All for You

by Jessica Scott

  The room groaned beneath the joke and Emily saw his name tag. Staff Sergeant Carponti. His eyes lit with an impish grin and she wished she knew the story behind how the young sergeant was able to defuse the anger between the two big sergeants with such ease.

  “That’s not funny, Carponti.” Reza settled back against the wall.

  “It was my accidental overdose. I’ll make jokes if I want to,” Carponti said. “You can’t because that would just be wrong on multiple levels. But I can make all the inappropriate jokes I want.” He turned and grinned in Emily’s direction and she instantly liked him. “How do we fix this shit, ma’am?”

  “There are no easy answers,” Emily said once everyone’s attention was off the two combatants. “But while Sergeant Iaconelli mocks the issue of bad homes, the simple fact is that the generation of soldiers we are dealing with have been raised differently than many of us were. A large portion of our force comes from broken homes, have been victims of trauma at a very young age.” She deliberately avoided looking in Reza’s direction. “What I’d like you all to think about is the fact that many of you are combat veterans. Many of you have lived through terrible experiences as adults. But how would your life be different if you’d been beaten as a child? Or sexually abused? You can mock the younger generation and say they’re weak.” She paused, scanning the faces of the warriors in front of her, looking for any sign that her words were breaking through their hardened shells. “Or you can look at the fact that some of them are even functioning as an act that takes the greatest strength.”

  * * *

  Emily hung back as the crowd of officers and sergeants filtered from the stuffy classroom. There had been no further outbursts as she’d continued the discussion but she’d lost one very important player.

  Reza had stared at his feet for the rest of her briefing, his jaw pulsing with more and more anger as she’d gone on. Something had struck a nerve with him and she had no idea what.

  She also did not know him well enough to approach him about it. But that did not mean the worry would leave her alone.

  She stuffed her notes into a plain manila folder as the sergeant major approached. He was a hard, weathered man, a man who’d spent too much time in the sun without sunblock. Who smoked and drank and lived life as hard and as fast as it would allow him.

  “Thank you for coming, ma’am,” Giles said, offering her a hand that swallowed hers whole. She felt engulfed. Surrounded.

  “Thank you for letting me go off topic,” she said quietly. “I think we do too much slidesmanship in the army and I haven’t been around that long.”

  He grinned and it lightened the bleak darkness in his eyes. “Don’t say that too loudly. You’ll get kicked out of the officer corps.”

  She smiled and folded her arms over her chest. “Do you think anyone listened today, Sergeant Major?”

  His gaze shifted to some distant battle and for a long moment, there were ghosts dancing in his eyes. He came back to himself with a grim set to his jaw. “I think so. Maybe one or two. But sometimes, that’s all you can do. And sometimes, it’s enough. Good job today.”

  He left abruptly and Emily wondered if this was what life was always like when dealing with men like this. Still, she had the feeling she’d been given high praise from a man who did not look like he handed it out easily.

  She picked up her hat and her papers and started for the door, somewhat disappointed that no one had stopped her to ask questions. Usually at least one or two soldiers lingered after her briefing, wanting more information. Usually it was for a “friend.” Today, though, there was no one.

  The stigma against getting help was alive and well at Fort Hood.

  She tucked the folder beneath her arm and started for the door. The hallway was old and beaten down, decorated with photos from the battles of this war and legends of previous wars. She didn’t linger, uncomfortably reminded that she had no combat experience. That she was not welcome in this part of the post.

  She slid her sunglasses on as she stepped into the bright Fort Hood afternoon, grateful that the day was nearly over. She wanted to go for a run. Needed to cleanse the toxic hostility from her skin.

  She rounded the corner and stopped. Reza leaned against a black Harley Davidson, arms folded over his chest, his expression as grim and forbidding as it had been inside.

  She could keep walking. Ignore the hostility screaming off him. She didn’t know him. Didn’t know why he’d chosen to wait for her outside the classroom, but her senses were not tingling alarm. At least not the kind of alarm that made her think potential psycho.

  No, this alarm was something else entirely. Something she was too afraid to acknowledge.

  She could walk around him and avoid him but that would be the coward’s way out. It would be admitting that he unsettled her. She lifted her chin and headed in his direction, toward her waiting vehicle.

  “You’ve never experienced pure hell on earth until you’re in the middle of a firefight,” he said quietly. “There is nothing like the feeling of piss running down your leg as you’re throwing everything you’ve got at an enemy that would drag your carcass through the streets if you lowered your defenses.”

  She stopped in front of him, unsure if she met his gaze or not between her black-rimmed sunglasses and his. She glanced down at his chest and at the stack of black badges over his heart. “This one is the combat action badge, isn’t it?”

  He looked down at the knife encircled in a wreath. “Yeah. Why?”

  She frowned. “Because you’re right,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it feels like.” She glanced down. “I’d like to think that my first time in combat, I won’t cower in a bunker, too afraid to move,” she whispered. Lifting her gaze again, she found the words she needed. “I’d like to know I won’t be a liability on this next deployment if the base gets attacked.”

