longer than that. He’s a good man and a great warrior. You’ve got, what, five years with the Corps? Three deployments with the 2nd Raiders?” Eli nodded. “Yeah, he’s a worthy addition to the team.”

          “Okay,” he grumbled. “Meet us at the briefing with Captain Lawrence, Bennett. Fish, I trust you to pick out the best warriors for our team. Don’t let me or America down, sir.”

          “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said as he walked off.

          “Don’t think he’s a fan of you,” Eli told me.

          “Feeling’s mutual, y’know?” A quirky butterbar who barely passed BUD/S and sniper training, and had two weeks between when he joined a brand new SEAL team and his first combat deployment? I wouldn’t have trusted me either. The other SEALs eased up on me after a promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade and the Ryongsong Residence raid, but, let’s face it, if it wasn’t for that double headshot I’d still be getting hazed to high heaven.

          That shot violated most of the guidelines I’d learned in sniper school. Normally you’re supposed to aim for the center of mass; it’s an easier target, and with most full-caliber rounds you’ll probably still kill whatever you hit. But I just saw two guys with their heads perfectly lined up and fired. It was still mostly a matter of luck rather than skill, and the rest of the SEALs made sure I knew that by making a joke out of it. Every time someone retold the story, they would exaggerate it just a little more than the last guy. According to the current story, the bullet flew through seven heads, then all the way across the Pacific Ocean and into Latin America, where it landed in an ammo cache and blew up a den of Nicaraguan gun runners. I’d still die for those guys. As another sort of rite of passage, I was on PowerPoint duty for the mission briefing, detailing everything we needed to know and explaining it to everyone else.

          “As you all know, in a show of solidarity with pro-democracy protesters, the United States decided to recognize Hong Kong as independent from mainland China and built an embassy on the island about three years ago,” I explained to the twenty or so SEALs and Raiders. “After the Second Korean War and the collapse of the Communist regime in North Korea while China sat and watched, protests resumed, believing that Beijing wouldn’t care if another puppet state fell. It was a long time coming, no matter how much they wanted to ignore it. One month ago, Beijing decided that they couldn’t ignore the situation, and they strong-armed Hong Kong into declaring an emergency and deploying the PLA garrison against protesters.”

          “That’s why they sent us here,” Big Chief added. “The Hong Kongers are our friends and they’re being gunned down in their own streets. Now, we’ve been trying our best to keep the peace and avoid an international incident. That was, until the Chinese general leading the crackdown blockaded our embassy and called our diplomats ‘accessories to social disruption.’ He’s essentially holding all the Americans inside—civvies, diplomats, the Marine guards—hostage, blocking any shipments and threatening to kill ‘em if they go outside. Pro-Beijing ‘counter-protesters’ have swarmed the embassy with the general’s forces backing them up.” We both knew the truth—that “counter-protesters” meant “human shields.”

          “Washington, in typical fashion, wants this problem to go away as quickly as possible. Our primary objective is to reinforce the embassy, save American lives, and hopefully get the Chinese to back off of the embassy—and maybe the whole island.”

          I pulled up a map of Hong Kong island with a mark showing the location of the U.S. embassy, built up on a hillside. “We fly to the embassy, reinforce the Marine garrison, and set up a perimeter. We keep the pro-Beijing forces at bay while the Navy sends in more choppers to get our guys out. Hopefully our presence should mean the Chinese keep their distance, but between the recklessness of the counter protesters and the military, nothing is certain. We got lucky in North Korea, but now we’re on their turf. Firing on PLA personnel is permitted only as a last resort; and engage for no longer than you absolutely have to. We’re not here to pick fights.”

          Big Chief stepped in to cover contingency plans. “If the Navy can’t extract us by air, the plan is to evacuate the embassy and move everyone south to Stanley, where a Marine quick reaction force picks us up at the waterfront. We have no idea whether or not there will be Chinese military along our route, so stay frosty. Between us and the Marines in the embassy, we have more than enough guns to protect everyone on the way out, assuming all goes well. In the event we need backup, the other SEALs and Marines might come in with some light armor to escort us to the coast, but let’s all hope we don’t need to call it in. If this goes well, the Chinese will leave us alone, or at least let us leave without any shots fired. Everyone clear?”

