"Forward… MARCH!"
Cold rain ran down the walnut fore-stock of the M14, slid along the chrome bolt and trigger guard, and gathered into rivulets beneath the gray-gloved hand pressed against the butt.
The drops fell straight onto the pavement, drumming against the shoulder cords of the man leading the column—Captain John Hastings. Beneath the dripping brim of his beret his face might have been carved from stone, yet he still heard the thunder.
"Detail, mark time… MARCH!"
The honor guard brought their shouldered rifles to the high port, forming a silent corridor for the row of black coffins. The arched lids glistened, darkened by the downpour.
"Detail… HALT!"
John and the guard stepped onto the rain-soaked lawn; the air was thick with wet earth. Dress shoes sank into the mud.
"Present… ARMS!"
The chaplain beneath an ancient redwood gave the order. The guard snapped to attention beside the draped caskets. In the driving rain the flag was unfurled, then folded with practiced precision into a tight triangle and presented on open palms to the slowly approaching families of the fallen.
Wives in round mourning hats veiled in black lace led small children by the hand or were accompanied by tall, already-grown sons and daughters. Umbrellas shed water in sheets as they accepted the deeper-colored flag amid the measured cadence of the eulogy, then placed small bundles of white roses and lilies wrapped in pale-gray silk atop the wood.
To the mournful notes of the bugle, former "Gray Horse" Captain John Hastings adjusted his dress coat and the sodden green beret above it. He walked to the lowered coffins, eyes moving across the silver nameplates. He knew every name, could summon every face from life.
"Order… ARMS!"
The bugle fell silent. Around the caskets lay a scattering of white petals beaten down by the rain. John Hastings lowered his head a fraction, yet still felt the weight of eyes upon him—eyes from two intact married families and four parents who had lost their only child.
"Firing party, attention!"
"Ready… Aim… Fire!"
Seven M14s angled skyward flashed as one. White smoke blossomed, then vanished instantly into the rain. Spent casings clattered onto the grass; the volley rolled through the green woods like distant artillery.
"Ready… Aim… Fire!"
In the thickening curtain of rain, John Hastings slowly lifted his face. Water streamed from soaked hair and beard; stubble darkened his jaw, and the half-healed scar a fragment had kissed still glowed raw against his cheekbone.
He looked dully across at the families of men he had served with but never truly known, and felt something block his throat completely. Perhaps, as the sole survivor of the catastrophe, he was destined to be judged—silently, mercilessly—for whether he had been brave enough.
All he knew was that when he had pulled the detonator cord, he had not been thinking of this funeral, nor of a green wooden marker carved with his own name. He had been thinking of a telephone call he no longer had anyone to make—until the distant "Duke of York's Royal Military School" supplied headquarters with a single sheet: the lonely childhood of one John Hastings, sole next-of-kin entry, so they could print a complete first half of a life and a set of dates on granite no one would ever visit.
Yet he was the one still breathing. Captain John Hastings—who had gone to war courting death—was now condemned to be the witness for the dead. He had lost his rank along with whatever trust he once had in himself.
It should have been him under those boards, not any one of them. They had far better reasons to survive, to come home to wives and children and peacetime.
"Ready… Aim…"
John's gaze settled on the single unfamiliar face among the seated mourners: a little girl no more than six, perched on the lap of Logan Lerman's widow. She clutched her mother's skirt with both fists and stared at him through the silver-gray veil of rain.
"Fire!"
The third volley cracked. The child flinched as though struck, then buried her face in her mother's chest. She understood death and absence, John thought. Her mother would not yet tell her everything, but the child already knew her father was gone forever, and the truth was too large to swallow.
John Hastings could not look away. Suddenly the hands hanging at his sides began to shake with a violence he could not command. He clenched his jaw against it, but the moral reckoning rose like floodwater, dragging his soul into the abyss.
Struggling, he raised an unsteady right hand, pressed the soaked green beret lower over his eyes to hide their ruin. He squared his shoulders and clasped his trembling hands behind his back.
But he could not hide the desolation in those deep sockets, nor the way his throat worked against the echo of the guns.
His eyes stung.
The rain took care of the rest.