A Few Good Men (6 page)

John sighed, defeated. “What would you like me to say?”

“You should probably thank her for the coffee since you liked drinking it as much as the rest of us. But I think first you should introduce yourself. She knows who you are because I talk about you.”

“You talk about me? To her?” John frowned. “Why?”

“Because I love and respect you so much, sir. Of course.” Jazzy smirked and John seriously considered smacking him and adding more damage to what the car bomb had accomplished. “And if you could email her today I would appreciate it. I’ve been in here for three days already, and she tends to get worried when I don’t respond to her for a while. She always assumes I got blown up.”

The guy never did know when to leave well enough alone.

“Yeah, well, this time you did get blown up,” John reminded him, feeling mean.

Jazzy hung his head dramatically. “Yes, sir, I did. But I got blown up happy in the knowledge that my fellow crew members and my commander were safely inside the tank.”

Another growl followed that comment. “Damn you, Jazzy.”

He had the nerve to laugh, and John decided he would have far rather been the one blown up than the one having to email Jazzy’s do-gooder porn-penning pal.

Damn. He’d give anything for a good stiff drink right about now.

A knock on the room’s doorframe caused him to raise his head to find Morales and Gonzo standing there. “Sir?”

He looked up at his driver. “Yes, Morales.”

“Permission to blatantly break the rules, sir?”

Hmm. What could this be about?
John raised a brow then laughed bitterly. How bad could it be? “Sure, what the hell. Go ahead.”

“I’ve been saving this for a platoon toast the day we leave this hell hole. But I think now might be more appropriate.” The large Texan pulled a small hipflask-sized glass bottle out of his back pocket. “Bourbon, sir?”

John laughed. Ask and ye shall receive. “I would love some.”

There was no drinking at any time at camp, not that any of his men would be stupid enough to want a drop of alcohol in their bloodstreams before going out into the hell they faced daily. But today was different. First, they weren’t at the camp, they were at the military hospital. Second, today was a maintenance day and they had already finished all their assignments, even with one man short, so they could visit Jazzy. John’s section was not due to be called out again tonight. And because of Jazzy’s injuries and the fact they were down a man, even in an emergency they would be the last ones called. It was a hell of a fucked-up way to get the day off from missions, but you took them how you could get them.

John shook his head at himself. Sometimes you just had to break the rules. Celebrating Jazzy not being dead, even though right now he wanted to kill him, was one of those times. “Get some cups.”

Gonzo jumped to do just that as Morales looked relieved he wasn’t about to be written up or worse for this breach of conduct. John decided he didn’t want to know where the booze had come from. It was enough the bottle was full and sealed. He chose to assume it really was for their going-home party and not for Morales to nip on nightly. He could live very happily with that belief.

Gonzo returned quickly with three tiny, hospital-sized water cups and closed the door tightly.

“Only three? Hey. What about me?” Jazzy whined with a shocked expression on his bandaged face.

“You have enough happy juice running through you right about now,” Morales told him as he poured three large shots and the trio of men stood motionless, disposable cups in their hands. It had been a very long time since any one of them had partaken of anything stronger than coffee. John stared down into the amber liquid, whose pungent aroma had already assaulted his nose.

“Would you like to make the toast, sir?” Morales asked, holding his little bourbon-filled cup awkwardly in his huge hands.

John nodded, raised his own blessed liquor and recited the tankers’ toast they all knew so well. “Here’s to cheating, stealing, smoking, fighting and drinking.”

John watched Jazzy raise his ice water with a pout and wait for him to finish the toast.

He went on. “If you cheat, may it be death. If you steal, may it be a woman’s heart. If you smoke, may it be a fine cigar. If you fight, may it be alongside your brothers in arms. If you drink, may it be with me. And may you get to Heaven before the Devil knows you’re dead.” The last sentiment they would probably all need when that time came. He concluded with, “To Jazzy, who has the hardest head I know.”

“Aww. Thanks, sir. You do care.” Jazzy smirked as John shook his head and laughed.

“To Jazzy,” the two other men echoed, and then all three swallowed the liquor faster than was wise.

Chapter Five

John walked into the MWR, pulled his helmet off and looked around. “Shit,” he whispered to himself. Five machines shared between one hundred soldiers and wouldn’t you know it, for the first time in his time here, the place was a ghost town. No line of men waiting to get on. Two machines available and not one excuse left for John to use to avoid writing this email.

He spied the coffee pot. The good coffee had already run out—even a case didn’t last too long once a hundred caffeine-addicted soldiers heard about it. With Jazzy laid up and unable to solicit more, they were reduced to the crappy stuff again. John couldn’t even use pouring himself a cup now to procrastinate getting on the computer because this stuff was barely worth drinking.

John sighed, hearing in his head Jazzy’s voice saying,
You could thank her for the coffee. Summer at summer winters dot com
.

“Okay, dammit.” He sat at the nearest available console as the three men on the other computers glanced up to see what all the mumbling was about. John was not about to tell them that he was arguing with his friend in his head.

John logged into his military email account, the only one he had, the same one he’d had since joining up so many years ago. Jazzy always teased him about the fact he’d never opened a personal email account. Not a Hotmail or a Yahoo or whatever the hell else everyone used nowadays. Why should he? The army.mil address the military had provided him when he signed on worked just fine for his purposes, that being the few times he needed to send official correspondence, such as now. He justified writing this message to this
pen pal
—he hated even saying the words—as nothing more than an official duty of a superior officer to help out his injured crewman.

