Diaries
of Becka Vol I
New Year’s Day
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Year of the Zombie
Copyright 2003 Timothy Willard
Diaries of Becka Vol I: New Year’s Day
Copyright 2011 Timothy Willard
Chapter One
Becka
T minus 24 Hours
“NO BLOOD FOR OIL! BRING THEM HOME!” I chanted with the rest of the group, waving my placard that read “STOP KILLING WOMEN AND CHILDREN!”, the words painted in red over a peace symbol made of flowers. I was skipping training in the gym in order to take part in the protest on the Washington Capitol’s lawn in Olympia. They’d bussed some us in from Evergreen University to protest the war, since the Secretary of Defense was supposed to be meeting someone there, but Gabby, Candy and I had ridden in Gabby’s car.
I wasn’t really clear on who he was meeting, but I agreed with my friends that the War on Terror was wrong, that violence in this situation only begat more violence. Total war wasn’t the way. Violence must be restrained, controlled, and only used when necessary. Violence never solved any problems, just created more of them, and the diplomacy of cooperation, compassion and compromise was the only way to solve the problems.
People flipped us off, honked in support, shook their fists and even spit at us or cursed us as they drove by. One guy was even punched by some establishment drone, who probably voted for both President Stail and President Bush as well as Reagan, and the police had not even done anything. It figures, they were just tools of a corrupt regime dedicated to squeezing the last bit of profit and blood from Amerikkka itself as well as Third World Nations that had resources Amerikkka could use and couldn’t defend themselves. You didn’t see the US Army invading North Korea, did you? Of course not, it was because they could defend themselves against Amerikkka’s unwarranted aggression.
“Do you think this will do any good, Becky?” Candy asked, leaning forward to shout in my ear over the crowd. I looked at my blonde sorority sister and nodded, positive in my knowledge that peaceful demonstrating had far more power than any form of violence. Her hair was cut in a mullet and pulled back into a pony tail; she was wearing a hot pink belly shirt with the words “Make Love Not War” and shorts with “Hot Stuff” on the butt. She was holding a sign that read: “STAILS=HITLER” on it, and sported a black eye from where a woman had punched her in the face the last weekend. Typical Republican response to peaceful protest: violence and accusations of being a traitor.
Candy smiled and went back to waving her sign, scooting closer to me. She was taller than I was, but I was heavier, thick muscle from years of power lifting and martial arts coating my bones, while she allowed her bones to stick out of a too skinny frame. If she had not have paid so much for her boobs she’d be flat as a child, she was far too skinny to pack those D cup cannons that stretched her shit. My hair was brown to her blonde, and I wore it long, down to the middle of my back and pulled into a braid at the moment. Where she exposed as much flesh as possible, I was wearing jeans and a full T-shirt. Only the sleeves were torn off, revealing my biceps and shoulders.
Steffy stood on the other side of me, dressed in a short pleated skirt, wearing a T-shirt that read “Love your fellow man, not kill him!”, a rainbow bandana and waving a sign that read “SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME NOW!”. Every once in a while her elbow bumped into my shoulder, since she was taller than I was by at least six inches. Her long blonde hair was in contrast to my brown hair, but where Candy’s was out of a peroxide bottle, Steffy’s was all her. We were a strange trio united in our determination to see the rest of the world free of unwanted Amerikkkan influence and our friendship that had lasted years. We had been introduced to each other when we were infants, our parents were friends. We’d gone to Sunday School together, went to the same schools, and had the same friends. Our friendship had even endured moving on to college and Steffy’s lifestyle change. She was my best friend, and I loved her more than anything in the entire world.
The police were arriving, getting out of their vans and cars, wearing riot gear as if they expected us to do something as savage as attack them. Violence is never an answer, and should never be an option unless all other options had been exhausted. Violence is only the answer for those who are unable to use diplomacy. I would no more attack them as I would hurt a child, strike another person in anger or kill anyone. I wasn’t a machine of the Republican Regime; just the thought of killing someone made me physically ill. I studied Karate for the mental discipline, the flexibility and the camaraderie, not to hurt people. Hurting people was wrong, even children knew that.
As the police approached, shouting through their megaphones that we were to disperse, that our permit had expired, I lowered my placard and quit chanting. I felt flush with the knowledge I had done my part to make the world a better place. The evil old men in Washington D.C. had to pay attention to us, as long as we stuck to our principles and did not sell out for press time. I wasn’t surprised by the cease and desist order, our demonstration permit was up at noon, and I knew from World News Network broadcasts that the Secretary of Defense would be arriving sometime around 1:00 or 2:00 PM. Nobody would allow us near him, on the off chance that some hidden terrorist would be hiding among us to throw bombs or something. Like that would happen, we were Americans who believed in peaceful resolution, not the Amerikkkans that the rest of the world saw on television.
I smiled at Gabby, Steffy and Candy as we walked toward Gabby’s car, a cute little 2005 Nissan her parents had bought her when she finished her second year of college. The bumper was still a little dented from a week before when she had gotten drunk and hit something on her way home, but thankfully she wasn’t caught, otherwise she could have gotten in trouble with the police. She hadn’t hit anyone, or worse yet, an innocent animal, just probably hit a mailbox.
“Are we going to the next one?” Steffy asked us, referring to the next demonstration outside McChord Air Force Base up by Tacoma. A bunch of soldiers would be returning from the Persian Gulf next Sunday, and there were plans to hold a demonstration outside the gate of the base. She wasn’t too keen on the demonstration, her cousin crippled for life after a bomb exploded near him in Afghanistan. I’d gone with her to visit him at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, and the unjustness of the War on Terror had a personal face to Steffy and me.
