I'll Be Home For Christmas (A Coming Home Novella) (16 page)

Sergeant Dean Foster rolled his eyes and spat into the dirt. He had the lean, wiry body of a runner and the weathered lines of an infantryman carved into his face though at twenty-five, he was still a puppy. “Sarn’t Ike, I tried calling him this morning but he’s not answering. His phone is going straight to voice mail.”

Reza sighed and rocked back on his heels, trying to rein in his temper. “Have you checked the R&R Center?”

Foster pulled out his phone before Reza finished his sentence and started walking a short distance away to make the call. “Nope. But I bet you’re right.”

“I know I am. He’s been twitchy all week.” Reza glanced at his watch. The commander was going to have kittens if Reza didn’t have his personnel report turned in soon. Because herding cats was all noncommissioned officers were good for in the eyes of Captain James P. Marshall the Third, resident pain in Reza’s ass.

Foster turned away, holding up a finger as he started arguing with the doc. Reza swore quietly, then again when the company commander started walking toward him from the opposite end of the formation. Reza straightened and saluted.

It was mostly sincere.

“Sarn’t Iaconelli, do you have accountability of your troops?”

“Sir, one hundred and thirty assigned, one hundred and twenty four present. Three on appointment, one failure to report and one at the R&R center. One in rehab.”

“When is that shitbird Sloban going to get out of rehab?” Captain Marshall glanced down at his notepad.

“Sloban isn’t a shitbird.” Reza lifted his chin, daring Marshall to argue. “Sir.”

Marshall looked like he wanted to slap Reza, but as was normally the way with cowards and blowhards, he simply snapped his mouth shut. “Who’s gone to the funny farm today?”

Privately, Reza agreed with his commander but he’d never admit it out loud. The Rest and Resiliency Center was supposed to be a place that helped combat veterans heal from the mental wounds of war. Instead, it had become the new generation’s stress card, a place to go when their sergeant was making them work too hard. Guys like Wisniak who had never deployed but who for some reason couldn’t function as adults without constant supervision. But Captain Marshall was the last person Reza wanted to agree with.

Luckily Captain Ben Teague approached, saving Reza the need to punch the commander in the face. The sergeant major would not be happy with him if that happened. Reza was already on thin ice as it was.

“So you don’t have accountability of the entire company?” Marshall asked. Behind him Teague made a jerking motion with his hand.

Reza smothered a grin. “Sir, I know where everyone is. I’m heading to the R&R Center after formation to verify that Wisniak is there.”

Marshall sighed heavily. Behind him Teague mimed riding a horse and slapping it. Reza rubbed his hand over his mouth as Marshall turned a pleasing shade of puce. “I’m getting tired of someone always being unaccounted for, Sergeant.”

“That makes two of us.” Reza breathed deeply. “Sir.”

“What are you planning on doing about it?”

He raised both eyebrows, his temper lashing at the restraints. Nothing Teague could do behind Marshall’s back could keep Reza from mouthing off. His mouth would be the death of him someday. That or his temper.

He started ticking off items on his fingers. “Well, sir, since you asked, first, I’m going to stop by the shoppette for coffee, then take a ride around post to break in my new truck. I’ll probably stop out at Engineer Lake and smoke a cigar and consider whether or not to come back to work at all. Around noon, I’m going to swing into the R&R center to make sure that Wisniak actually showed up and was seen. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day hunting said sorry excuse for—”

“That’s enough, Sergeant,” Marshall snapped and Teague mimed him behind his back. “I don’t appreciate your insubordinate attitude. Accountability is the most important thing we do.”

“I thought kicking in doors and killing bad guys was the most important thing we did?” Reza asked, doing his damnedest not to smirk. He failed. Miserably. Marshall’s head about exploded, which was satisfying enough for Reza. He’d pissed Marshall off. His day could officially not get any better. Time to crack open a cold one and kick his boots up on his desk.

