Three Pounds

By Drazen Ruzic

This is a true story.

Parris Island. August 1995. Sand fleas eating you alive and a drill instructor screaming so close you can taste his breakfast. I'm eighteen. Three pins in my shoulder from a war I was fourteen for. The other four don't know that yet. They don't know anything about me. I don't know anything about them.

Murphy. Rod. Danny. Toby. Me.

Five kids from five different Americas standing on yellow footprints at three in the morning wondering what the hell they just signed up for.

Thirteen weeks later we're not kids anymore. We're not five separate people anymore either. Recon takes what boot camp built and turns it into something that moves like one animal. Shoot, breach, crawl, kill - together, without thinking. That's the point. Don't think. Move. Breathe. Trust the man next to you because he's all you've got and you're all he's got and if either of you thinks too long you're both dead.

East Timor. Red dirt. No cameras. Children who don't look up when the helicopters come.

Then Congo.

There's a crater in a jungle and something happens in it that I can't undo. Three pounds of trigger pressure. That's what the title means. I won't say more than that. You'll get there.

After Congo I stop sleeping. I stop eating. I stop answering the phone. A hotel room in Crete with the curtains nailed shut and a bottle that's the only thing between me and the edge of something I can't come back from. Twenty-four missed calls. I don't pick up. Picking up means still being here and I haven't decided about that yet.

Three Pounds is Book One of the Three Pounds Trilogy.

My brothers decide for me.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GLJK5BWM
• ISBN13: 9798244455601
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"