“Get up.”
Arthur did not move.
“You and I are going to base security.”
“No.”
The single word was neither loud nor defiant.
It was complete.
Logan looked toward his teammates.
Mason raised his eyebrows.
Derek smiled.
Backing down had become impossible.
Logan pointed at the tarnished pin.
“What is that supposed to be?”
Arthur’s fingers paused near the spoon.
“That does not concern you.”
“Looks like surplus-store garbage.”
The old man’s eyes changed.
Only slightly.
But the calm surface became colder.
Logan leaned closer.
“You buy it to convince people you served?”
The pin had not been purchased.
It had been placed into Arthur’s palm on a rain-soaked island in 1944 by a dying man named Henry Vaughn.
Arthur had been twenty years old.
Henry was twenty-three.
Both belonged to an experimental naval combat demolition unit operating in the central Philippines before the Navy had fully defined what men like them were supposed to be.
Their mission, code-named Black Current, required twelve men to infiltrate a fortified island chain near the Samar Sea.
Japanese listening stations on three small islands were intercepting Allied naval communications and tracking American aircraft.
Arthur’s team was ordered to destroy all three posts before an approaching fleet movement.
The operation failed before it began.
A local informant betrayed the insertion route.
Enemy fire met them on the beach.
The first machine-gun burst...