Afghan Storm (Nick Woods Book 3) (21 page)

Chapter 60

After his
phone call with Mr. Smith, Nick found himself trying to process through a lot
of questions and feelings. Manly feelings, that is.

Mostly he
was nervous about the identity of this Dr. Clayton. He truthfully had no idea
how many doctors were even stationed on Bagram Airfield, and he had even less
of an idea how many of those doctors were female. But he guessed that the
statistical probability of it being the female doctor he had dealt with earlier
was likely working against him, and chances were strong that he had most likely
(and certainly, indirectly) hired a woman who he already didn’t like.

And it
seemed that the feeling might be mutual. However, that might also be the one
thing that helped his odds. Hopefully, someone he’d already successfully pissed
off wouldn’t think to apply for a job at his company. Would they?

Argh,
Nick thought. Why had he not learned the woman’s name? She had to have told
him, right? She probably did, but you were too busy coming up with a reason to
hate her guts. Remember?

Well,
at least
he knew of one way to figure it out. Mr. Smith said he had talked to someone
not just in S3, but in S3’s leadership. Barring any technicality, Nick was
pretty certain that there was only one person other than himself that could be
classified as leadership in his organization.

Nick
could hear Marcus’s voice before he even reached the weapons room. And either
the man had just finished having a heart attack, or Marcus was telling one of
his stories. Marcus was definitely one of the most disciplined and serious men
Nick had ever met, but when he had a good story to tell, the man went all out.
Nick could hear Marcus lost in an eruption of laughter. He could just make out
Truck’s deep, hearty laugh in between Marcus’ attempts to catch his breath.

When Nick
entered the room, he saw Marcus hee-hawing in a squat down on the floor. He was
teetering so far forward that he required both hands out in front of him to
keep him from falling on his face. Marcus had this reputation of when he got
tickled enough about something, his body suddenly and very mysteriously became
too heavy for him support on his own. If you got him going good enough, the man
would either literally crumple to the ground or slowly stumble from person to
person clutching at them for stability until he finally managed to steady
himself or gave in and allowed gravity take him down.

Meanwhile,
Truck was seated with his M4 on his lap, clearly in the middle of cleaning it,
but at the moment, the big man appeared to be having a straight-up, giggle
fest. His face was splotched and red, and he had one meaty hand fanning back a
collection of tears that threatened to pour out and down his face.

Nick
looked around the room and saw two unattended weapons and cleaning kits. One
obviously belonged to Marcus and Nick assumed the other belonged to Red.
However, as the little man appeared to be nowhere in the room, Nick had a
suspicion that Red might somehow be at the butt of this particular joke.

When
Marcus finally saw Nick standing in the doorway, his face lit up. He stood
precariously trying to find his balance and moved in a drunken fashion toward
Nick. The man was obviously too lost in his amusement to read the serious
expression on Nick’s face.

“Oh, man,
Nick,” Marcus said, “you are not gonna believe this, brother.”

The man
chuckled a bit more, and Nick looked over to see Truck slapping his thigh as a
fresh wave of hiccupping laughter tumbled over him. Apparently it was a good
joke if it had Truck willing to be seen with an unmanly amount of tears
spurting from his face.

“Okay,”
Marcus exhaled, attempting to rein his amusement in. “So I had gone to get Red
to tell him to get his gun and kit, right? But when I got there, dude was
already gone, okay? But I happened to see that the man left his lamp on. So
being the conscious man that I am,” he said, bobbing his head briskly from side
to side, “I went to turn it off for him, right? And as I get over to the lamp,
I look down and find this stick or whatever on the ground by his nightstand,
kind of hidden. Well, I have no idea what it is. But it seems kind of familiar,
you know, so I grab it.”

Now by this
point, Nick was genuinely curious about the “stick,” so he adjusted his face to
grumpy where before he was ragingly pissed off. Both Marcus and Truck looked to
one another and fell into another fit of giggles.

