Red Hot & Blue 08 - Model Soldier

by Cat Johnson

  “Okay.” Emily nodded slowly, still wondering why Katie was hesitant about this candidate.

  It would all work out just fine. BB was the sweetest man on earth. The perfect gentleman. No way would he pick a jerk for Katie and Emily to work with. The happiness bubble returned.

  Emily flipped open the folder and shuffled through the few papers inside. “Is there a picture in here?”

  “Not in the client folder, no. The model was a...uh...recent decision. Actually, I’m not considering it’s a done deal yet. BB said he is one hundred percent sure he’ll be the one, but the guy hasn’t even received the info for the assignment yet. He’ll get it when he gets back to his garrison tomorrow. Until he gets the orders, I’m not convinced he won’t back out.” Katie shrugged. “We’ll know for sure soon, I guess.”

  Emily pouted, the nearly useless file in her hand. “So there is no information on him at all?”

  Katie smiled. “Relax. Check the printer.”

  “The printer?”

  “Matt, BB’s computer-genius friend, sent a few background documents directly to our printer.”

  “How the heck...?”

  Katie shook her head. “Honestly, I don’t know how he did it. Quite frankly, I think I don’t want to know how Matt hacked into our wireless network from Europe and sent a document directly to our printer.”

  Emily glanced at the printer. Katie was probably right. Some things were better left unasked.

  “I think there might be a picture of our potential model there,” Katie continued.

  That sent Emily flying across the room. She skidded to a stop and grabbed the pages waiting for her there in the printer tray.

  She flipped through. “Damn. There’s no picture, but there is a spec sheet. Staff Sergeant David Hawkins.”

  Mmm. That was a nice name. Emily Hawkins. Emily Price Hawkins. Staff Sergeant and Mrs. David Hawkins.

  She continued reading. “He’s thirty years old and seventy-two inches tall. That’s...”

  Emily squinted at the ceiling, doing the math until Katie interrupted her effort. “Six feet.”

  Excellent. Emily liked tall men. He’d look nice next to her five-foot-five-inch frame even if she wore heels.

  “Hazel eyes. That’s good. If we put him in Army green, it will bring out any green tint in his eyes for the photos.” Her head spun with the possibilities.

  “Really, Em. I don’t think you should expect too much.”

  Emily frowned at Katie. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  The big sigh her boss released, accompanied by her guilty look, did not bode well.

  “Emily, the soldier selected may not exactly be happy about this assignment.”

  “Is that all? You told me BB wasn’t happy when he was ordered to do the recruitment campaign either, and that worked out fine.”

  More than fine. Katie had never been happier since meeting BB.

  Nope. Emily was not about to cancel her dreams of happiness over one disgruntled soldier pouting over a few photo shoots. She’d win him over fast enough and prove to Katie she could handle a big, supposedly difficult, assignment all on her own.

  Big. Mmm. Most likely her soldier was big and muscular, as well as tall and handsome. This day was turning out pretty great and it was still only morning.

  “I just wish there was a picture.” Pouting, she looked accusingly at the printer...and noticed the blinking red light. The machine was out of paper.

  “Oh my God. There are more pages.” Flying into action, Emily nearly ripped off one short, pale pink-polished fingernail tearing into a fresh ream of paper. She loaded it into the printer tray.

  Tapping her foot while Katie laughed at her across the room, Emily waited impatiently for the next page to print.

  “Come on, come on.” She watched the printer, which was obviously not listening to her judging by how slowly it chugged along. Emily glanced up at her boss with frustration. “This is taking forever. We need a new printer.”

  Katie smiled indulgently but did get up to walk over and wait with Emily.

  Finally, a color photo emerged ever so slowly from the machine. Close-shorn dark hair appeared first, followed by serious, piercing eyes. There was a strong, square chin and then a chest so broad and forearms so thick they could have easily belonged to a lumberjack.

  David Hawkins’s features would never be considered perfect like BB’s. Instead, he was ruggedly handsome and all manly man. BB had chosen the quintessential warrior to represent the US Army.

  Emily started grinning before the printing finished. Eyes never leaving the photo, she asked, “When do I meet him?”

  Chapter Five

  First was the humiliation of having to hike down the mountain alongside Task Force Zeta as they relived each and every kill among themselves. Sometimes they even stopped to enlighten Hawk and his men as to what Hawk’s squad had done wrong during the mock slaughter.

  Then Hawk had the pleasure of having to, while still wearing the game-ending paintball stain on his back, meet with Commander Miller once again back at the base camp. Miller had apparently watched and listened to every step of his golden boys’ victory courtesy of Matt Call-Me-Computer-God Coleman.