Steffy had been deeply wounded by her cousin’s injuries. A lot of her spirit seemed to drain out of her and I worried about her. I stared at her thoughtfully while for a few seconds, taking in the sight of her. Taller than me, like most people, she was my best friend in the whole world. We’d gone to school together, had sworn to get married on the same day in a joint wedding ceremony, and be friends long after most people discarded their childhood friends. Where my eyes are brown, hers were bright green, and where my skin was unmarked, she had a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
Gabby nodded, smiling with her conviction. She was far more devoted to the peace cause than I was, even willing to protest soldiers who were returning to Amerikkka for medical care. She felt that making a demonstration there wasn’t disrespectful to the men and women returning wounded, but showing that the cost of the war was too high for her.
“No, I don’t think I like that,” I replied, putting my placard in the open trunk. “I mean, those guys didn’t start this war, and a lot of them have no choice but to serve. You know that the government uses mostly the poor and minorities to fight their wars.” I opened the door to the back side and slid in, slightly self-conscious when the car sagged slightly as I did so.
Gabby looked slightly disappointed but held her tongue. She knew I felt just as sorry for the soldiers wounded while fighting the illegal war as I felt for the innocent Iraqi and Litakian women and children who were often killed by the pointless war for resources that Amerikkka’s gluttony consumed. Steffy’s cousin had joined after 9/11, anger and rage filling him and misdirected at the wrong people for the catastrophe, which made her views more like mine. Gabby felt that if the soldiers were truly victims, they’d run away to Canada, like her parents had done during the Vietnam War. I wasn’t sure life was that simple. Candy joined us more out of friendship that anything else, and out of all of us, I was the only one who knew that she was seriously thinking about joining the military.
Candy nodded helpfully, taking my side of it. She set her placard inside the trunk and got in. The car didn’t even wiggle for her weight. Of course, she counted calories in and out like crazy, making sure that for every calorie that went into her body, the same amount returned. Personally, I thought that was crazy, since it involved bagging and weighing your own vomit and wastes.
As Gabby got into her car, Candy put one hand on my thigh, and smiled sunnily when I picked her hand up and dropped it back into her own lap. She made a face at me and I laughed, and everything was OK again. It’s not that she was actually gay, according to her, but rather experimenting before she settled down. As far as she was concerned, college was all about ‘broadening horizons’ and doing things you would not be free to do later in life. She planned on sowing her wild oats in the first year or two of college, so she could concentrate on her studies later.
She also kept teasing me that having her as a girlfriend would allow me to keep my promise to myself and remain a virgin until I was married, but bleed off sexual tension in other ways besides lifting weights or practicing Karate. Candy thought it was all from being undersexed; I thought it was love of competition and focusing negative energy on positive things.
Steffy got in, climbing on my lap and draping her arms around my neck. She gave me a sloppy wet kiss, more for show than anything, and I saw a camera flash outside the window. Candy pouted playfully, and Steffy laughed as she pulled away.
“Where to, ladies? The bar?” Gabby asked us, looking in the rearview mirror at us as she pulled out smoothly, ignoring the screech of brakes and the horn.
“No, I have a Speech 115 quiz tomorrow,” I told her. “Plus I need to get ready for the power lifting meet.”
Candy made another “ick” face when I mentioned power lifting. She was of the school of thought that believed that too much muscle on a woman was unattractive, that women should be thin and delicate. I loved my sorority sister dearly, but she looked like a walking coat rack to me, and one of my biceps was as big as her leg.
“Lunch at the cafeteria and Gears of War in our room?” Gabby asked, running a yellow light and pulling on to the highway. She smoothly cut off the bus that most of our fellow demonstrators had rode in, and rode up on the bumper of the car in front of us until it pulled over enough to let her pass. We all ignored the out-thrust middle finger and shouted profanity that echoed in the tunnel.
We made the exit, sliding in between two semi’s and honking our horn to get a motorcyclist out of our way. Gabby pulled up at the light, and I looked toward the college. Just a few more minutes and I’d be home in the sorority house.
“Gabby, what classes do you have tomorrow?” I asked, absentmindedly removing Candy’s hand from my thigh again. Steffy glared at Candy, still sitting on my lap, and I pretended not to see it.
“Just geometry and speech,” she replied, biting her tongue between her two front teeth and pulling out in front of a car, blatantly running the red light. Candy flipped the guy off as we sped toward the college. “Any reason?”
“Let’s go to the mall soon, I want to pick up some new work out clothing,” I told her.
“If you’d get laid more, you wouldn’t have to pump so much iron,” Candy teased, poking me in the muscles over the ribs.
“If you’d get laid less, you’d pass class.” Steffy smiled back, and Candy made a disappointed face. Gabby pulled smoothly into the parking spot, the bumper scraping on the curb for only a moment. I slid out from under Steffy and jumped out of the car and started rocking it as Gabby shut off the engine. My three friends squealed in mock terror as I pushed it back and forth on the springs, enjoying the feel of the power my body was capable of.
“Gears of War time, ladies, time to show the penis-slingers that women rule,” Candy laughed, climbing out of the car. Gabby giggled too, running a hand over the hood of her trusty car. I flipped my hair out of my face and followed, my stomach rumbling for a slice of pizza.
“I wish she wouldn’t touch you like that,” Steffy told me, her voice pitched so only I could hear her.
“She’s not serious about it,” I told her, reaching out and taking her hand. Her silver promise bracelet sparkled in the afternoon light. “I told you, maybe someday I’ll be interested in it, but right now I want to concentrate on my workout.”