  Her words surprised him. She could see it in the slight part of his lips, the sudden absence of tension in his jaw. “What do you think you’re asking for?” he asked, his voice rough.

  “You have a field training exercise coming up, right?” She tried to find the words she needed but she was still learning the language of the military.

  His lips curled in a faint smile. “Yeah.”

  “I’d like to tag along. See what your soldiers do.” She tipped her chin. “I’d like to understand better. Would you be able to make something like that happen?”

  * * *

  Would he be able to make something like that happen?

  Would he like to be held down and have a smiley face drawn on his nuts? Sure, why not. Every day brought a new experience; why not bring a psych doc out to an infantry company’s training exercise?

  Because what was the worst that could happen, right?

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” she asked.

  “Why do you want to understand something you will never be part of?”

  She offered him a funny sort of smile, a smile that hid a thousand secrets. A smile that reminded him that there was still goodness left in the world. A smile that shined a light on the dark part of his soul. “Let’s just say it’s intellectual curiosity and leave it at that.”

  He frowned down at the tightly buttoned-up captain and had the strongest urge to see what would happen if she unbuttoned enough around him to relax. She made him want things that he’d long ago given up on wanting for himself.

  He was not meant for relationships. He managed to hurt everyone important to him. It didn’t matter if it was intentional or not. She was out of his league and he knew it but the stubborn tilt of her chin stroked admiration to life inside him. His little captain had faced down a room of combat vets today and hadn’t even blinked.

  “You’re one confusing lady,” he said quietly.

  “Keeps guys like you on their toes.”

  He met her gaze sharply. Her eyes danced in the midafternoon sunlight. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess she was flirting with him.

>   “What are you doing, ma’am?” he asked, his voice rough.

  Her throat moved, the muscles tight beneath her skin. “That’s the first time you’ve used any military courtesy with me,” she said. “That’s the problem. I wear the uniform but guys like you, they don’t see me as one of you. I want to feel like a soldier. Like we’re on the same team.” She paused, her fingers tightening around the notebook she cradled in one hand. “I want to understand what it is that you do.”

  “No you don’t,” he whispered.

  Reza narrowed his eyes, searching her face for any hint of deception or ulterior motive. But behind the polished demeanor, he caught a glimpse of a hunger, one that he’d known well once upon a time.

  Her need to belong was a palpable thing. He could practically feel it coming off her in waves. And yet, the way she stood in front of him, eager to go out to the field with a bunch of dirty nasty infantrymen…it loosened something inside him. Something he hadn’t realized was bound.

  Something that wanted to curl up with her and simply feel her heart beat against his. It shocked him with the strength and power of the urge. For once it overpowered the urge for a drink and it rocked him back on his heels with the force of it.

  “Going to the field isn’t going to help you understand us any better.” Only bleeding in combat would help you understand. But he kept that thought to himself.

  “It’s not like I’m planning on going in Combat Barbie and coming out GI Jane or anything,” she said dryly.

  Reza laughed because her words were exactly where his thoughts had been heading. “That’s good.” He straightened, curling his fingers to resist the urge to touch her cheek again. “Look, I’ll do what I can. No promises. But I need your help in return.”

  “Sure.”

  “I need you to find Sloban’s packet. I’ve been getting the runaround from your office for a week and I need answers.”

  She frowned and jotted Sloban’s name down in the little black moleskin notebook. “The name doesn’t sound familiar but I’ve done so many files, I could have missed it. I’ll check the log today.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her smile was blinding and he wondered if her eyes were lit up like her smile. “This means a lot to me,” she said softly.

  His throat tightened. “Remember you said that. Do you have your kit?”

  A tiny frown burrowed between her eyes. “Kit?”

  Reza took the notebook from her hand and jotted down a phone number. “Call these guys and get your gear issued. I’ll let you know if I can get approval for you to come to the range with us.”

  Her smile was blinding. “Okay. I’ll e-mail you as soon as I find Sloban’s packet.”

  He leaned back on the bike and let her go, biting the side of his cheek to keep from calling her back. From asking her what she thought she was going to accomplish by going to the field with a bunch of knuckle draggers.

  Here was his tight, buttoned-up captain, asking to go to the field to see what he did for a living. This same captain who put one of his soldiers in the hospital because he wasn’t able to go to the field. Wisniak did everything he could to escape training. Emily had just asked for it.

  Therein was the difference. He could train someone willing to train. He could build up a kid who was weak. But he couldn’t make a man of character out of someone terrified of his own shadow. Who used the system to malinger and avoid his responsibilities.

  So he’d take Emily to the field. Maybe he could understand her need to protect everyone.

  Maybe he could understand what it was about her that called to him. That made him lose his mind and want something he could not have.

  Because she didn’t understand. Some people couldn’t be saved. It was as simple as that.

  He had warriors getting ready to go back downrange. Maybe if he helped Emily understand what they did, she could help someone before someone else got hooked on drugs like Sloban had.

  Maybe he could make a difference one more time before he got her out of his system entirely.

