Page 16

They are home.

“Hey, Sarge.” Specialist Brooklyn Navas’s Mississippi drawl catches my attention, and I turn to see him shuffling his linebacker frame toward me. In one hand he makes a fifty-pound machine gun look like a child’s toy, and in the other he balances a stack of loaded magazines. “Where the fuck’s the Humvee?”

“Fuckin’ Elkins forgot fuel again,” I say as I grab the stack of mags from his hand.

“Well shit, that’s a goddamn shocker. Did he take Tweedle Dick with him?” Navas grunts and spits a rope of tobacco and saliva to the ground as he sets the machine gun down.

“Yeah, they should be back soon.” He hands me another stack of mags from his cargo pockets and I line them into my vest while he does the same with his. "Lieutenant DickFuck’s probably still sleeping anyway.” I think I like calling him that too much. One of these days he’s going to catch me. I’m not so sure I’d mind.

“Oh, you know it. Just got done filling these mags up and he was still snoring the fuck away.”

“You wake him up?” I ask, just as our Humvee comes tearing around the corner, screeching to a halt right in front of us. As if on cue, Lieutenant DickFuck exits the officer’s quarters, which sits just beside headquarters. DickFuck, or 2nd Lieutenant Justin Dixon as we’re made to call him, is a fancy little twat one year out of West Point. His parents are senators, or some shit like that, and he sucked his way to our unit. Not literally, of course, though it wouldn’t surprise me.

A boy amongst men, we were shocked when he arrived because his type doesn’t make a good infantryman. But like it or not, here he is. It’s obvious he sees this specific assignment as a fast track to Senator status. The close relations with locals and the promise of a Combat Infantryman Badge is a future politician’s dream, and he knows it. He also knows the line he must meet to stay here, and he dances all over it. He sleeps in up until about the point we need to head out on a mission, and he often skips the more dangerous ones. I wish he’d skip all of them, because it’s a fucking nightmare riding with him due to his intolerable arrogance.

He staggers toward us, his eyes sunken and his uniform disheveled, and I slip a glance toward Navas. “Tell me he’s not riding with us,” I mutter as we load into the vehicle.

“Fuck,” Navas grunts.

That would be a yes. Fuck.

I watch as Lieutenant Dixon’s slender five-foot-six-inch frame rocks harshly back and forth in the passenger seat—my seat—as we cruise the rough terrain. He usually rides with Sergeant Dustin Adams in Bravo Team's Humvee, since the two New Yorkers seem to have hit it off. But apparently their gunner ate some bad goat meat on a mission last night and has essentially created a gas chamber within their vehicle.

So instead, DickFuck is in my vehicle messing around with the navigation perched to his left with an almost child-like distraction. He doesn’t know how to work it, nor does he ever try to learn, but he likes to play the part.

“Ahhh, you see that shit?” Dixon’s head shoots to his right, his eyes peering out the window. His shrill voice breaks the static buzz within our headsets.

“What shit, Sir?” Navas asks.

“That chick. She’s in jeans, no fucking burka. I’d tear that shit up.” The attractive woman walks down the side of the small dirt road. She looks our way and cracks a timid smile, and I see Dixon shudder out of the corner of my eye. He’s getting worked up, shuffling in his seat, and I look to Elkins to see if he notices, but his ADD has him off in fuck-fuck land playing with his med-pack.

"I'm shocked she still has her head,” I say before catching myself, wishing I could take back my words. I think about the beheading videos that have taken over the media and I feel sick to my stomach. To get my mind off the grisly images, I decide to piss off Dixon. “By the way, how’s your wife doing, Sir?” I ask, shooting a mischievous smirk toward the back of his head. I know he’s trying to think of something clever or witty to say, but he sucks at it, so I soak up the few seconds he takes to think of a rebuttal.

“Pregnant and spending all my deployment money,” he snaps. “What about yours, Sergeant Clay?” I know he wishes he could say something insulting, but the gold bar on his chest restrains him.

“No wife here, Sir.” Not that I haven’t thought about it from time to time. How nice it would be to have someone waiting on me … someone to go home to … someone to miss me.

Dixon twists his head around.

“No?” he asks, his beady, lifeless eyes scanning me from head to toe. He turns back around quickly. “You’re not ugly. What is it then? You can’t get a woman? Can’t provide for one? How old are you anyway, Sergeant Clay?”

“I’m twenty-seven, Sir. And negative, I just don’t want one. I don’t have time for all that.”

“Probably the best choice you could make. My wife, she’s great and all, but fuck! We weren’t meant to be with one pussy for the rest of our lives. Why else would God have created hookers?” He cackles loudly, making me flinch at the sound it makes over the headset.

“Roger that, Sir!” Elkins says, chucking the med-pack to the side. Apparently, he’s become bored with it.

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Elkins, you wannabe playaaa,” Navas chimes in, kicking a heel back toward Elkins but not even coming close.

“Shiiiit, I bet I’ve fucked more bitches than you have, old man,” Elkins shouts up through the turret hatch, as if the headset on his head was useless.

Navas laughs and tilts his body toward Elkins. He shifts a hand down to his crotch and pretends to jerk off. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? That’s some dumbass shit you’re saying, boy. I was a Marine for twelve years, travelin’ around by ship to ports all over the world. You do the fuckin’ math!” Navas shouts, pretending to come all over Elkin’s face before angling back forward.

I look up through the turret hatch and see Navas smiling down at me. I know him well, and because of that, I know he’s lying his ass off. He's not the fuck-around type. He was married to his high school sweetheart for fifteen years and they had two beautiful children together, a son and a daughter. She died of breast cancer a year ago, just before he joined the Army and came to our unit. He fought with our leadership for a month straight to even get on this deployment. They wanted him to stay back, for his kids’ sake, but he’d have none of it. He said he needed to be with his guys. I respected him for his decision, but I worry about him and his kids nonstop out here. It keeps me awake most nights.

“You ever been to Thailand, Navas?” I ask, slipping bits of jerky into my mouth while consciously shoving the thoughts deep down. Deep enough to never see the light of day. Until they inevitably do.

“Yeah, a shitload a times. Why?” Navas questions.