“Do you still love me?” Steffy asked. Her voice was vulnerable and trembling.
“Of course, don’t be silly,” I told her, squeezing her hand, careful not to hurt her. She squeezed back, and things were all right between us again.
She was jealous of Candy, worried that I’d take Candy up on her frequent offers. She’d carried a torch for me for years, but I hadn’t touched her sexually since we’d played doctor as children, since we got hair and boobs and examined each other. When we drank together, she often sat near me, touching me, and a couple of times she had crawled into my bed, but she’d never tried to force me.
Lesbianism was a sin, we’d both learned that in Bible School, and while Steffy didn’t care about the sin aspect of her sexual desires, it still mattered to me. While she didn’t view sex with other women as breaking the promise we made when we got our abstinence bracelets, I did, and she respected my views.
Now that I was attracted to a guy I worked out with, she was insecure about whether or not I loved her, if I still loved her, and asked quite often if I still did. I did, but I didn’t feel the way about her that she felt about me. I loved her with all my heart.
We walked across the quad, my tennis shoes silent and her heels clicking, our fingers intertwined. Some people stared, and I knew that they were seeing my heavy build and dropping us into the dyke pocket in their mind, but I didn’t care. Steffy was my friend, she craved, needed physical contact, and I didn’t care what anyone thought about me comforting my best friend.
We nodded politely to the few of our sisters who were in the sorority house commons room, headed up the stairs and down to our room. It was a nice room, lavish, and Alpha Sigma Epsilon was a large, spacious house. We had four separate bedrooms, our own bathroom, and a common front room all to ourselves.
Candy had already grabbed the X-Box 360 controller and was logging into X-Box Live so she could compete with people around the world. She loved the combat games, loved to compete against other people, to virtually kill them. I personally thought it rather strange that a peace activist and self-professed pacifist like her would spend so much time playing games where the object was to kill other people. Or take such vicious joy in tormenting them over voice chat when she won.
Gabby was already in her room, talking to her boyfriend on the phone, giving him a play by play of the protest. As I passed the door to her room, I could see her stripping off her outfit, and knew that pretty soon she’d be laying in bed talking dirty to her boyfriend. I shared a wall with her and she got pretty loud, so it wasn’t like I didn’t know what she did, but as long as she didn’t comment on what she heard from my room, I wouldn’t comment on what I heard from hers.
I let go of Steffy’s hand and stripped off my T-shirt, then unbuttoned my pants and kicked them off. Candy reached out with a foot and flicked the door shut before my pants dropped, and Steffy went into her room as I stripped off my panties and sports bra. I paused long enough to toss my clothing in my room, hitting the hamper, before I threw myself into my favorite spot. A large cloth bean bag that fit me easily. I was bulky enough that I felt uncomfortable in normal chairs, but the beanbag easily hid my size and let me just cuddle up into it.
Steffy came back out, wrapped in a bathrobe and holding a book. She curled up on the edge of the couch and nudged Candy with her toes until the other woman gave her enough room to curl up comfortably.
My nudity was status quo to my roommates. It didn’t even register with them, since I’d been doing it the entire time we’d been together. Gabby had been the one to sponsor me into the sorority, and she’d known I was a private nudist before she’d ever even approached her sisters about admitting me.
I sighed and stretched, and caught Steffy looking at me sadly over her book. I could tell from the longing look she was giving me that one of our talks was overdue. I stood up, stretched again to get the tension of the day out of my muscles, and held my hand out to Steffy.
“I need to talk to you, honey,” I told her. She let me pull her up, leaving her book on the couch, and followed me into my room. She closed the door behind me as I sat on the bed and patted next to me. She sat down and I crossed my legs before turning to face her.
“Is it bothering you?” I asked. She knew I was referring to my nudity.
“No, it just sucks wanting what you can’t have,” she told me, being brutally honest.
“What about that guy, the one with the curly hair?” I asked, taking both of her hands in mine, crossed at the wrists. Our bracelets chimed together.
“He was a bit too impatient, so he screwed Linda,” she told me. “She was bragging about it in the cafeteria that she’s stolen my last four boyfriends.”
“Want me to break her arm?” I joked, smiling at her. She laughed, the sadness disappearing from her face.
“Of course not. Don’t be a silly.” She sobered. “Thanks though.”
“Do you need me to stop talking about Tom?” I was worried about the question, I wanted Steffy to be my friend, but if I couldn’t bring up boyfriends with her, how could we remain friends.
She shook her head. “No, this is my problem.” She sighed deeply, then squeezed my hands. “I’ve prayed over it, I’ve talked to Father Jonathan, I’ve asked God to help me, but honestly, it isn’t helping.” She sighed and looked into my eyes.
“You aren’t the only one.” I felt a sudden stab of irrational jealousy. “You’re the main one, but sometimes I feel attracted to other women.” Her voice dropped low. “I caught Candy masturbating while she was playing Crackdown the other night, and I just laid on my bed, watching her.”
“And?” I asked. Part of me felt bad for her, I wanted to be accepting, to encourage her to embrace her sexuality as it seemed to be blossoming, but so much of me, the older part of me, said it was sinful. I knew better than to accept that, I knew that Steff didn’t have any choice but to feel the way she did, that God had made her that way and so he must love her, but years of sermons said Steffy was going to Hell. Still, another part of me suddenly hated Candy fiercely.
She blushed and looked away. I let go of her hand and turned her face back to mine, so that my eyes held hers. “Tell me.”