“Sergeant—”

“Sir, I got it. I’ll head to the R&R center right after formation. I’ll text you…”

“You’ll call. I don’t know when texting became the army’s preferred technique for communications between seniors and subordinates. I don’t text.”

Reza saluted sharply. It was effectively a fuck off but Marshall was either too stupid or to arrogant to garner the difference. “Roger, sir.”

“Ben,” Marshall mumbled as he stalked off.

“Jimmy.” Which earned him a snarl from Marshall. Teague grinned. “He hates being called Jimmy.”

“Which is why you’ve called him that every day since Infantry Officer Basic Course?”

“Of course,” Teague said solemnly. “It is my sacred duty to fuck with him whenever I can. He was potty trained at gunpoint.”

“Considering he’s a fifth generation army officer, probably,” Reza mumbled. Foster walked back up, shaking his head and mumbling creative profanity beneath his breath. “They won’t even tell you if he’s checked in?”

“I had to practically give the lady on the phone a hand job to get her to tell me anything and she pretty much told me to kiss her ass. Damn HIPAA laws. How is it protecting patients’ privacy when all I’m asking is if the jackass is there or not?”

“I’ll go find out if he’s there.” Still swearing, Foster limped off. Too bad Foster wasn’t a better ass kisser; he’d have already made staff sergeant. But Marshall didn’t like him and had denied his promotion the last three months because Foster was nursing a bum leg. Granted, he’d jammed it up playing sports but the commander was being a total prick about it. It would have been better if Foster had been shot. “Damn civilians,” Reza mumbled.

“Yeah, well, the docs are only supposed to talk to commanders.”

“They talk to you,” Teague said, pushing his sunglasses up on his nose and shoving his hands into his pockets.

“That’s because they’re afraid of me. I look like every stereotype jihadi they can think of. All I have to do is say
drka drka Mohammed jihad
and I get whatever I want out of them.”

“A
Team America: World Police
reference at six fifteen a.m.? My day is complete.” Teague choked back a laugh. “That’s so fucking wrong. Just because you’re brown?”

Reza shrugged. Growing up with a name like Reza Iaconelli had taught him how to fight. Young.

“What can I say? No one knows what to think of the brown guy. I’m sure if I was smaller people would think I was Mexican.” He started to walk off, still irritated by Marshall and the unrelenting douche baggery of the officer corps today. They cared more about stats than soldiers. It was total bullshit. The war wasn’t even over yet and it was already all the back-to-the-garrison army bullshit that had gotten their asses handed to them in ’03.

“Where are you heading?” Foster asked.

“R&R. Need to check up on the resident crazy kid and make sure he’s not going to off himself.” He palmed his keys from his front pocket. Reza slammed the door of his truck and took a sip of his coffee, wishing it had a hell of a lot more in it than straight caffeine.

He’d rather have one of his nuts crushed with a ball peen hammer than deal with the R&R Center. He hated the psych docs. They’d failed him badly in the past. He had no use for them. None. They were worse than the bleeding heart officers he seemed to find himself surrounded by these days. Just how he wanted to start off his first day sober: arguing with the shrinks.

Oh what fun.

* * *

“I really don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation, Captain.”

Captain Emily Lindberg bristled at the use of her rank. The fact that a fellow captain was attempting to intimidate her at the moment only irritated her further. She inhaled a calming breath through her nose, and spoke softly, deliberately attempting to keep her composure. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I’m afraid you’re the one who doesn’t understand. Your soldier has experienced significant trauma since joining the military and his recurrent nightmares, excessive use of alcohol to self-medicate, and his inability to effectively manage his stress are all indicators of serious psychological illness. He needs your compassion, not your wrath.”

“Specialist Henderson needs my size ten boot in his ass. He sat on the FOB last deployment and we only got mortared a few times. He’s a candy pants who has a serious case of
I do what I want-itis
and now he’s come crying to you, expecting you to bail his sorry ass out of a drug charge.” Emily could practically see smoke coming out of the big captain’s ears.

