The Incident

A new short story, available on Amazon for .99 cents.

Jesse J. Rideout, a young covert operator, returns to civilian life to complete college but is deeply discontented. He and his new wife Ann are drifting apart. Thinking an adventure vacation might be a remedy they set out on an overland journey by train and bus through Mexico and Guatemala where they encounter more adventure than anticipated.

* * *

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
– Camus

I tried the citizen’s life. It didn’t work. I was suffocating in Santa Monica, teaching mountaineering to college students, and, like many veterans, taking college classes. Even registered in my true name, Jesse J. Rideout. First time I had used my true name since entering the clandestine world.
In class my mind would drift and I’d be back in the twin engine de Havilland Caribou with the red lights and roaring engines and then going out over a country where I had one contact who might be reliable and seventy-two hours to do the job and get out. The jump into darkness and the fall and the pop of the canopy opening and above the stars and below the unknown and a mission that meant something, that was life.
I thought a little vacation adventure might snap me out of it and bring us closer, my new wife and I. We were drifting apart. She didn’t know who I really was and had fallen for who I had appeared to be. It might have worked out except for that one incident.

https://www.amazon.com/Incident-James-Morgan-Ayres-ebook/dp/B07LCSCYHV