“I matched her. Seeing her get off got me off. It felt good, and I wanted her in my bed even more afterwards, but I fell asleep before I could work up the courage to ask her,” Steffy admitted, her hand fumbling for mine. I could tell she was upset, she didn’t even try to playfully cop a feel. She sighed loudly and threw her head back to look at the ceiling. “God, why am I so screwed up?” she asked. Her face turned vulnerable again. “Do you still love me, Becky?”
“Of course,” I said, squeezing her hands again. I hugged her suddenly, pulling her against me. “I’ll always love you, honey, no matter what.”
“I love you too, I’m sorry, but I’ll always love you most,” she told me, and her tears were hot against the bare skin of my breasts as she cried over something we both had been taught was wrong, but that was inside her all the same.
Chapter Two
Greg
T minus 24 Hours
I woke up quickly at a tap on the end of my sleeping bag, moving immediately from dreams of a wife and family I had never known or expected to live long enough to have. Waking up freed me from the dream horrors of age, weight, stress, and a slow descent into a bland death of someone who had never known what living was. I opened my eyes and sat up, my right hand reaching for my rifle and my left grazing over my gas mask, load carrying equipment and my Interceptor vest. I wasn’t even totally awake and I had pulled on a (semi) clean brown T-shirt and was already reaching for my battle dress uniform blouse and shrugging into it. Gillamaro, AKA Gilly, nodded to me from his sleeping bag, wrapped up closely to ward off the chill of the desert night which had invaded our tent.
“Stand to,” I stated, my breathing steaming out in a cloud as I quickly buttoned my top. The time just before dawn when we were most likely to be attacked, and that meant that everyone was in position to repel attacks and survive any mortar barrages. Gilly nodded and shrugged free of his sleeping bag, revealing that he slept without a T-shirt just as I did. I stood up, uncaring about modesty despite the fact that I was naked from the waist down, and grabbed my clothing roll. Boxers, then socks (hey, they smelled clean enough), then my pants. Follow that with boots and then my gear. By the time I grabbed my rifle, Gilly was yawning and stretching, standing beside his bunk clad only in his boxers and a brown T-shirt with a neatly sewn up tear.
I quickly rolled in the sides of my sleeping bag, canoeing it on the cot, and draped my wool blanket over it (US side down, no need to tempt fate, know what I mean?) to keep the scorpions, spiders, sand, insurgents, Democrats, Republicans and PETA commandos armed with kitten cannons and laser guided puppies out of it. Satisfied everything was in order, I sat on the end of my bunk to relax for a moment. My bladder wasn’t signaling that it was lizard draining time, and I had a few moments before we had to take positions on the perimeter for the shift from nighttime to dawn.
I yawned as I pulled out my canteen cup and dropped a packet of instant coffee into it. People were moving around, burping, farting, yawning, stretching with pops and groans, bitching about the early hour, scratching their crotch or ass, or just grumbling under their breath. It wasn’t petulant grumbling; more like just bitching about things we couldn’t change the same as we did every morning.
Instant coffee wasn’t any better cold, and I made a face as I pulled down about half of it right off the bat. Gilly farted thunderously and grinned at me like he’d just given birth to the Second Coming of Christ or something special. I shook my head, finished my coffee, cleaned out my canteen cup with a rag, and stood up. The other nine men in the tent groaned audibly, quickly pulling on their gear.
That was the signal. When “the old man” stood up, that meant it was time to get on the ready line. Same as every other morning we were sitting in this stupid base in the “Triangle of Death” as the press called this region of Litak. Triangle of Death my ass, we’d lost less men in a year the last time I had been in Iraq than records said the unit lost during a month of fighting in Vietnam in the late sixties. I’d killed more men during the ninety plus hours of Desert Storm chasing Iraqi forces on the highway between Kuwait City and Basra than I’d had to kill during the entire war so far. I guessed that comparison was no longer part of the vocabulary of war.
I left the tent, pushing aside the canvas drapes and sliding between them, practiced ease keeping me from getting my gear hung up, and took two steps into the darkness before stopping. I dropped down my NVG’s (short for Night Vision Goggles, what gave us the edge and let us rule the night) and hit the switch, turning the predawn blackness into a combination of greens and blacks, people moving from tents to their positions springing instantly into my field of vision.
I shrugged my shoulders, setting my Load Carrying Equipment and weapon sling more securely on my shoulders, and started moving toward the dirt berm, glancing up at the tower that I’d be next to. It was already manned by two soldiers and I could see them scanning the perimeter from behind the M-240B light machine guns. The old M-60’s had been replaced by the M-240, but in effect it was the same weapon. Still, it made me feel old. I’d qualified expert on the M-60 back when I was a corporal, now they weren’t even in service.
“Staff Sergeant Matthews.” The voice caught me by surprise, but I recognized it. Specialist Sharter, formerly an orderly room clerk, now the liaison between Ranger teams and the various officers in charge of them, wearing the same disapproving grimace he always did whenever he had to venture outside of the remains of the building that headquarters squatted inside. He acted as if he might get contaminated having to come into contact with soldiers who actually did soldier stuff.
“Yes, Specialist?” I asked, waving my team past me in order to allow them to take up positions on the berm. I watched his face closely, unwilling to forgive or forget that the scumbag was the type who like to fuck other men’s wives while they were deployed, focusing in on my hate for the human shitweasel in order to wipe away the last of the fatigue that was still slowing my reflexes and limbs. The bastard had caused nine divorces last deployment when he was left behind, and it was the only reason a human paperweight like him had been brought along this time. Enough men had threatened to shoot him that he didn’t go out on patrols or anywhere where an “accident” could take place.