  Now—the topper at the end of one hell of a shitty day—having drinks with Zeta. It was an invitation from Miller that Hawk thought best not to refuse even though the dead last thing he wanted to do was bond with frigging Task Force Zeta and discuss the exercise. At least they’d gotten to eat some chow first. Hawk definitely could not have faced this on an empty stomach.

  “Losing is more important than winning, if you learn from your mistakes.” Jimmy Gordon delivered that advice in a southern drawl so thick Pennsylvania-born Hawk nearly needed a translator to interpret for him.

  “Come on. We’ll go over with you exactly what you did wrong.” Gordon had the nerve to make that offer while smiling and truly looking like he meant every frigging friendly word.

  Hawk didn’t want to talk to any one of them, but the beer at the pub was German, dark and strong, and the pool table actually had all of its balls. All in all, since they couldn’t fly out until morning, this might not be such a bad way to spend an evening, if he didn’t have to sit here and listen to Zeta recap what he and his men had done wrong.

  They didn’t do anything fucking wrong. He wanted to shout that at them. They were outmaneuvered by technology, nothing more. That sucked, but worse, it scared the shit out of him.

  “Hawkins?”

  Leaning against the pool table, sighting his next shot, Hawk didn’t even look up at Miller when he bit out a most likely less-than-polite, “What?”

  Hawk finally glanced up in time to see the training commander’s smirk. “Nothing. Just you’re about to sink a striped ball.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  Miller raised a brow. “So, you’re solids, not stripes.”

  Shit. With a deep sigh, Hawk stepped back from the table, planted the cue stick on the ground and hung his head.

  “What’s wrong, son?”

  The last thing he wanted to do was admit to Miller what he was about to, but he was a real man and so he would face reality.

  “That loss to Zeta today shook my confidence, sir. I mean, when I said I wanted Zeta to play full out I didn’t realize what that meant. The implants, the computers...we’re not ready, sir.”

  He looked at Miller and told him, with as much conviction as he could put into his voice, the absolute truth.

  “We’re not ready for Afghanistan. If the insurgents come at us with anything like Zeta did today...” Hawk shook his head and continued his confession. “What if I can’t bring them home alive? What happens when all that red in the snow isn’t paintballs but our blood? What if my men fall in those mountains in Afghanistan just like they all fell to Zeta today?”

  “They won’t.” Miller spoke with a confidence Hawk could only wish he felt.

  “But—”

  “No but about it. Do you really think the Taliban ha
s access to the kind of training and equipment our teams have?” Miller asked.

  “They might.”

  “They don’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s my job to know. And besides that, we’ve faced them, right there in their own backyard. I can’t tell you much more except that our teams aren’t always focused on training, son. A few years ago, I led Zeta personally into those exact mountains where you’re headed and beyond them, and I brought them all back out again. Alive. And if you repeat what I just told you, I’ll deny every word.”

  Hawk couldn’t care less that Miller and his SpecOps had sometime in the past most likely trespassed in a country they shouldn’t have been in. He was more worried about his guys and keeping them alive. But at least now the close, easy camaraderie between Miller and Zeta made more sense. They’d been together for a long time and they’d been through things he likely couldn’t even imagine.

  “No disrespect, sir, but with those men and that equipment I’m not surprised you and Zeta all came out alive. Unfortunately I’ve only got my normal, human men and crap for equipment.”

  “First, the guys on Zeta are regular men just like you. When you stop wallowing and get to know them better, you’ll find that out.”

  When Miller chastised, he pulled no punches. Hawk bit his tongue to keep himself silent after the wallowing comment, true though it may be.

  “Second, I can tell you this about what you’re walking into in Afghanistan.” Miller continued undeterred. “The remaining Taliban factions survive only because of a thriving drug trade. If they were based anywhere else besides in the largest poppy-producing region in the world, they’d have little to no funding and be totally screwed.

  “I’ll concede that works in their favor. However, they’re also in a region in constant turmoil. It’s occupied by foreign powers but ruled by a newly created government as well as, unofficially, by the local warlords and tribal elders. Having too many heads like that leads to confusion and anarchy. Sometimes that climate will help the insurgents get a rare but small victory, but ultimately it leads to their defeat.”

  “How?” Hawk frowned. Those sounded like the perfect conditions for the bad guys to thrive.

  “Their own allies turn on them, when they’re not turning on each other. Most of the Taliban is living in squalor and chaos in those mountains. And believe me, they don’t have anyone like our Matt Coleman designing their equipment.”

  The mention of Coleman aside, Hawk listened closely as Miller spoke. Now that he knew the man had been there, his words held more weight, though he said nothing that Hawk didn’t to some degree already know.

  “You and your men are good, Sergeant Hawkins. You held your own better and for far longer than I anticipated today. You’ll have the advantage in those mountains. Trust me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hawk managed a nod, whether he believed it deep down or not.

