The air was so clean you could have gotten a clear sniper shot from kilometers away. Above the field, the 17th Company’s flag snapped in a moist southerly breeze blowing off the Pacific. The sea air held a scent that snaked its way down your nose and tickled your tongue on its way to your throat. Rita knitted her brow. It wasn’t the stench of a Mimic. More like the slightly fishy fragrance you got from those bowls of nuoc mam sauce. Wartime tensions and the constant threat of death aside, the Far East really wasn’t so bad. The coastline, so difficult to defend, afforded beautiful sunsets. The air and water were clean. If Rita, who had about one tenth the refinement and culture of an average individual, thought it was wonderful here, an actual tourist might have considered it paradise. If there were one mark against it, it was the cloying humidity. The weather that night would be perfect for an air strike. Once the sun had set, bombers laden with GPS-guided munitions would take to the sky in swarms to blast the island into a lifeless moonscape before the next morning’s ground assault.
