Assignment: Draft a short story from the following prompt: Richard loosened his tie and rested his head on the back of the seat. He opened the car door and heard the surf pound against the sea wall. He could feel the stress drain from his body. What a day this had been.
One result:
It had been 24 hours since he’d passed through the security gate to enter Elmendorf AFB, Anchorage. He’d used an alias to do so and to file his flight plan. But now he had the evidence that both sides wanted. All of it. The one side was using part of it to blackmail the President to go along with them lest proof of his indiscretion and abuse of power be made public; the other side wanted the rest of it for it proved the blackmailers’ collusion with the enemy.
Who would have thought it was stored in an unguarded locker at Elmendorf? But he’d found it, loaded it into the car, rigged the car for a parachute drop in the back of a C-130, been cleared for a flight to Hawaii, taken off and set the aircraft on auto-pilot, and backed the car out of the cargo ramp mid flight. He had even rigged the cargo ramp to close after the drop. He remembered watching the plane recede into the night as the black parachutes opened and jolted him and his vehicle. He had left just enough evidence behind that his persuers would be waiting for him to land in Hawaii. By the time they realized the plane wouldn’t be landing he would be well on his way.
His sense of time moved him to brace for the landing. He hoped to settle on the abandoned expanse of Anchorage’s boondoggle of an international seaport. He also worried that the slight delay caused by his fall might be a problem. He wondered if he’d sprained his ankle. It hurt. Even more as the car thudded to the ground.
In the dim light he saw he’d landed on a small gravel bar. Waves washed around it to crash against the base of a sea wall. He’d missed his target by only a stone’s throw. Richard loosened his tie and rested his head on the back of the seat. He opened the car door and heard the surf pound against the sea wall. He could feel the stress drain from his body. What a day this had been.
And then it dawned on him. An exposed gravel bar at the base of the seawall means it’s low tide. And this is Anchorage, where the tides are nearly forty feet.