          They treated me to a resounding chorus of “Aye-aye!” and “Oo-rah!” We were ready.

          Big Chief stopped me as we loaded up on a Chinook to fly into Hong Kong. He was the senior enlisted in Team Ten for years. Then, the Navy created SEAL Team Nine, sending them straight into North Korea and Nigeria. The Navy needed to shuffle some personnel around, including Big Chief, to mix some experienced SEALs in with the new enlisted and officers like me to help us out on those first missions. Even though I technically outranked him, I respected his initiative and experience and treated him like a superior. I was grateful to have him by my side, especially after our company commander was critically wounded in the Ryongsong raid and earned a one-way ticket back to the States, leaving me as the lone officer in the platoon.

          “You look a little nervous, Fish,” he said in his gruff voice.

          “We’re about to do something that could result in the first great-power war since the First Korean War,” I said to him.

          He shrugged and added, “But only if it goes wrong, right?”

          “Yeah. Only if it goes wrong. And I’m leading the assault team, so… yeah.”

          “No pressure,” he joked. I smiled, then turned to check up on Eli. He looked at home in his MARPAT camis, beaming as he checked his machine gun one last time. As much as I wanted to give my father credit for starting me on the path to the Navy, Eli was responsible for keeping me on it. Looking back, I never would’ve believed that those two nerds playing with LEGOs on the sidelines of a soccer game would end up as special forces operators.

          In line with pop culture disguised as American military tradition, Eli and I listened to “Fortunate Son” as the helicopter took off from the amphib and shuttled our task unit over the cool waters of the South China Sea. As much as I liked the song, it wasn’t enough to calm my nerves. I obsessively twisted the knobs on my scope just to keep my hands busy. Elias nudged me and smiled.

          “Chimera busted again?” I reset the scope and shrugged.

          “Just keeping myself busy,” I murmured. The other thing the SEALs loved to bust my chops about was my weapon, a hodgepodge of parts and accessories I cobbled together over a custom rifle chassis. I wasn’t a great gunsmith by any standards, but Chimera did its job better than most of their standard issue sniper rifles and got some bonus points for style. I suspected they were jealous.

          I stared out one of the windows as the street lights and sandy beaches of Hong Kong Island came into view. It was far different from the last time I’d been, accompanying my father on a business trip to nearby Shenzhen. The streets, which had been filled with travelers and salespeople and business executives, were now empty and sad. The only exceptions were the Chinese military police and their vehicles, training their 20mm guns on us as we neared the peak.

          “They’re eyeballin’ us,” Big Chief told me. I opened Chimera’s bolt, checking to make sure a round was chambered and I could shoot back if I had to.

          Our helicopter slowed down as the embassy came into sight. The protesters had set fire to the vegetation to the south and were burning tires outside the gates. I took inventory of what they had as we circled the embassy. “Best guess is about two to four hundred civvies and two hundred security personnel,” I told the team. “They’ve got two APCs with anti-aircraft guns.” The gunners stayed focused on those APCs as the helicopter stabilized and we tossed out the ropes for our team to descend onto the embassy roof. Big Chief went first while Eli and I made sure everyone made it down okay.

          Right as Eli and I grabbed the rope, a cheer went up from the crowd. I only had a few seconds to look up and see a 20mm round chew through the rear propeller assembly. The helicopter went into a tailspin, taking us with it. Even with thick gloves, the ropes burned my palms as I struggled to stay on. The helicopter slammed me into a second-floor window so hard I went all the way through the glass. Eli was lucky his backpack stopped him from breaking his spine after he slammed into the concrete wall and landed on the balcony.

          I don’t quite know how long I spent lying on the embassy floor with my eyes shut, reciting the Frogman’s Ballad under my breath to distract myself from the glass shards digging into my skin. It became a habit after I’d started training for the Navy and served as a calming mantra all the way through BUD/S. It keeps my brain calm in situations where I feel overwhelmed, like this one. I made it all the way through before I stumbled to my feet and met Eli at the shattered window.

