Page 35

LINDA

"H ow're you feeling?" Lieutenant Parker asked Linda as the company assembled in the motorpool.

It was three hours since recall, and she'd been ordered to rest while the rest of the company handled preliminary preparations.

The attempted rest had left her physically refreshed but mentally foggy, caught between sleep and wakefulness. The ninety minutes in her room had passed in a blur, simultaneously an eternity and mere minutes.

"I'll be fine, sir." She leaned against the bumper of the Humvee behind her. "If this is a full roll out, I'll grab sleep on the plane."

Parker nodded and moved on, leaving Linda alone.

She felt weird, and not just because of the lack of sleep.

Her stomach roiled, and her body felt sweaty in a way that wasn't typical for the early summer heat.

Her skin felt clammy, and if it wasn't a recall, she'd get herself checked at a medical clinic.

She felt slightly off balance, and as she waited for Major Kirk to brief the company, a gnawing worry chewed at her mind.

She couldn't get that conversation with Brutus off her mind. The end of it, their discussion of children. She'd started it for some instinctual reason, and she was reminded of her sister. Her sister, with so many children, but who knew even before her first missed period she was pregnant.

Each. Time.

Sure, she was taking the pill, but she and Brutus hadn't been 'safe-safe.' And pills could fail, especially if stress or changes in her routine played hell with her hormones. She'd ignored the first rule of the weekend safety brief that she'd been telling soldiers for years.

Always use a condom.

She never had, not from the beginning with Brutus, and now she wondered, when was her last period?

Thinking back, she did the math in her head… and knew what she had to do before the mission kicked off. But she set that aside as Major Kirk entered the motor pool, his face grim.

"Gather around Charlie Company," he said, and Linda inwardly winced.

It was Major Kirk who'd named Charlie Company 'Cranked,' and he was the one person who almost always referred to the company that way.

He only called them Charlie Company when things had the potential to get bad.

"Pentagon's recalled us on this Saturday for... a big one," Major Kirk began. "An Army helicopter's gone down in Southeast Asia."

Linda felt her shoulders tense. Southeast Asia meant mud, jungle, and multiple warring factions who all hated Americans equally.

"Another clusterfuck," she thought, remembering the rumors about escalating tensions in the region. The kind of conflict that never truly ended, just simmered until it boiled over again.

Major Kirk's face hardened. "The situation's complicated. We've got a multiparty conflict that's been escalating recently. What one side calls insurgents, the UN calls refugees, and human rights organizations are calling ethnic cleansing victims."

A murmur rippled through the assembled soldiers. Linda exchanged glances with Sergeant Orkin, both of them recognizing the political minefield they were about to enter.

"The helicopter crashed in an active conflict zone," Kirk continued, his voice dropping an octave. "And now we've got terrorist cells and military groups from all sides converging on the site, looking to use it as leverage against the United States."

Kirk cleared his throat, scanning the faces before him.

"I'm sure some of you are wondering how a single helicopter can create so much of an issue.

Well, besides the whole Blackhawk Down effect.

.. there is an Assistant Secretary of State aboard.

So we're tasked with going in, securing our people, and getting the hell out of there before we do have another Somalia or Benghazi situation to deal with. "

"Sir, what's an Assistant Secretary of State doing in a warzone?" someone asked.

Linda's mind raced with the implications. High-level diplomats didn't just wander into conflict zones for fun.

Kirk's mouth tightened. "That's above all of our pay grades. But it was an Army chopper, on an Army flight. So we're going to go clean up the mess."

He didn't need to say more. Linda knew what that meant: someone higher up had made a mistake, and now soldiers would be risking their lives to fix it. The same old story.

"We're going in light, using the smaller vehicles," Kirk said, his voice shifting to tactical mode.

"The roads won't support our heavier trucks—too much mud from recent rains.

Get your gear, weapons ready, and grab your wet weather equipment.

We're wheels up from the airfield in three hours.

Full operation order will be at the airfield. Let's go!"

The company broke into a flurry of activity, and Linda threw herself into her job. She'd told Lieutenant Parker she could sleep on the plane, and she knew that was going to be the case. In the meantime she had a job to do.

"Hollywood, Satomura," she called out, her voice sharp and efficient, "get those vehicles ready.

Dawkins, Jackson, handle the rest of the gear.

Light loadout, we're not planning on staying overnight.

Focus on food, water, and ammo. Both vehicles need to be fully loaded, gassed, and ready to go in ninety minutes. "

"Hooah Sarge," Goodman replied as he and Satomura headed for the vehicles.

Linda looked around, and saw that Terry Atkins had his team working well. Still, her thoughts before Kirk started talking didn't leave her mind, and she knew she had to do something about it.

"Sergeant Orkin, got a sec?" Linda pulled him aside, her heart pounding with more than just pre-mission adrenaline. "Look, this is really out of the norm, but I need to disappear for twenty minutes."

"For what?" Orkin asked. When Linda didn't answer, he sighed. "Your team's on top of things?"

"They're good. You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't an emergency, Aaron," she whispered, using his first name to push her point. "I promise, I'll be back by the time Hollywood and Satomura get the vehicles ready."

Orkin sighed again, and reached into his pocket.

"Here, take my car. Just park at the company offices, if anyone asks I sent you to make sure the weapons are squared away. I'll make sure Linc and the El-Tee are distracted... as if they're not already."

Linda nodded gratefully and rushed from the motor pool. Her mind raced with possibilities as she clutched Orkin's keys, the metal digging into her palm. What would she tell Brutus if she was right? How would this change everything between them?

Jumping into Orkin's slightly out of place Honda, she quickly drove to the PX, where she ran inside to the pharmacy area, buying the first test she saw.

"Where's the toilet?" she asked the girl who rang up her purchase. The girl pointed without comment, and Linda ran down the hallway, locking herself in the stall and pulling her pants down.

There's no way this is going to give me a good reading. I'm stressed, sleep deprived, caffeinated to the fucking gills, I doubt I can even?—

Her flow came, soaking the end of the absorbent tip. While the test did its thing, she washed her hands, looking into the mirror and asking herself if she was ready for this.

She had just started talking about motherhood with Brutus. She wasn't even sure if she was ready for it.

Yet there was no way she was going to get rid of the baby if she was pregnant. Forget religion, there was no way she could not do everything in her power to grow any life that was started inside her body.

But motherhood scared the hell out of her.

Looking into her reflected eyes, the brown eyes so much like her mother's back in Puerto Rico, her mind flooded with memories of growing up wanting.

Of what her sister went through. Of struggle, and sacrifice, and still not being able to have the sort of life that she knew her parents wanted for her.

Of a single night in Bayamon, and terror that left her, if not raped, traumatized and desperate to get the hell off of Puerto Rico, never to return.

The timer on her watch beeped, and Linda took a deep breath. She was a soldier, dammit. She was a warrior. She was a fighter, and she was sure she wasn't going to be alone no matter what.

"Hell, if anything I'll get Jess Adams to be the godmother," Linda joked to herself in the empty bathroom. "That'll make sure the baby's protected."

She thought of Brutus, of his smile when they'd talked about children. Would he be happy? Terrified? Both? Her own emotions were such a tangled mess she couldn't begin to imagine sorting his out too.

Taking a final deep breath, she turned her eyes to the test. The results were supposed to be clear, white for not pregnant, and blue...

It was blue.