Chapter 9 - The Final Salute
The silence stretched long between us. A cool gust of wind whipped across the asphalt, carrying the scent of cut grass and rain that was finally rolling in from the west. My throat burned. For twenty-four years, I had convinced myself that isolation was my armor. If I didn't stop driving, I didn't have to remember the smell of burning jet fuel. If I kept moving, Tommy stayed dead in the past, neatly filed away where he couldn't hurt anyone.
I looked down at the battered leather band around my wrist. The cracked leather, the fading stitches, the scratched metal plate.
Slowly, with stiff fingers, I reached for the brass buckle beneath my wrist. The pin resisted, rusted into place from years of sweat and highway grime, but with a sharp tug, it gave way. The leather separated from my skin for the first time since 1999, leaving behind a pale, unblemished strip of white flesh around my weathered wrist.
I held the band out toward General Mercer.
""Take it,"" I said, my voice barely audible above the wind. ""He wanted you to have it.""
Mercer’s hands shook as he took the band. He held the worn piece of leather in both palms like a sacred relic, his thumbs tracing the rough indentations of the metal plate his little brother had beaten into shape with a combat knife. A single, shuddering breath escaped his chest, and for a moment, the fearsome three-star general looked like an exhausted boy who had finally received a message from across the grave.
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""Thank you, John,"" Mercer choked out, tucking the band securely inside the breast pocket of his uniform, directly beneath his ribbons. ""Thank you.""
He stepped back and snapped to attention one final time, rendering a personal, private salute that carried none of the formal stiffness of the stage. This time, I snapped to attention immediately, my boots clicking cleanly against the pavement, returning the salute with the full strength left in my battered frame.