          “You good?” he asked. I nodded, even as I picked specks of glass out of my face.

          “Fish!” Big Chief yelled into the radio. “Fish, come in!”

          “I’m with Bennett,” I told him. “Chinese downed our chopper.”

          “The chopper’s fine,” Big Chief explained, “it just grazed it. It’s headed back to the ship as we speak. I’m calling in the QRF. No way we’re getting out of this embassy by air.”

          “I saw that shit,” Eli told him, “and there’s no fuckin’ way that was just a warning.”

          “Play it safe, Bennett. Do not engage the Chinese. I’m checking in on the Marine garrison and the embassy staff, you two can join our other snipers and MGs on the roof.” We passed Big Chief on the way up to the roof, assisting the deputy ambassador in securing any valuables or information in his office.

          “The crowd looked smaller from the air,” was all Eli could say when we reached the roof. I looked out into the crowd once again. The civilians were leaving; this crowd was almost all military or local cops, but still numbering close to a thousand against our fifty or so SEALs and Marines. Two of the Marines were setting up a mortar and zeroing it on an APC, just in case. I flipped open Chimera’s lens cap and scanned the outer walls, some five hundred feet away. It was considered close for a sniper—a distance that someone could run in under a minute. I could see the eyes of each Chinese soldier glaring right back at us behind cracked riot shields.

          “What are they doing?” a SEAL asked.

          “Not sure. Probably waiting for us to make a move,” another suggested. I started mentally calculating everything I’d need to do to take a shot at this distance if I had to, then what I’d need to do when they crashed through the gates, ready to kill me and everyone else inside.

          I watched through my scope as a gap appeared around the front gate. An officer stepped forwards, looking right at me. Holding a megaphone to his face, he shouted in broken English, “America, open this gate at once! If you do not we shall reduce you to dust!” So much for keeping their distance. Eli gave him the bird, thankfully from a distance where he couldn’t see it. When he received no response, he waved into the crowd.

          I watched as military police marched out ten civilians and pushed them to the ground. There was an elderly couple, a trio of university students in their college sweatshirts, a Western businesswoman, and four children. Each one was scared to death. “Fish, talk to me,” Big Chief told me. I checked my rifle again, hoping I wouldn’t need to use it. “What are those civvies doing out there?”

          “I’ve got eyes on. Ready to engage.” Someone handed the general a 9mm handgun.

          “He’s got a gun,” Big Chief said. “This is an execution.”

          “Shit,” one of the SEALs said. “Prepare to engage!”

          “Negative!” Big Chief said. “Don’t spook ‘em. We aren’t taking fire.”

          “Sir, what the fuck are we waiting on?” a Marine asked as the general shoved the gun’s barrel into the businesswoman’s face, refusing to avert his steely gaze from our embassy. “You have ten seconds or I shoot!” he yelled. Those “anti-subversion” laws were no joke.

          “I’m thinking, I’m thinking…” There was a pop from outside as I watched the businesswoman’s suit turn bright red and her lifeless body fall over in the street. The other civilians were yelling at us to save them. “Nine seconds!”

          “Captain Lawrence!” I yelled into my radio, trying to contact my superior. I only got static as the general executed one of the students and mechanically paced towards the other innocents. “Eight seconds!” Every second meant a life saved, and I couldn’t act.

          “The general’s staging an execution!” I yelled. The general shot another student while proclaiming that we had seven seconds to make a decision.

          “Fish, are you seeing this?” Big Chief asked. The general marched an eight-year-old girl to the gate, slammed her face into the gate, and shot her in the back of the head.

          “Six seconds!”

          “Motherfucker’s gotta pay,” Eli told Big Chief as he chambered a round in his machine gun. “Preparing to engage.” The general executed the elderly man, leaving his bloody body in the street with the others.

          “Five!”

          “We shouldn’t intervene,” Big Chief said solemnly. “Don’t shoot back.” A little boy no older than ten had just been shot. The general announced that we had four seconds.