John had written too many letters of condolence to the families of fallen soldiers, twenty to be exact. It was a dreaded but necessary part of war. This, however, would be John’s first email to a pen pal. He sighed, bowed his head, thought for a minute and then set to work.

Dear Ms. Winters.

He stifled the urge to roll his eyes at the obviously fake name he was being forced to use for this missive that his supposed friend had coerced him into writing in the first place.

I regret to inform you SPC Joshua Zipkin was wounded during a mission.

Sincerely,

SSG John Blake

There. That about covered it. Reading the email over one more time, he verified there were no typos and then hit send, relieved that particularly nasty duty was done.

In the meantime, he realized he needed to order himself some underwear and socks. At this rate, with the laundry service losing things as fast as he dropped them off at the quartermaster’s, he would be going commando. John was about to search for an online retailer that would ship to a military address when into his inbox popped the last thing he expected to see—a response from Summer Winters.

With a feeling of dread, he opened the email.

Oh my God. I knew something was wrong when I didn’t hear from him. Please, is there anything more you can tell me? Is he all right? He must be if he asked you to email me, right? But he must be very hurt if he could not email himself. Is he in the hospital? Did they send him back to Germany? I know how busy you are, but I am going crazy here. Please, please, please write back if you can.

Summer

John leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen. Hindsight was twenty-twenty. All his good intentions had done was manage to upset the girl. Now what?

Then John realized that his image of Summer Winters had suddenly changed in his mind yet again. She had gone from his first impression of little old lady do-gooder sex novelist to a concerned young woman. When had that happened? He glanced at the email again and decided it was because she sounded young when she wrote. Like a worried high school girl. Although he certainly hoped she was older than that considering what she wrote. She must be in her twenties.

But all this pondering didn’t solve the issue that he had to respond to her and fix what he had done. He hadn’t wanted to write her the first time. Now, because of his screw up, he had to write to her again.

Deciding the road to hell was paved with good intentions, he hit
Reply
and faced his penance.

Ms. Winters,

Jazzy was severely wounded when a vehicle-born IED exploded in his vicinity during a mission. His condition is stable. However, he remains hospitalized here in Iraq for the time being. You are correct in assuming he asked me to inform you of his injuries and as his superior officer, it was my duty.

I am truly sorry to deliver such news.

John read the last sentence and deleted it, deciding it made Jazzy sound dead rather than lying in a hospital bed cracking jokes and twisting his arm to make him do things he didn’t want to do. Instead, he added
I am sure he will contact you when he is able
.

Leaning back, John reconsidered that. He couldn’t write that to the girl. He wasn’t exactly sure Jazzy would hop out of bed and email Summer immediately. He did have a wife to catch up with. Hmm. Deleting that line also, he simply signed the letter
John Blake
and hit
Send
before he could think any more about it.

He found himself doing the strangest thing. He didn’t log off. Instead, he sat there and waited. John soon realized he was waiting for her response. He somehow knew with certainty it would come. Somewhere in the United States, nearly halfway around the world from where he sat, this woman was at this very moment reading his letter and writing back to him.

John quickly did the math. He didn’t know where Summer lived, but it would be late afternoon, or actually early evening on the East Coast, mid-afternoon on the West Coast. Was she at work? Did she even have a real job or did she sit around in slinky lingerie writing sex stories all day long?

Jeez.
Where the hell had that image come from?

Then, something even stranger happened. John found himself typing in www.summerwinters.com and holding his breath as his guess at her website address paid off and the home page loaded. He scanned quickly through the site. There was a picture of the cover of the book he had watched Jazzy and Morales fight over in the chow hall. Next to that book another one, featuring an equally provocative, unclothed male chest on the cover, was listed as
Coming Soon
.

On one webpage John found a vague and sketchy biography but no photo. He hadn’t even realized he was searching for a picture of her until he felt the disappointment at not finding one.

With that discovery, he closed the website and checked his inbox again. As he suspected, he found her email and opened it.

John,

Thank you for your quick response. I can’t say that knowing the severity of his injuries relieved my worry. Quite the opposite. But knowing is far better than not, and these past days wondering why he didn’t respond to my emails have been nearly unbearable. It is strange. Though we have never met, he and I have been friends for so many months now that I find a hole in my life at the thought of being without his friendship.

Would it be all right if I emailed you occasionally and inquired as to Jazzy’s progress? I would not normally bother you. Jazzy has told me how busy you are there being tank commander and all. I just don’t know who else to contact to find out how he is doing. Please, could you let me know if anything changes? Jazzy has told me about the gravity of internal injuries incurred from explosions. I will worry until he is back to one hundred percent. Thank you, John. I appreciate your taking the time.

Please keep yourself safe.

Summer

PS Please let me know if you or your guys need anything and I will send it to you.

John leaned back in his chair and let out a long slow breath. This woman he didn’t even know was now calling him by his first name, worried for his safety and wanted to send him things for his troops. He shook his head. Could anyone really be this nice?

He pushed aside his craving for Summer’s tasty coffee and responded, sparing a brief thought that each email seemed easier to write than the last. Worse than that, each one brought him closer to having a pen pal of his own. Dammit.

Ms. Winters,

I will keep you informed. I promise. We are good here. No need to send anything.

Thanks.

John

And then John realized with shock that he had been on the damn computer for nearly thirty minutes emailing with her, there was now a line of men behind him and he had yet to order his damn underwear. He would have to wait for another time.