A few
deep breaths later, and Marcus continued the story, “So I find Red and Truck in
here already cleaning. And so I go ask Red, ‘Yo, man. What the hell is this
thing?’ Then the little man’s face goes all bug-eyed and red. But he won't tell
me anything. So I keep at him. Even Truck starts asking him about it, but the
man won’t say shit. Then finally, it hits me.”

Nick
looked over and saw that big ole’ Truck had started snorting and panting, a
tear-stained mess again. Nick was, honest to God, sure the man was going to
pass out from a lack of oxygen.

Marcus
came over to stand directly beside Nick, placing a big hand on Nick’s
non-injured shoulder. “You remember at the compound, that first hut we hit?”

Nick
simply lifted his eyebrows, urging the man to move the story along.

“Okay,
well you remember how Red got tripped up on that chair in the front room, and
you had to advance past him? Well, while you and Truck were clearing out the
back room, I could have sworn I heard some kind of scuffle still going on in
the front room. Of course, I’ve got the door, so I can’t do anything about it.
Can’t turn around, right? I just wait until I get Red’s signal that he’s
covering the door so I can start moving the furniture and shit from the room.”

Then
Marcus smiled so big that Nick thought he could get a pretty good guess as to
how many teeth the man actually had in his head.

“Turns
out,” Marcus continued, “that the little dude got his gear caught in the damned
chair…” Marcus suffered another fit, unable to finish the sentence.

“... so
the boy is wrestling and karate chopping the thing into pieces,” Marcus said,
snapping his arms in the air imitating the scene as his words became less and
less decipherable through the hoarse squeak in his voice.

“And then
I realize that not only has this boy gotten his ass handed to him by a fucking
chair, but he’s gone the entire mission without noticing an eight-inch-long
piece of chair leg still caught in his gear.”

Marcus
seemed to dissolve as he all but fell to the floor while Truck had come to the
clear end of his sanity. At some point, the big man must have set his gun down
as he was now half-pitched backward in the chair bouncing his leg and waving
both hands in a gesture suggesting that either Marcus stop or the big boy was
going to wet himself.

Nick
allowed them to laugh for a minute longer as he moved over to look at how much
progress Red had made on his gun. The proud little man must have decided to
abandon ship and let the two girls in the room have their fun. Ultimately, Nick
was glad that they’d had something to laugh about. And he’d look forward to
laughing about this later. But right now, he needed to get some shit
straightened out.

From
behind him, Nick could hear Marcus say to Truck, “I mean it took me a couple
trips to clear that chair from the middle of the room, man. Red must have beat
that thing into ten or more pieces.”

As soon
as the giggles began to die down, Nick turned to look at Marcus. The grin on
the man’s face fell as recognition suddenly won over his amusement. “Is
something wrong, boss?”

“We need
to talk,” replied Nick, keeping any sign of anger out of his voice.

Truck,
who was still a little too giggle drunk, interjected an “oooo” attempting to
sound girlish, but lost his enthusiasm for it when he saw that neither of the
other men was laughing. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“The
hall?” Marcus offered.

“Yeah,”
Nick replied. And the two men made their way out of the weapons room into the
adjoining hallway. Bagram Airfield was, at present, mostly vacant as the
majority of US forces had been ordered to finally pull out of Afghanistan. And
S3 had its own area on the base, so for the purpose of a private conversation,
the empty hallway was as good as a high-security war room.

“What’s
going on?” Marcus asked.

“We need
to talk about Dr. Clayton, Marcus.” Nick was suddenly very glad that he’d
walked into the weapons room when he did. Although he hadn’t exactly been able
to enjoy the humor earlier, the scene of his two men having a moment of rare
and genuine laughter had been a valuable reminder to Nick.

These men
were people, his people. And if he was going to ask for their respect, then it
was important that he do the same for them. Ultimately it would be unfair for
Nick to lash out and accuse Marcus of anything without hearing the man out
first.