          “Chief, get everyone loaded up with the QRF and prepare to slowly open the gate. That’s an order,” I said. I watched as the general shot a third college student.

          “Three!”

          “Don’t do it, Fish!” The elderly woman dropped dead. The last two kids held onto each other for dear life.

          “They gave us a quote-unquote warning shot,” I told Big Chief as the general pried a kid away from the other.

          “Two!”

          I lined up my scope on the general. “I just want to return the favor. As they say here, courtesy demands reciprocity.”

          “Fish! We talked about this shit in Ryongsong! I suggest—”

          I shut off my radio. I trusted Big Chief on a lot of things, but not this. The general shot a third kid, then moved towards a third-grade girl who was bawling her tiny eyes out.

          “One!”

          The crosshairs on my scope traveled down the general’s arm, resting right on his thumb. In a split second, I took inventory of everything on me I’d need in the next three seconds: a loaded sidearm, thermite charges, smoke grenades, extra bullets, the tactical laptop, my radio, my medkit, and an infrared strobe. I wasn’t 100% confident about what I was about to do, but then again, nobody ever is in this business.

          I held my breath as he raised the gun to her little head and I pulled the trigger on mine. The bullet veered left and shattered the general’s wrist, ripping through the bone and tendons, carrying the hand and the gun with it. He screamed in pain as I tossed Chimera towards Eli and jumped off the roof into the gardens out front. I landed weird on my ankle, but I ran through the pain towards the slowly opening gate. The little girl was still crying as I called out to her to run to me. She ran through, bawling and flailing her little arms as the rest of the Chinese riot police stood still and we closed the gates on them.

          I got down on one knee and picked her up with my left arm while my right reached for my sidearm. I watched as the general picked up his pistol with his other hand and pointed it straight at us.

          “No!” I yelled, turning to keep the girl behind me. He raised the gun and fired three shots. The first missed me, the second hit my kevlar vest, and the third ripped through the left side of my neck. Even as my helmet strap dug into the bloody mass of skin and muscle on my neck, I raised my handgun and fired back, placing a bullet in his kneecap.

          As soon as I’d done it I knew I’d messed up. A battle cry sounded over my head as the wounded general ordered a counterattack. The bullets and mortars started flying. I emptied my sidearm’s magazine as I limped towards the security door.

          “I got you, bro!” Eli yelled as he returned fire, saturating the crowd with 5.56 while beaming like a madman.

          There is no sensation quite like being stuck in a firefight. It’s massively calming and disorienting at the same time. After Iraq and Afghanistan, scientists ran some tests with ex-soldiers where they measured their heart rates while the soldiers were in virtual reality engagements. Their heart rates actually lowered when the shooting started and their training kicked in. You would think that it would be the other way around, but truth be told I always found it relaxing. The adrenaline canceled out the fear of violent, imminent death—not that I was afraid of that anyways.

          Eli and I shut the doors inside the embassy. He took the girl from my arms as I took the cloth from around my neck and tied it tighter to stop the bleeding. Big Chief stormed towards me carrying my sniper rifle.

          “You’re the only one wounded,” he muttered. I inspected Chimera and slung it over my back. Right as I looked up, Big Chief socked me in the face.

          “No thanks to you.”

          “I did what I had to,” I told him as I tried to dry the blood off of me, both from the bullet through the neck and from Big Chief’s signature knuckle sandwich. I noticed that the rest of my left arm was bloodied.

          “Aw, shit!” Eli said.

          Turns out that the general had hit his original target. The girl was gasping for breath and coughing up bright red blood all over her t-shirt. The shot pierced her ribs and lodged itself in her lungs. “She’s going to die,” Big Chief said. “Everyone’s moving out. Come on.”

          I didn’t know much Cantonese, but I knew what the little girl kept repeating between her tiny, pained breaths. “Help, American.” I didn’t know what to do. She would’ve bled out on the way to the ship. Our corpsmen wouldn’t have been able to stop the bleeding. And I couldn’t leave her here to suffocate on her own blood. I caught myself repeating the Frogmen’s Ballad under my breath again.

