Matson and Henry sit in the Humvee waiting for Sergeants Woods and Paddock to return from the operations tent. The operations tent is a mystery to Henry. Every day Woods and Paddock come out with a new mission for the squad. Henry never knows what these missions are, doesn’t want to know. He is happy […]

Henry sits against a white stone marker high up in San Francisco’s National Cemetery. The marker is one of thousands formed in rows with military precision. They remind Henry of morning formation and he smiles. The grass is freshly cut and the morning dew soaks pleasantly through his pants and wets his legs. The sun […]

Henry and Matson had been in Germany and on the same MP team for a year before they deployed to Kosovo. She was tall as him with blond hair cut above her collar and bright blue eyes and small breasts. She was the driver and Henry was her gunner. She was tough. Ran faster than […]

“How do you always have money for weed and McDonald’s?” Vargas asks. “You got a job or something we don’t know about?” They eat Big Macs in the park just above the artificial waterfall. Sallie eats one too, her red and black tongue licking up mud and pine needles to get the last of it, […]

Henry met Nikki at a barrack’s party. She was a friend of Specialist Olsen’s girlfriend and Olsen was throwing a party because it was a Wednesday and he didn’t have to work. Henry was two weeks stop lossed and he sat in the corner next to the keg drinking Bud Light heavily. Music pumped from […]

Hippie Hill is just inside the park off Haight and during the afternoons, when it is sunny and the ocean wind isn’t so cold, it is littered with the street kids who come to San Francisco from everywhere else. They are hoping to catch something of Jerry Garcia, hoping to revive that summer of love. […]

Specialist Richard Henry, of the Fort Knox Military Police Traffic Detail, walks up Haight Street smoking a joint. He is coming from Alamo Square where he likes to sit in a tree and watch the fog move through the Financial District. Just beyond Masonic Avenue is Golden Gate Park and he is going there to […]

The sun is going down and the shadows growing long. Birds screech and dive into the water, frantic with the last light. Henry wonders if the birds know that the sun will be back or if the end of each day is for them like dying all over again. A gull surfaces, a slick and […]

It was their second or fourth date. They ate tacos and drank beer and talked until eleven and then walked to the corner. Travis wanted to take a cab. But they were expensive and none were in sight and Katie hated cabs so they waited for the bus. It wasn’t a long wait, maybe thirty […]

excerpted from No Plan Survives a novel in progress Ric sat in the back seat of the Humvee reading an American news magazine. Henry and Matson sat in the front slapping cards down between them on the gunner’s platform. Ric had tried to grasp the basics of the game, but Matson spoke quickly and Henry […]