“Major Baxter wants you in operations.” Sharter almost sneered. Not enough to actually be insubordinate, but definitely close to it. I resisted the urge to smash the stock of my M-4 into his mouth, to send him sprawling back with split lips and broken teeth, and nodded frostily to him.
“Go tell Gillamaro that I’m going to see the Major,” I told him, brushing by him. He started to protest that it wasn’t his job, that I wasn’t in his chain of command, that I couldn’t tell him what to do, but his words trailed off as I vanished into the darkness.
Major Baxter was the leader of my Ranger Team, the man who took the orders from command and figured out how to make them happen. A lot of people hated Major Baxter, finding his inflectionless, emotionless voice creepy, and thinking that it reflected his lack of concern for what happened to the Ranger teams. They thought that the emotionless tone and expression meant that he considered the men under his command nothing more than additional equipment that could be, and should be, expended to accomplish the mission.
They were wrong. It was his own mental armor, a way of guarding himself from the pain of members of those teams getting wounded or killed. It was a coping mechanism, hiding the raw, savage pain of all of those boys who got hurt over the years. I had gone to the Officer’s Club more than once to pick him up, seen him sick with the pain, the death and the mutilation. But he did his duty, unwilling to trust others with the job he had to do.
See, Ranger Teams often end up working together for a long time, and you become more attached to your team than some people were to their spouses. I knew things about Gillamaro that his wife didn’t know. It happens after you live and work with someone for years in conditions that most people wouldn’t keep a dog in. You bleed with a guy for a decade and you kind of get to know him.
What the unit didn’t know was that, after a nasty bit of business back in 2000, the entirety of the Ranger team had dropped on request from Delta Company back to the 75th Rangers. Yeah, we could have gone to First Special Forces, like we’d been recruited from over the years, but we had all talked it over, in a quiet corner of the NCO club over beers, and agreed we’d have a better chance to drop to Rangers. Special Forces trained insurgents and did teaching, got involved in politics and other things that the Rangers never had to worry about. We were all tired of politics, tired of fuzzy objectives that shifted almost daily, and having to make nice with people who turned out stomachs.
And so Kilo Actual Seven had dropped back into the 75th Rangers and never spoken of their time in Delta Company. The Major had come with us, the wounds inflicted on his soul after that mission still raw and bleeding. Goldstein had walked into the Major’s office just in time to stop him from giving his service pistol a blowjob, the dog tags of the men who had died spread out on his desk, and managed to talk the Major down. Convinced the Major that we needed him, convinced him not to blow his own head off. He’d told the rest of the team, but we kept our silence and never told anyone else. He was our Major, and that meant keeping his secrets.
Like I said, we knew things about each other.
Now we were in Litak, pulling missions for whoever needed us. We stayed with the First Cavalry Division and arguably we were just infantryman on their TO&E as far as the press were concerned. They understood that SOCOM could and did tap us whenever they wanted us, or that First Cav could have us go outside and pick up cigarette butts all day if nothing else was going on. First Cav was pretty good about it, never really touching in actuality, but their records had us running convoy duty and patrols all over the place, while we usually planned mission ops or were out doing dirty deeds.
When we weren’t helping do area maintenance.
If Major Baxter was summoning me directly to the Tactical Operations Center instead of letting me go to the stand to, that meant SOCOM was reminding us who we really worked for. They reminded us at least twice a week, so it’s not like we forgot. Although at times SOCOM seemed a little needy to me.
I moved around the concertina wire surrounding the tent housing operations and slid through the canvas door, my fingers moving to switch the NVG’s off before the light hit them out of old habit. Inside stood Colonel Raddison, Lieutenant Colonel Donner, Sergeant Major Farthing, and my own team leader, Major Baxter. All four men turned as one to look at me, Donner smiling.
“Greg, how are your men?” SGM Farthing asked me, his voice kind and grandfatherly. Oh. Shit. Every time he sounded like Santa’s gay lover, something bad was about to go down. Kind of a bizarre “Ho ho ho, since you’ve been a good boy, SSG Matthews, I’m going to sodomize you! In public. And for that extra special Christmas treat, without lube! Glee!” I internalized my shudder at what he could be so happy about and sat down in one of the folding metal chairs.
“Doing fine, Sergeant Major,” I replied, reaching to peel off my Kevlar helmet in a test. If he didn’t motion at me to keep my Kevlar on, I would be there for a while.
“Might as well leave it on, Ranger, I’ve got a favor I need from you.” The voice was sweet enough to give a five-year-old diabetes. I was surprised goddamn syrup wasn’t coating the walls. I nodded and replaced my Kevlar, snapping the chin guard and feeling pre-mission detachment flowing over me. The last favor he’d asked for had resulted in my team damn near running out of ammunition in a desperate fight to buff up 15th Forward Support Battalion before they got overrun and wiped out by a group of Foreign Fighters working with Al-Qaeda in Litak. We’d managed to do it, hitting the insurgent forces from the rear, acting as the hammer to 15th’s anvil, but it had still been a sticky situation.
“Indigenous personnel have brought us information that the insurgents that are flowing in from the Iranian border have a major arming point in a village fifteen miles from the border.” Major Baxter just leaped into the mission briefing without any preamble. Had to admire that about the man, no bullshit at all, just straight to the guns. “A Predator drone recon last night showed roughly twenty personnel clustered in these two houses, as well as the presence of two black SUV’s that have no business being out there.”
Colonel Raddison unrolled the map on the table and Major Baxter tapped two buildings, each of them on the western side of the village. I nodded as the Major went on, with LTC Donner taking notes. Insertion, possible threats, Rules of Engagement, what to expect, when and why to break contact, call signs, the whole nine yards. In all the briefing only took about thirty minutes, and I made notes in the notebook I carried in the pocket of my BDU blouse.