          I suddenly remembered my own siblings, and the time the fire alarm in our house broke and I smelled smoke under the stairs while my parents were away.           We didn’t see any fire, but my youngest brother was crying, thinking the whole house was burning down. I walked him outside to our driveway, and, not knowing what else to do, I started singing along to Three Little Birds. It felt like hours of singing (and not even great singing) but it calmed him down by the time the alarm shut itself off and our mom got home.

          This time, both of us were crying as I sang to this girl I’d only met a few minutes ago, knowing she would die in my arms yet refusing to quit trying to keep her with me. Eli stayed behind and sang and cried with us. We started with Three Little Birds, then did some Imagine Dragons and Zac Brown Band. The light left her itty-bitty eyes right in the middle of Chicken Fried. The song we used to sing together on our way to movies and double dates was tainted.

          My next move was to commit the cardinal sin of any officer: I froze, fixated on the little lifeless body that our violence had left in its wake. I’d shot a Chinese officer twice in an attempt to save anyone, and now I’d started a shootout between the two largest militaries on the planet and didn’t even have the girl to show for it. Big Chief radioed us from the ship. “Navy’s gettin’ ready to pull back. Where the hell are you two assholes?” His message passed through one ear and out the other, blocked out by the weight of the futility, if not outright failure, of my leadership.

          “We’re in the embassy, Chief,” Eli said. “We’re surrounded by Chinese forces. They have not breached the perimeter. Sorting out extraction now.”

          “Eli, you need to get to Stanley,” I told him mindlessly, still frozen and teary-eyed after losing the girl. “Check the rear parking lot for a working car while I secure the embassy.”

          “Why do I have to go out there and find the car?” he asked. I checked my sidearm and murmured, “I think I can buy you a few minutes. I’ve got more than enough ammo and grenades to take out a few. It’s me versus a thousand or so Chinese. I like my odds.”

          “Bro,” he started, “I’m not leaving without you. No man left behind, remember?”

          “I outrank you. Go get in a car and leave. That’s an order.”

          “No,” he said. “I refuse.”

          “Why?” I asked incredulously. “I’m busted up. I’m not getting out of here and we both know that. You get to live and I get to end this miserable hellscape of eternal pain that I call my existence!” I laughed as I delivered that last line. Eli looked scared. Given my history with this, I couldn’t blame him. “It’s a win-win!”

          “You’re comin’ with me and that’s that,” he said as he opened the door to the parking lot. “I’m not letting a friend give up and get himself killed. That’s a promise.”

          I sighed. Picking a fight with Eli was dumber than risking nuclear war with China. “This is why we’re friends,” I said, and he smiled. I’d had my fair share of episodes, and, no, I don’t want to discuss them any further. Anyone reading this journal would know.

          Eli mounted his machine gun on the dash as I hotwired the car and slammed on the gas. He opened the gate in the nick of time, much to the surprise of the Chinese soldiers outside. They exchanged fire with Eli as we barreled right towards them. Thankfully for them, they jumped out of the way for us. Bullets whizzed and snapped all around us as we made our way through a tunnel and towards the south side of Hong Kong Island.

          “We’re home free, baby!” Eli cheered. I laughed, even as every speed bump or bit of debris we hit caused a burning sensation near my neck wound and wherever glass was lodged in my uniform.

          A few minutes later, as we approached the ocean, the car started slowing down even as my foot pressed on the gas.

          “Shit,” Eli said, “must’ve been leaking gas all the way here.”

          “We’ll go at it on foot,” I said as the car rolled to a stop in the middle of the street. I applied the parking brake. Two blocks down, a platoon of Chinese riot police and an APC passed. Eli and I ducked behind the car.

          “If we’re lucky, they won’t have seen us,” I told him as I readied my sniper rifle. Of course, by now you realize that we don’t have that kind of luck. 20mm rounds flew over our heads. I threw a smoke grenade out in front of us and made a mad dash for a nearby hotel. For the second time that night, Eli and I crashed through a glass window into a darkened office adjacent to the hotel lobby.