“Dr.
Julia?” Marcus inquired. “Yeah, what about her?”

So
definitely a woman, Nick thought. He cleared his throat, then said, “Well, I
assume you know that S3 has officially hired Dr. Clayton as its full-time
physician. I was just informed of this by Mr. Smith.”

Marcus
looked confused. “I mean, I knew that there was the possibility. I didn’t know
that she had already been hired.”

“Okay,
Marcus,” Nick said, “Can you just tell me what your whole role in this was?
Because all I know is that Mr. Smith told me he’d spoken to someone within S3’s
leadership. And since I knew he hadn’t talked to me about any doctor, I’m
assuming he went to you, correct?”

“Yeah. I
mean, listen. Here’s what happened, alright? I get word that I’m supposed to
call Smith as soon as possible. So I call him, and he gives me orders to go and
interview this doctor. And he tells me to interview her under the same process
we would hire anyone else for S3, except for adjusting the questions to better
suit a physician.”

The man
stopped, looking at Nick as if trying to gauge how Nick was taking the
information. But Nick simply nodded and said, “Okay, so what happened?”

“Well, I
went and interviewed her. I mean, Nick, Smith gave me an order.”

Nick
waved his hand and shook his head, dismissing any defensive instincts Marcus
had about needing to explain his actions. Nick wasn’t mad at Marcus. Sure, he
wasn’t too happy about the situation or how his slimy CIA boss had worked a
damn loophole in order to get their way.

“No,
Marcus. I know you were just doing what you were told. And even though I’m not
exactly happy about what happened, or even how it happened, you did the right
thing, okay? So just tell me what you told Mr. Smith about Dr. Clayton.”

Marcus
sighed in relief. “I told him that Dr. Julia met all of S3’s standards as far
as I could tell.”

“You
think she’d be good for S3?”

Marcus
gave Nick a look of exasperation.

“Nick, I
told you forever ago and several times since then, how I thought a physician,
or a medical professional of some level, would be valuable to S3.”

Oh yeah,
remembered Nick. He did recall Marcus saying that a time or two, or twenty. But
it had never been a pressing concern, so Nick had consistently kicked the can
down the road, barely filing it away in his head.

“Okay, so
what’s the deal with her? Is she really up for this, or even able to handle the
kind of trouble we get into?”

“Look,
Nick, from what I could tell, she’s overqualified for the job,” said Marcus.
“She’s worked for years in austere conditions on small,
forward firebases. She’s saved lives with limited medical gear on some firebase
in the middle of nowhere. And her background is impressive. She graduated from
Harvard and spent years patching up gunshot wounds on gang members in Baltimore
before joining the Army after 9/11. This woman is one of the best. I’ve
researched her.”

“Hmm…”
Nick said, folding his arms across his chest and looking thoughtfully down at
the floor. “She say why she wants the job?”

“Actually,”
Marcus said curiously, pausing, “As a matter of fact she did.”

“Yeah?”

“It sounded
to me like she’s been here for a long time, Nick. She seems a little hallowed
and ready to move on. And the opportunities in the Army for real trauma work
are becoming more and more limited. Plus she seemed to feel that moving to work
beneath a corporate company might make it easier for her to move into the
private sector one day.”

“Is that
what she said then?”

“In so
many words, yes. Look, I think she’s a doctor, meaning she wants to help
people. And let’s face it, Bagram doesn’t have much of a need for her anymore.”

Nick
nodded. He could definitely understand the need to be needed.

“So,”
Nick said, starting to feel a bit uncomfortable, “She’s tough enough to put up
with us?”

“More
than enough, man. I mean she seemed to know how to adapt from moment to moment.
She was charming and polite when she came in, but she showed some edge when I
pushed her a bit.”

“Right,
” Nick
said, staring fixedly at a particular orange fleck of the tile floor. “So,
Marcus, what does Dr. Clayton look like? I mean I’ve already met a couple of
doctors here, but…”