When the briefing was over, I was dismissed without any bullshit. Everyone was still on stand-to, watching the perimeter for any funny business as I walked over to the makeshift arms room that stored our additional gear and extra ammunition. The whole thing was just a metal Conex buried in the sand sandbagged up to minimize the chances of shrapnel setting off a catastrophic ammunition detonation. I ducked under the desert camou net and knocked on the door, waiting.
“Arr, what be the password?” came the voice from inside, the panel cut out of the door sliding back and revealing a set of NVG’s.
“Open this door before I monkey stomp your ass. Monkeys beat pirates,” I answered, grinning at Sergeant Doughty’s normal bullshit. He had a thing for pirates. When we were back in the World, he always dressed up on Talk Like A Pirate Day, and since it was good for morale, nobody ever said shit about it. The debate between which was cooler: monkeys, pirates, robots or ninjas, had become a unit joke thanks to SGT Doughty.
“Enter, friend,” Doughty laughed, opening the door and waving me in. Green chemlights were strung around to maintain light discipline, and a ragged porn mag someone had smuggled in lay sprawled out on the table where Doughty was supposed to be maintaining weapons. “What’s up, Matthews?”
“I need my team’s tactical radios, a few SLAP charges and a twelve gauge,” I told him. Doughty raised his eyes at the last part. Shotguns were only issued when heavy urban fighting was expected, and they weren’t exactly heavily listed on Delta company’s Table of Equipment and Organization.
“Rough?” he asked, turning to get me what I asked for.
“Monkeys don’t take chances, that’s why there’s more of us,” I answered with a grin, shrugging. SGT Doughty flipped me off without looking.
It only took him a few minutes to hand me the gear I’d asked for. He even remembered a replacement for Sergeant Tanner’s NVG’s, his old set having died a horrible death when an insurgent had tried to buttstroke Tanner in the face and instead knocked off Tanner’s NVG’s, breaking them to shit.
From there I headed over to the sandbagged mess tent, stopping by the Mobile Kitchen Trailer to grab breakfast as well as a case of Meals Ready to Eat from Sergeant Masting. Masting was stirring the porridge and humming to himself, faint sounds of Mexican polka drifting from the headphones of his iPod. He saw me raise up the MRE box and nodded, leaving off stirring for a moment to put another checkmark on the board behind him in the MRE column.
Stand-to finished with the all clear signal as I looked over my notes from the mission briefing, mechanically spooning the porridge into my mouth as I read. The two SUV’s were new to the area, jet black, and MILINT had positively ID’d them as late model Subaru’s, most likely American versions. To me, that meant car-bomb. One would be wired to blow, the other would transport the insurgents.
It was common practice for the insurgents to have two of the vehicles when they sprang an ambush. They’d drop one off, ambush a convoy, then drive like hell. The one carrying the insurgents would pull around the other, that way pursuing troops would stop to investigate and get blown to shit when some raggedy ass insurgent a quarter mile away punched his grimy thumb down on the jury-rigged button.
I hated this kind of fight. I’d grown up with Cold War and part of me wished that we still had the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union around, instead of all the crap the Cold War had left behind that now needed to be cleaned up. The Hell with screwing around in the desert with a bunch of raggedy ass insurgents, I should be doing operations deep in Warsaw Pact territory, going toe to toe with the GRU, KBG and, of course, the Spetz.
But it hadn’t worked like that, and instead of a world with clearly defined enemies, I was awash in a world full of shadows and conflicting or switching loyalties.
“When are we rolling, Sergeant?” It was Stevens, the team’s weapons specialist. He sat down next to me, setting down a plate of scrambled eggs and started shoveling them into his mouth. His eyes glanced at my copy of the aerial recon photo, noting where I’d outlined things with my black Sharpie.
“Wait for the others,” I replied, going back to slowly spooning the porridge into my mouth. It was a ritual, just like any other. I ate porridge before a mission. It was silly, but I threw up after any major combat, and porridge came up easier. My whole team knew that I’d eat slowly and they’d have till I finished before I started the briefing.
“You’ll be carrying a shotgun in addition to the pig.” I nodded at the M-240b light machinegun he had across his back. The machinegun was heavy as hell, but Stevens was stronger than his lanky frames suggested. He was a dead on shot with it too, long practice and live fire action hard wiring the ability to snap off aimed single shots as well as automatically estimating range by eye for precise bursts. I’d tried to convince the freckle faced brown haired farm boy with a constant farmer’s burn to try out for sniper school repeatedly, but he just laughed me off every time.
By the time my porridge was done, the members of my team that were going on this mission had gathered. The Major was sitting there, watching me give the briefing, confident in my abilities. I’d come a long way since the E-5 he took under his wing so many years before.
The plan was simple. We would roll up in the Humvees until we’re about two miles out, leave the Humvees in the hills and hump it to the outskirts of the village. About eight hundred meters from the village there was a set of old ruined buildings. They were destroyed by MRLS hits in 1991, were probably around a thousand years older than Christ, but we weren’t the first to destroy antiquities and I doubt that we’d be the last to break shit in this region. In a thousand years, some other military would undoubtedly be fighting right there, and break the fuck out of the same village we were probably about to bust up.
