Edge of the Coin

The Edge of the Coin is a developing fiction project inspired by experiences from my deployments during Desert Storm and Southern Watch.

At its core is the idea of being made deliberately visible.

A conventional unit operates close to a hostile border under the appearance of routine training. Its movements are obvious. Its presence is noisy. Its people know they are being watched. What they do not fully understand at first is that drawing that attention is part of the mission.

While more secretive operations unfold elsewhere, they become the distraction: a force meant to be seen, tracked, and worried about. To preserve the appearance of training, they remain seriously under-armed for the danger surrounding them. Their visibility protects people they may never meet, while placing targets squarely on their own backs.

The story itself is fictional, allowing me to explore a similar situation without attempting to recreate specific real-world operations. But some of the atmosphere, uncertainty, personalities, absurdities, and experiences come from things I actually lived through.

It is a story about the people on the visible side of a hidden operation, and what happens when being the decoy stops feeling theoretical.