  He swung one leg over his bike and contemplated trying to make it off post without his proper safety gear. Deciding he’d had his ass chewed enough recently, he pulled his helmet on, idly wondering how he was going to survive being ragged relentlessly by the guys for bringing a female to training and knowing that was just a convenient lie.

  He felt something when he was around her. Something he hadn’t felt in forever. Alive. Like there was something filling the dead space inside him.

  She touched a part of him he hadn’t realized craved touch and now that it had been awakened, he wanted more.

  Craved it more than the need for the alcohol that burned through him.

  What the hell was he supposed to do about that?

  Chapter Five

  It was quiet. The kind of quiet that felt like a thousand tiny spiders crawling up his spine. The kind of quiet that could only be found in the middle of the night in the heart of the western desert outside of Fallujah. Every so often, a burst of automatic weapons fire would punctuate the dark and then silence would fall again—unnatural, heavy.

  The silence of death and dying. Because death surrounded his platoon’s position. They were not where they were supposed to be. There was nothing around them in any direction but darkness edged with the eerie green light from his night vision goggles.

  And the radio silence carried with it the whispering seduction of the Reaper whose name they bore. His skin crawled in the darkness. Fear clawed at his belly like a live, crawling thing.

  They’d taken a wrong turn. It had taken everything Reza had to keep the platoon sergeant from shooting the lieutenant on the spot.

  They argued behind him in hushed tones, their whispers carrying on the midnight wind. Reza stared into the eyepiece of his night vision goggles, watching the desert for motion, keeping busy to deny the fear a foothold. He didn’t want to die today. Not today.

  He blinked as the sickly green shadows twisted in front of his eyes. Story’s face melted into view. He blinked. Twice. He had to be seeing things. Story was dead. His lungs squeezed tight. He tried to suck in a breath but his lungs fought him.

  Story’s face melted into Wacowski’s And then another. And another. Until the faces of his friends blended into a writhing mass of green light.

  Sloban laughed in his face. Reza jerked, his lungs locking up, his throat not cooperating. He struggled to break the fear’s grip on his lungs but then the face melted and shifted once more.

  And Emily was looking at him, her shadowed green eyes filled with blame and sadness.

  * * *

  Reza bolted awake in the driver’s seat of his car, his skin pulled tight against his bones as his heart attempted to break free from his chest. Fear skittered over his spine like the Reaper dancing over his grave and he shivered, turning the truck on to warm up the cab against the early morning chill. He threw his arm over his eyes and counted to one hundred by threes. The fear did not retreat but then again, Reza hadn’t expected it to. It was always the same nightmare. Faces dancing in the desert, like specters beckoning to him from across the river Styx. Mocking him for their deaths. His failure to keep his boys alive.

  Emily wasn’t dead. Neither was Sloban.

  His head was just screwing with him. The nightmares always screwed him up when he detoxed in Iraq.

  Fuck, man, Emily had been dead. He scrubbed his hand over his face and covered his mouth. She wasn’t his to protect. Wasn’t his to mourn.

  Reza sat there, gripping the steering wheel. The flask in his glove box called to him. Whispered seductive things. Just one sip. One and it would push away the nightmare’s lingering grief and fear.

  One sip, right? He could do that. Hating that he was such a miserable failure, he reached into the glove box. The flask was cold beneath his palm. He sat there for a long moment, holding it. Staring at it.

  Needing it.

  The clock on the dashboard said five twenty-six. He made it a habi
t of getting onto post early, before the crush of traffic at the main gate that backed up Highway 190, sometimes for miles. He didn’t always sleep in the cab of his truck but he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. The nightmares had been getting worse and he was running on about four hours of bad sleep a night. He dragged his hand through his hair and wondered if he’d get back to sleep or if he should walk into the company ops and check his e-mail.

  His brain danced over the nightmare again and again, the faces of the dead tormenting him. Mixed in together, enemy and friend alike. All dead.

  Death, apparently, did not recognize divisions like religion or uniforms. Reza had told himself that he’d done what he needed to do to bring his boys home. But alone in the dark, it no longer seemed like a good enough reason to have led the charge full bore into battle like he had. The Queen of Battle had whipped him into a frenzy more than once.

  And every time he’d told himself it was justified. It was the right thing to do. That if he didn’t kill the enemy, then it could be one of his boys hanging from that bridge in Fallujah or being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

  He’d grieved more than once over the friends he’d lost. But he hadn’t expected the guilt over the enemy dead to weigh on him as well.

  War was something he was good at. But there was a price. Wasn’t there always? The dead refused to let him go. And he punished himself when they didn’t do enough. The flask warmed in his hand. A means to dull the pain, so that the guilt wouldn’t eat at him.

  Just a little to keep the monster inside him placated enough that it wouldn’t consume what little was left of his soul.

  Just one sip. Just one and he could forget. At least for a little while. He scrubbed his hands over his face once more, then put the flask back into the glove box.

  He couldn’t bring back the dead. And the grief would always be with him.

  Maybe tonight, if he still hadn’t slept, he’d take a drink. Just one. Just to take the edge off so he could sleep.