At the time, however, that wasn’t even going through my head. I was giving orders. Who would move to what position, who would provide what cover, and who would move in. The Major would stay in radio contact with a team of Marines who were tasked to provide cover for several operations. If things were to go downhill, they’d come in and pull our shit out of the fire. I’d lead the insertion team, call sign India Bravo Niner, while Gilly and Stevens would hang back running the sniper rifle and the M-240b respectively. With me would be Mavens, Tanner and Smith, while Johnson, Kelmin and Goldstein would be led by Breaks as India Bravo Three.
India Bravo Niner would hit the north side of the perimeter and scale the outside wall, while India Bravo Three would wait by one of the identified doors. When the Major gave the go signal, my team would go in through the roof and eliminate any hostiles. If gunfire started, Breaks’ team would go in and hit them from the other side. If nothing happened, they would hit the second target.
We’d done it dozens of times before, from Tikrit to Fallujah from Angola to Kosovo.
Easy as pie.
Chapter Three
Buck
T minus 18 Hours
The night was warm and insects were chirping and singing to attract mates or warn others away from their territory. I walked up the pathway leading up to the front door of the rather expensive house in the Tumwater suburbs of Olympia, Washington. My motorcycle looked just as out of place as I did in the upscale neighborhood. Two men watched me, stone-faced, from inside the Lexus they had parked at the curb behind my hog.
I shook my head to myself, wondering at the stupidity of a man who could afford a house like this one running up a six-figure debt and thinking that his law practice would protect him. My riding boots clicked steadily as I approached the door, climbing the steps up to the front porch, suddenly surrounded by the fragrance of spring blooming roses.
Normally I would knock and politely ask the gentleman or lady I was present to speak with to step outside, but I had good intel that the wife and kids were gone to grandma’s today. That left a whole different tactic, one that my employers had agreed to and that they considered very effective.
The door was nice, carved wood, heavy, dead bolted. The door itself probably cost as much as the insurance on my motorcycle did for an entire year. The knocker was solid brass, carved and ornate, and probably weighed a good three or four pounds. The doorbell button on the jamb was lit up and surrounded again by wrought brass. This guy had a thing for brass, it showed in the trimming of the porch railing, in the little extras on the door and the visible windows. It spoke of the deep pockets that had funded this house, from the looks of it, Nouveau riche trying to appear old money.
Too bad.
I leaned back and delivered a solid kick directly between the door handle and the deadbolt, and watched the whole edge of the door explode into splinters. Before it even finished slamming against the wall and tearing off the hinges, I was walking inside as if a butler had invited me in for brunch. My hands were out of my pockets, the brass from my knuckle dusters gleaming in the bright lights of the front room, my eyes scanning the room for threats that might require the heat I was packing at the small of my back.
No threats, two people, no cameras visible, no servants. Just a nude young woman staring at me in shock, her boobs still slightly bouncing and her legs splayed open in a shot that would do a porn movie justice. The man whose lap she was straddling and whose lusts she was servicing goggled at me in shock. I could hear him trying to gabble out some words.
“Up, bitch,” I growled, moving forward, opening and closing my hands, my leather gloves, standard US Army Class A dress uniform gloves, creaking in the sudden silence. “Over by the fireplace, hands behind your head and feet shoulder width apart.” She scrambled off of him, leaving him suddenly vulnerable.
“What do you think you are doing?” the man screeched, his voice high from fear. I knew what he was seeing. Almost three hundred pounds of bald menace looming over him clad all in leather with a cold smile that came nowhere near my eyes.
“John Reddeer sent me,” I told him, reaching out and slapping the head of his exposed manhood with my fingertips, bringing out a squall of pain. When he went to bend forward, I grabbed his six-hundred dollar haircut, snatched him to his feet and buried a fist in his gut. Hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to rupture his internal organs, even with the knuckle dusters I was wearing. I stepped back and glanced at the trollop real quick, avoiding the steaming vomit that poured from the man’s mouth and nostrils as his stomach purged everything in response to the agony that flooded his torso. A normal reaction of a body in imminent danger and nothing to be ashamed of. My old crew chief used to do that after combat all the time. The trollop was trying to cover her crotch by twisting her hips.
“I said stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your hands behind your head. I didn’t pay for the goods, so I won’t touch them if you do as you’re told,” I growled at her, stepping around the man and grabbing him by the back of his hair. “Someone else paid for him to be serviced tonight, honey.”
“But…” he began, and I slammed a fist into his kidney, eliciting a strangled scream as the realization he’d be pissing blood for a few days suddenly dawned on him.
“Mr. Reddeer is displeased that you have been avoiding your scheduled payments,” I informed him, kicking his feet out from under him and dropping him face first into his own vomit with a wet smack. “He wishes to give you a friendly reminder that you should pay your debts. Roll over, skell.” I nudged him with the toe of my boot until he began trying to roll over, still gagging and groaning.
While he struggled to roll himself over, I pulled out a thick cigar, bit off the end and lit it up, taking a few deep drags off of it. I put the bit off end in my pocket rather than spitting it across the floor. The mark was staring at me in terror, his black hair matted with vomit that stunk of liquor, his eyes rolling in the sockets like those of a wounded calf. His mouth was working, trying to vocalize a protest, an explanation, something, but I couldn’t care less. I had a message to deliver and they hadn’t paid me to listen to the explanations of some deadbeat. I stomped on his stomach, eliciting an explosive gout of vomit as his stomach emptied out acid and bile, as well as the contents of his lungs.
“Mr. Reddeer feels that you are not taking the repayment of your debt seriously. What was the term you used? Oh yeah, ‘ignorant redskin.’ That’s how you referred to Mr. Reddeer and his business associates.” I took another drag off the cheroot and blew smoke into the air. “Hands behind your head, young lady, don’t make me come over there.”
