Suspicion Island

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He flew in from the West, so the flight stopped at Tampa International and then went on to Miami. He looked down at the hot October land, at the saw-grass plains cut by the impossibly straight canals. In the beginning, it had been fury that had sustained him. A rage that the things he had planned had been taken away. Then all that had faded into a pain of loss. And loss had eventually turned into a cold curiosity, an almost wry desire to know why and how this had been done to him when he was away.

Home is the soldier, he thought. Home again, and two wars is too many. This one is a war for the professionals. They’ve given up the parades. Social note for the season, please: Captain Paul Rayder, U.S.A., Infantry, returns to his broken home and abandoned business enterprise after two years of, shall we say, inadvertent active duty. During his sojourn among the up-and-down hills, the captain saw many interesting things. He was decorated for valor, and — combination social and humor note — he became known to his company as the “Iceman.”

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