Once she might have flinched away from his anger and done anything to placate him. It was abusive jerks like this who thought the army was all about their ability to accomplish their mission. The mouth breather in front of her didn’t care about soldiers.

It was up to folks like Emily to hold the line and keep the army from ruining yet another life. There had been more than fifty suicides in the army this year and there were still five months to go in 2009.

“What Henderson needs, Captain Jenkowski, is a break from you pressuring him to perform day in and day out. My duty-limiting profile is not going to change. He gets eight hours of sleep a night to give the Ambien a chance to work. And if you don’t like it, file a complaint with my boss. He’s the full bird colonel in charge of the hospital.”

“You fucking bitch,” he said. His voice was low and full of rainbows and unicorns. “I’m trying to throw this little motherfucker out of the army for smoking spice and you’re making sure that we’re stuck babysitting him. Way to take care of the real soldiers who have to waste their time on this little weasel instead of training.”

The door slammed behind him with a bang and Emily sank into her chair. She had a full three minutes before her next patient. It wasn’t even nine a.m.

A quick rap on her door pulled her out of her momentary shock. “You okay?”

She looked into the face of her first friend here at Fort Hood, Captain Olivia Hale. “Yeah, Liv. I just…”

“You get used to it after a while, you know,” Hale said, brushing her bangs out of her eyes.

“What, the rampant hostility or the incessant chest beating?” She tried to keep the frustration out of her voice and failed.

“Both?”

Emily smiled. “Well, that’s helpful.”

It was moments like this that made her seriously reconsider her life in the army. Of course, her parents would be more than happy for her to take the rank off her chest and return home to their Cape Cod family practice. The last thing she wanted to do was run home to a therapy session in waiting. Who wanted to work for parents who ran a business together but had gotten divorced fifteen years ago?

Yeah, she’d pass, thanks.

“Can I just say that I never imagined that I’d be going toe to toe with men who had egos the size of pro football linebackers? Where does the army find these guys?”

“Not all of them are raging asshats,” Liv said. “Some commanders actually care about their soldiers.”

Emily raised both eyebrows, clicking off the Outlook reminder that had just chimed on her desktop. “It must be something special about this office, then, that attracts all the ones who don’t care.”

She’d been in the active army for just under a year now and had recently moved to Fort Hood because it was the place deemed most in need of psychiatric services. They had the unit with the highest active duty suicide rate in the army.

“Does it ever end?” she whispered, suddenly feeling overwhelmed at the stack of files on her desk. Each one represented a person. A life. A life under pressure.

Liv shrugged. “It doesn’t.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got my nine o’clock. You okay?”

She offered a weak smile. “Yeah. Have to be, right?”

Liv didn’t look convinced but didn’t take time to dig in further. In the brief moment she had alone, Emily covered her face with her hands.

Every single day, Emily’s faith in the soldiers she’d wanted to help weakened. When officers like the one in front of her were threatening kids who just needed to take a break to pull themselves together, to find some way of dealing with the trauma in their lives, it crushed part of her spirit. She’d never imagined that confrontation would be a daily part of her life as an army officer.

She still wasn’t used to it. It drained her.

A sharp knock on her door had her looking up. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the single most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His skin was the color of polished bronze, his features carved perfection. There was a harshness around the edge of his wide full mouth that could have been from laughing too much or yelling too often. Maybe both.

And his shoulders filled the door. Dear lord, men actually came put together like this? Sure, romance novel readers might fantasize about a man in uniform but those characters were just that: fantasy. The real military man was just as likely to be a pimply faced nineteen-year-old as he was to be this… this warrior god.

A god who looked ready for battle. It took Emily all of six-tenths of a second to realize that this man was not here for her phone number or to strip her naked and have his way with her. Well, he might want to have his way with her but she imagined it was in a strictly professional way. Not a hot and sweaty way that made her insides clench and tighten.

She stood. This man looked like he was itching for a fight and darn it, if that’s what he wanted, then Emily would give it to him.

It was just another day at the office, after all.