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I miss your touch, your smile, and most of all the fun we have together. You make me brave.

All for now,

Love, me

I checked out the second and third letters, and they were pretty much along the same lines. She didn’t sign her letters except Love, me. She wrote of her time with ‘Dan’s’ parents in Topsail Beach, about the flower garden, about the restaurant his parents owned, about the characters at the bar where she worked, and about her paper.

I quickly googled Topsail Beach and saw that there were far too many restaurants for me to know which one was attached to the woman who wrote the letters. I’d have to find some other way to discover her identity so I could return her letters.

The letters were from a young bride to her bridegroom, who had gone away to war only a week after their wedding. He was in Special Operations Forces, so I had my first clue about the identity of the mysterious Dan. Armed with that information, I might be able to dig a bit, contact a few people I still knew in the service to find out why, other than the name we had in common, these letters were sent to me instead of to his family. By the blood on the letters, I had a suspicion that Dan was killed in action but other than that, I had no evidence.

The last letter was dated August 15th, and then there was no other. That final letter was sent less than a week before my incident – the incident that got me my only scar from my time in Afghanistan, other than incidental cuts and scrapes that are part of everyday life on deployment in a war zone. I thought it might be a coincidence, but the date and the blood stains on the letters was too much to let go. The connection nagged me, so I read through the letters, noting down everything she wrote in case there was any other clues to her identity.

I felt incredible sympathy for the beautiful young woman I knew only as love, me. The letters might be all she had left of her new husband, judging by the blood on the th

in airmail paper.

I knew what I had to do. I had to find her and return her letters. I’d do some sleuthing, find out who the young SOF was who lost his life, and FedEx the letters to his beautiful young widow.

It was the right thing to do.

The mysterious young woman, whose letters I was reading for clues to her identity, seemed ethereal to me. I imagined her with flowers woven into her long auburn hair the way it was in her wedding portrait. For all I knew, she might be a tall Amazon of a woman, but she didn’t come off that way in her letters to her new husband nor did her photos suggest height. She came off as someone who needed him, his strength, his fearlessness – as someone who fought her fears, wanted to confront them, and was glad to have a husband who was brave.

After reading her letters, I had an image of a stalwart young man named Dan, with a square jaw and whitewalls, who towered over her protectively in his military camo. From what I read, he took her places that she would never go on her own. Mountain climbing in the Rockies. Parasailing on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Flying in a small plane to a secluded mountainous area in Peru to explore ruins. Fly fishing in the Montana wilderness.

Without you, I’m a chicken. With you, I’m brave. Please be careful over there. Don’t always do the bravest thing. Do the safest thing. Stay safe, please. Come back to me…

It’s impossible to do the safest thing when you’re in a war zone. You do what keeps you alive, if you can, or what saves your brothers-in-arms. You need quick wits and fast responses when you’re in a firefight or on a dangerous mission. Sometimes, there’s no time to think. You just respond, using muscle memory and routines drilled into you so that they become second nature. Sometimes, there’s not even time to respond.

Like when an IED blows up your supposedly mine-resistant armor protected vehicle, or MRAP. I’d learned that all too well during my last trip to Afghanistan, when I got my scar and almost lost my life.

Later that night, I sat in my office and tried to recover after the business meeting from hell when I had to tell half my team that the other half had just been fired, explaining the half-empty boardroom.

Graham McKenny, my business partner and best friend forever, had been killed in Malaysia on a job two weeks earlier and as a result, half the capital we relied on for collateral was gone to his estate and to his brother. Not to mention the lawsuit we faced by the widow of one of the customers who was killed along with Graham. Despite the waiver he signed, I might add.

We had business insurance on Graham because he worked in dangerous places as a war tourist guide, but it was his collateral that kept us afloat and helped fund our projects. Along with my other friend Brandon, Graham and I were in the same Marine Recon unit over in Iraq during the last year of the surge. Then, Graham and I had been in Special Operations Forces, deployed in Afghanistan.

Short and pugilistic with a shaved head and a southern twang that he cultivated despite living in Hell’s Kitchen for most of his adult life, Graham was the best friend I had on earth. His death hit me hard.

Real hard.

Not only did I fire half my staff as a result of the sudden drop in our financial worth, I cleaned out their offices myself, and then sat alone in the darkened office space after everyone else left, wondering how I was going to hold it all together.

So, despite the fact it was the week from hell in which I tried to patch up the holes left in my business from Graham’s death, I had to find out who wrote the letters.

About seven thirty, my cell rang. When I checked, it was Terry, a contact I had in the Marines Special Operations Command and the only person I could trust to tell more than the most basic of details of the incident. I was with MARSOC in Afghanistan, testing out our prototype comms system I’d developed for the CIA’s Special Activities Division. I’d put in a call earlier to Terry to try to find out who sent me the package of letters.

“Hey,” I said when I answered. “Thanks for returning my call.”

We exchanged pleasantries, called each other old bastards and giant pricks as Marines are wont to do. Finally, we got down to business.

“Hey, Beckett,” he said, his voice finally serious. “It’s great to shoot the shit and all but why did you call me, anyway?”

“I need help tracking down who sent my stuff back from Afghanistan. I was embedded with a Special Operations Forces unit last year testing a prototype Brimstone developed under a DARPA contract.” When he said nothing, I continued. “I was with that Marine Special Ops team that went down in a chopper crash last year.”

I waited for his response. He must have heard about it through the grapevine even though the nature of our mission had been kept out of the headlines. It was in August. We were embedded with a Recon team that hit an IED while testing my prototype in enemy territory. A Special Ops team came to our rescue and then the chopper crashed in a sandstorm.

“Holy shit,” he said finally. “You were part of that? Oh, man. I had no idea…” He paused for a moment. “I remember hearing some talk about it, but it was pretty hush-hush,” he said, his voice hesitant as if he was trying to decide whether to admit he knew of the event.