THOMAS COLE'S POV
The sunrise over St. Jude's Key wasn't like the sunrises in the desert. In the Middle East, the sun was an intruder, a burning, merciless eye that crawled over the horizon and immediately began punishing everything beneath it. Dawn there meant heat, grit, and another endless march through dust that tasted like rusted metal.
Here, it was something entirely different, and the light rose slowly, almost lazily, spilling across the Caribbean in waves of gold and amber. The ocean caught the first rays and turned them into a sheet of hammered copper that stretched to the horizon.
It was too quiet, and I was awake before the light touched the water. Some habits never leave you, but the Ranger Regiment trains that into your bones. Sleep lightly. Wake early and fucking scan the horizon before the world even knows it's awake.