          Three Chinese military police had been clearing the building. We could hear them talking in the dark, splitting up to investigate the source of the crashing sound. I pulled out a knife as Eli readied a suppressed handgun.

          “Hunt and eliminate,” I whispered as we crouched by the door frame. We could see their flashlights all over the lobby. One crept closer and closer to where we hid. Right as the soldier looked inside and saw the shattered window, I sliced the tendon in his ankle and Eli shot him through the side of the head. We could hear the two others yelling as we tried to pull the body away from the door frame. They approached the door. I nodded at Eli and readied my knife again.

          Eli swung around and popped the lead guy twice in the head. I dove out towards the last guy as he started shooting, nicking Eli’s leg. I tackled him and jammed my knife between his ribs, in the same place the general had shot the little girl. He gripped my neck right by the wound and pulled my knife out, then tried to stab me with it. Two gunshots rang through the lobby and the soldier’s body went limp. Eli reloaded and helped me to my feet.

          “Thanks,” I told him, then looked at the blood oozing through his camis. “Let me take a look at that leg.” Eli shook his head and pulled out a tourniquet, tightening it around the wound to stem the bleeding. “I—I’m good, man.”

          “Fish, Bennett,” Big Chief’s voice said through my radio as Eli and I limped towards an elevator, “some SEALs and I are coming back in a helo to get you two. Where are you?”

          “We’re in Stanley, holed up in a hotel. Both of us have multiple wounds. We’ll send up a flare on the roof, over and out!” I clicked the button and stepped into the elevator, with both of us trailing blood on the floor. Eli and I ripped our helmets off of our sweaty heads as the elevator rose to the roof.

          “You have serious hat hair, bro,” he panted. I burst out laughing. I don’t know why. He laughed with me.

          “Dude,” I said to him, “when the nukes start flying, I am so horribly screwed. I mean, we’re all screwed, but I’m double-screwed. Promise you’ll visit me in Leavenworth every so often.”

          Eli shook his head. “You ain’t going to Leavenworth. Over my dead body.” The elevator doors slid open at the top floor. Eli and I shuffled to a stairwell that led to the roof.

          “Your optimism is appreciated,” I said as I ignited a hand flare and ran up the stairs, reciting the Frogmen’s Ballad yet again. Every step burned, but we couldn’t give up. Not now.

          We threw open the doors and tossed the flare to the edge of the roof. I sat down to catch my breath. I began to hear the faint sound of helicopter rotors as Eli hummed to himself. A small scout helo landed on the roof carrying Big Chief and some other SEALs to set up a perimeter. The sun was just coming up by now, and the water below sparkled like you’d never believe.

          “We were never going to leave you behind,” Big Chief said as Eli and I limped to the helicopter, “you stubborn, short-sighted dipshits.”

          “Love you too, Chief,” Eli joked after we were on board and on our way home.

 

 

 

About the Author: Finch Davis

          This is the opening to a novel nearly six years old, originally written back in 2018 when the prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong were front-page news and I was finishing my U.S. Naval Academy application. Written as part of the prologue to an epistolary novel with over twenty unique narrators spanning a war of ten years, this chapter is meant to introduce us into the voice of LTJG Fish Dawson and provide a brief background into a more geopolitically tumultuous world of the future. I completed the first draft of Operation Dauntless Eagle in a day or two for an assignment in a high school creative writing class, and since then it’s been my stylistic and conceptual testing ground that I use with friends, writers, editors, and magazines. I started my creative writing journey with a fantasy-style prequel to this almost ten years ago, as part of an assignment in my middle school English class to write an essay or story using vocabulary words we practiced during the month. The prequel was eventually dropped and replaced with a more realistic military fiction (but still leaning heavily on science fiction and bits of fantasy) setting, and massively expanded when I made it my submission to National Novel Writing Month in November of 2016. It’s been under constant revision ever since, and the current novel stands at 450 pages boasting 207,000 words—and it’s not even halfway finished. I’m also currently working on a sequel, picking up fifteen years after this novel’s conclusion, as well as a prequel anthology full of scenes from the lives of other key characters well before the events of Operation Dauntless Eagle come to pass.