Here's the first page of "Rules of Engagement":
A Reporter At Large
It
was not much of a fight, as bar fights go: not even enough to get
Kevin Bishop, Tony Cervantes and Tom Hollis thrown out of the bar in
which they had spent the afternoon and evening of July ninth. The
three soldiers had been drinking at The Swiss Bar and Grill, a bar
popular with college students on weeknights but largely taken over by
military on weekends, when their implants relax the usual
restrictions on alcohol. Bishop, Cervantes and Hollis had served
together in the 23rd Infantry Division of the 2nd Infantry Brigade
(more often referred to as the 23-IN), mostly in Somalia and Yemen,
and two of them were still on active duty. Fire team Chinook had
survived the worst that the war and al-Shabaab could throw at them, but before long two would be in
prison and one would be dead.
The
immediate cause of the fight was money. Bishop, who had ordered the
last two rounds, had revealed that he was unable to pay his share of
the night's tab. The entire 23-IN had been flush with back pay when
they had come home from deployment in Yemen, bringing a welcome
stream of money into the city's bars; it was not unusual during that
period for John Pratt, The Swiss's owner, to make two or more bank
runs per night, each time with a duffel bag full of money. (Soldiers
in the 23-IN pay for almost everything in cash, due to a widely-held
belief that their implants track direct payments.) Two months later
the money was beginning to run out, and for Bishop – who was no
longer receiving combat pay and was also making regular payments to
the city's ghat
dealers – it already had.
#SFWAPro
