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Window of Peace: Stained Glass Legacy, book 2

By Regina Rudd Merrick

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WINDOW OF PEACE
Chapter One
February 1970
Vietnam
The occasional flash from too-close mortar rounds provided the only light in the dark jungle. Lieutenant Michael Connor “MC” Dunne’s eyes had long ago grown accustomed to seeing at night, making the flashes of light a detriment.
Gunnar stopped.
“What is it, boy?”
MC knelt next to his K9 scout. The dog had instincts that couldn’t be taught. Instincts he was born with.
Those instincts had never let the unit down.
“What do you see?”
MC crouched, gazing all around him, waiting for the intermittent light to reveal any Vietcong guerrillas hidden in the lush undergrowth. His unit had made it through the swamp, but suddenly, it was too quiet.
Too peaceful.
Frankie’s moan drifted toward MC. The soldier had to keep quiet, or he’d alert the enemy to their position. Gunshot wounds to both legs sustained while taking point during the last altercation would kill Frankie if they didn’t make it to the pickup spot. As it was, he’d soon receive his fourth Purple Heart, and most likely a ticket home.
Sal, the unit’s medic, gave him a shot of something. MC didn’t care what it was—at least it got him quiet. It took two men to carry the wounded man, and now he was even heavier—dead weight.
They made it to the outskirts of an area that had once been a temporary base. The tents that housed personnel had long been dismantled and moved to another site.
MC and his men reached a clearing. A church stood in the center, shining in the moonlight—a small chapel, rustic in nature, with a short white steeple. Left behind when the unit vacated the area. It reminded him of his Grandpa Brendan’s chapel on Dunne Farm back in Tennessee.
He heard rustling, and Gunnar emitted a low growl from his throat.
The small building would either become a great hiding place. Or a trap. MC made the decision and used hand signals. Hiding place. They had to stop in order to deliver Frankie to the pickup zone alive.
Using stealth movements, as they’d learned when guerrilla warfare became the norm, they made their way to the building.
Gunnar remained quiet, but MC could feel the dog’s raised hackles. He never let down his guard.
Maybe they could rest here tonight, but someone would have to stand guard duty. In the jungles of Vietnam, no one could be trusted. The enemy could be an old lady in the marketplace, a child harvesting crops in a field, or even a nursing mother. Anyone could be a Vietcong plant.
As they settled into the small structure, MC whispered, “I’ll take first watch.” They’d been so quiet, his whisper sounded loud.
Pulling out of his pack a collapsible bowl, he poured water in it for Gunnar, who, even as he drank, kept his ears at attention. Looking around in the dim light, MC took in his surroundings. The room was about the size of the chapel on the farm. In fact, on one end,
where the pulpit would have stood, was a stained-glass window, much like the one that meant so much to Grandpa. The Dunne chapel’s window had survived the trip from Ireland to Chicago, then from Chicago to Tennessee. Home.
The window before him probably wouldn’t survive this war, if it even made it through tonight.
Are you there, God? We’re in trouble here.
He looked over his comrades, fitfully sleeping, a few snoring. Sleep was the last thing on his mind. He had to figure this out. Grandpa would say to wait, to trust in God’s timing, but Grandpa wasn’t here, in the thick of battle.
A blaze of light through the stained-glass window alerted him, but too late. As if in slow-motion, shards of glass flew toward them. Being awake, MC had time to shield his face with his arm. The glass bounced off of Gunnar’s thick German shepherd coat.
His unit scrambled to safety, each man picking bits of glass from what little of the uniform they could stand to wear in this heat. Some of the bits stuck to their sweating bodies, driving the glass in just far enough that small rivulets of blood dripped down.
These surface wounds wouldn’t slow them down. MC turned toward Frank Wallace. Frankie.
He wasn’t sure if the red he could see was blood, or a piece of glass the same color. Whatever it was, whatever color it was, it had hit its mark, deeply piercing his neck.
Frankie was dead. Not from gunshot wounds, but from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When MC reached him, he saw Sal, next to the body, eyes staring straight ahead, and a bullet hole in his forehead. He wanted to be sick, but there was no time to grieve.
Not now.
The enemy was close. Between them and the pickup zone.
MC drew his rifle out, still dazed at the sight of his dead friends. These weren’t the first deaths he’d witnessed, but Frankie and Sal?
They’d died on his watch. He turned when he heard a guttural male scream rushing toward him. The enemy.
He couldn’t tell where the gunshot came from. Gunnar barked, and tugged at him. He felt Gunnar knock him to the ground as he pulled his trigger. A heart-wrenching yelp came from his partner, followed by pain searing through his shoulder. After that, MC was in and out of consciousness, seeing only flashes of activity around him. The last thing he remembered was sunrise coming through what was left of the window, then the medivac lifting him out of the jungle, without Gunnar beside him.
Where was God, now?
###
March
Tokyo
Dear MC,
We made a lot of promises to each other before you left for Vietnam.
Promises that I can’t keep.
I loved you so much …
Loved? She didn’t know the meaning …
I met somebody. His name is Clint.
I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. It’s cliché, isn’t it? The war hero and the flighty nursing student. I guess I’m a cliché.
The idea that I promised to wait for a soldier who, statistically, wouldn’t come back, is too much for me. I need more assurance than that.
Please don’t hate me. I hate myself enough for both of us …
###
The nurse who had attended to him for the last few weeks interrupted his thoughts.
"Lucky you, heading home.”
MC looked up, his emotions roaring.
“Lucky me.”
She didn’t deserve that. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. “I’m sorry, Carol. I didn’t mean to take out my problems on you.”
Nurse Carol, Captain Dryden to those she outranked, like him, nodded, then placed a clean uniform on the bed. She didn’t mention his verbal slip. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” Tilting her head, she frowned. “I hope things go well for you at home.”
He nodded, then looked down at the paper in his hands. His attention back on that, he folded up the tattered letter and shoved it into his duffel, feeling the anger well up in him. The smart thing would be to throw it away. He couldn’t. He’d read and re-read the fine script so many times, he had it memorized.
He’d received the letter six weeks after he arrived in Vietnam.
After his first skirmish in-country.
Maybe when he got home, he’d burn it.
Reading it again had been a mistake. But since when did this new, reckless version of Michael Connor “MC” Dunne avoid mistakes?
Now, he was on his way out. Going home. He should be celebrating.
Dying would have been preferable, easier, but as much as he tried, when men were falling all around him, MC survived. He’d thought surely this time, when he saw Gunnar go down, that he was a goner.
The first bullet, meant for him, hit Gunnar when he pushed MC away. MC ended up with a flesh wound, but Gunnar ended up dead. Why would a God who loved him make him endure such loss without easing him into death, especially when he’d begged for it?
Now MC had to live with everything he’d encountered in a foreign land as opposite home as possible. Home, where nothing was as it was “supposed” to be.
His Commanding Officer had tasked one of the men in his platoon to pack up what little personal effects that belonged to him, including Rebecca’s letter, and had them sent to the hospital. Now, going through the bits and pieces of his recent life, he wished it had all been destroyed.
Glimpses of war, of jungles, of friends lost, of desperation—of horror—consumed him. Now, he’d have to navigate that foreign land he called home.

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