I bent down and grabbed the mark by his hair, dragging his head up. “Yet you could afford her. That necklace around her neck cost at least five figures, and the box next to the chair shows that you gave it to her tonight. How old is she, Mr. Portman?”
“Eighteen,” Portman coughed. I slapped him, hard. Never let the mark get away with the slightest lie, always establish dominance and a willingness to be casually brutal. “Fifteen, she’s fifteen!” he screamed at the same time as the young girl screeched out confirmation.
“Fifteen? Girly, get your goddamn clothing on and get the fuck out of here. If I come on another visit and find you here, I’ll spank your little ass so hard you won’t be able to take a dick for a month,” I snarled, then returned my attention to the mark.
“Now, Mr. Portman, Mr. Reddeer asked that I give you a reminder, and seeing as you enjoy using your dick on kids, I think that the message should also include a little note from me.” I dropped him, his head bouncing in the puddle of vomit. He cried out once when I reached down and grabbed his rapidly shrinking tool with my left hand, and pulled the cigar out of my mouth with my right. He didn’t even scream, just lapsed into unconsciousness as the stench of burning flesh filled the room.
I stood up and looked at the teenage whore standing in the doorway, staring at Mr. Portman in horror. I knocked the ash off of the cigar and took another drag, smiling at her. At my feet, Mr. Portman was still out like a light, unaware that his shrunken tackle tip had been the same size as my cigar’s cherry. It wouldn’t be visible to the public, he’d be able to continue his law practice, but it would be awhile before his dong was stuck in another kid. It also let him know that my employers were serious.
“Ma’am,” I said, nodding at the whore, who was bending at the waist as if she was bowing. As I walked out the destroyed door and down the steps, I could hear her retching. I smiled, took a drag off the cigar and blew smoke into the night air as I walked toward the Lexus parked at the curb.
As I approached, the window of the Lexus rolled down with a nearly silent whine. Inside sat Mr. Twofoxes and Mr. Clearsky, their faces impassive but their eyes full of curiosity. Most white-eyes like myself would not be able to understand their demeanor, seeing only Native American stonewalling and impassiveness, but I’d worked with enough Native Americans to recognize it.
“Will he remember our message?” Mr. Twofoxes asked. He was the older of the two, his suit more expensive, his watch a real Rolex. I nodded and took another drag off of my cigar. “Is he able to continue working?” I nodded again, smiling as I exhaled into the night air, watching the smoke stream away in the glow of the streetlight.
“Ten percent of the skell’s debt,” I answered, “in chips, when we return. It’s non-negotiable.” Both men nodded, they were businessmen, professionals, and knew when they could bargain and when it was useless. Behind me, the kid who was probably turning tricks to purchase the latest clothing styles ran sobbing off into the night, most likely home to cry in bed and write about it on MySpace.
Dumb cunt.
Sooner or later, she’d get into drugs at the behest of some John, and later on some semi-pro version of me would knock her front teeth out and rape her after she ripped off her dealer. If she didn’t straighten her ass up, she’d be just another meth whore on the strip. Just like so many I saw when I rode by. Another person lost.
I turned from the Lexus and walked over to my hog, throwing my leg over the saddle and settling down comfortably. It was battered and looked like an old hunk of junk, but it was mine, free and clear, and easily disposable if it was identified too closely. The Lexus’ lights flared on as I fired her up with a single kick, and I left them behind as I headed back to the casino.
The suburban roads quickly turned to Interstate-Five. As I took the turn, banking slightly more than I needed to, I goosed the engine, opening her up and relishing in the feel of the open road. Soon I was whipping past streetlights and yellow road turtles with the engine roaring, the wind in my teeth. I know I should wear a helmet, but screw it, it’s been a good night.
I planned on hitting the casino. Meet with Mr. Reddeer. Spend my money on a little bit of blackjack, get an invite to a private game where one of Mr. Reddeer’s minions would bet hard and blow the hand, paying me in chips the amount owed to me for my night’s work. I’d spend the night relaxing in the hotel suite, then do some light gambling in the morning.
And leave sixty thousand dollars richer.
Chapter Four
Sam
T minus 18 Hours
My shift was almost over. I’d been cruising the back roads of Thurston County for seven hours, pulling over cars for routine traffic stops, responding to domestic disturbances and other typical Deputy Sheriff bullshit. I longed to make a difference, to help improve the lives of the people who lived in my jurisdiction, but I was just one man trying to stem the tide of methamphetamines that was creeping into every facet of life. From junior high schools to living rooms, it seems like the drug was everywhere. A week before I had arrested a sixty-five-year-old woman with a baggie of the crap in her pocket.
Now the prescription drug Oxycodone was making it rounds. Called hill-billy heroin by some, it had a multitude of fans. It was smoked, swallowed and snorted by everyone from businessmen to housewives to crack addicts. I’d arrested two high school girls earlier in the day, both of them high as a kite and not even fully dressed, who had over one hundred pills of the prescription drug each, and none of the bottles had an intact prescription label. They’d been under the Black River bridge and I’d caught them in an act that would be most men’s fantasies. It made me glad I’d pulled my cruiser up close enough that it taped me arresting them in case they attempted the usual “he fondled me” crap. Still hurt to find the dope, they were just little kids. Someone’s kid sisters and daughters. Probably someone who’s younger sister or brother I’d been school with.
That’s what depressed me the most. My little corner of Thurston County should have been a haven to raise children and enjoy old age. Bordered by Grey’s County to the West and Lewis County to the South, it was all small towns and a single Native American reservation. Full of trees, parks, rivers and beautiful landscape, it had become a breeding ground for drugs and organized crime.