  “I’ve had about enough of chasing balls around a table. How about a beer?” Miller offered.

  Now that was one thing Hawk could totally agree with Miller on. “Yes, sir. I’d love one.”

  But once Hawk was leaning against the bar, strategically placed there by Miller, he realized Miller’s sudden craving for beer had nothing to do with thirst and everything to do with throwing him in the path of Zeta’s normal guys just to prove his point.

  Miller introduced him to a dude named John Blake—no rank or service branch specified, Hawk guessed these guys were above that—and then Miller disappeared.

  “So you’re an Army staff sergeant.” Blake shook his head with a laugh.

  Hawk had noticed Blake’s grin when Miller had mentioned Hawk’s branch and rank during the introduction. It seemed to still amuse the guy. Hawk decided he’d had about enough for today without this guy and his attitude too.

  Hawk straightened his spine, his knuckles whitening around his beer. “Yeah. What about it?”

  Blake shrugged. “It’s just that not too long ago I was you. I was Army Staff Sergeant John Blake. I was a tank commander in Ramadi.”

  “Ramadi. I’d heard things were pretty bad there.” With more respect for Blake, Hawk decided to give him a pass. The cold beer sliding down his throat didn’t hurt his newfound generosity either.

  “Bad is an understatement.” Blake laughed. “We were eyeball deep in snipers at camp to the point we couldn’t even eat in the chow hall without body armor. A few weeks before I left, I watched one of my men get hit with a vehicle-borne IED right in front of my eyes while he was dismounted. He was out of that tank following my orders. Good thing he’s got a hard head and lived.”

  Blake shook his head again and took a sip of his beer. “And now look where I am and what I’m doing. I’ve got more shit implanted in my body than I ever knew existed, and I’m running around in the Alps playing what’s probably the most expensive game of paintball on earth. What a difference a few months can make.”

  “You’re trying to tell me a few months ago you were just a normal Joe out there in the sandbox?” Hawk frowned.

  Blake nodded. “Yup. It was my third, and I guess my final tour.”

  “So what happened? How did they get you?”

  He laughed. “You make it sound like they took me hostage and brainwashed me or something. Like an alien abduction.”

  Exactly. At first glance, all the Zeta guys had a bit of that Stepford-wife quality to them. Too perfect, too coordinated, too in tune with each other. As if they were humans replaced by robots, just like in that movie.

  “I find it hard to believe that they pluck totally average guys out of the theater and turn them into you super soldiers.”

  Blake shrugged. “I can’t speak for the rest of them, but in my case, yeah, believe it.”

  “So you’re honestly trying to tell me you’re all regular guys, just like me, but with better toys?”

  At that, Blake laughed out loud. “Yeah, they...we...do have some pretty amazing toys, half of which Coleman over there invented. Now, he is not normal. He’s an honest-to-goodness card-carrying genius.”

  When Hawk still wasn’t convinced, Blake continued. “Look, I’m not saying any one of the troops out there would be right for the teams. Of course they’re more selective than that. You have to have excellent basic skills as well as certain qualities. The ability to work in a group or alone. The aptitude to both lead or follow, and to switch between the two on a moment’s notice.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Well, no. It helps to be a language expert like Trey Williams over there. Or be able to drop a man with your bare hands like Jack Gordon. Or never miss a shot like Jack’s brother, Jimmy Gordon. Or be a bomb expert like Bull Ford, or a diving and swimming champion like BB Dalton.”

  Yeah, Hawk got the idea. All perfectly regular guys. Sure. He snorted out a laugh.

  “Okay, yeah, a lot of the guys used to be what you’d consider elite. Rangers. Delta Force. BB was a SEAL. But not me. I was just a tanker.” Blake shrugged.

  “So then why you? They all have specialties. What’s yours?”

  Blake smiled. “I asked Miller that exact question when he mysteriously showed up at camp in Ramadi one day. He made quite an impression, I can tell you that, dressed head to toe in his black body armor.”

  “And?”

  “He said I had an instinct. Some innate ability to think like the bad guys, and that was as valuable a skill as any of the others.” Blake shrugged again as if he had trouble believing it himself.

  “I’ve been told I have that instinct in me.” Hawk wasn’t one to brag, but both superiors and guys he’d served with had said that about him.

  Staying one step ahead of the baddies was a skill that had kept him and his men alive more than once. Or perhaps it was just dumb luck. At this point, Hawk wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Blake nodded. “I know you do. I saw it today during the exercise.”

  Hawk let out a bitter laugh. “You mean the slaughter.”

  “
It’s all in the toys, Hawkins. Just the toys.” Blake smiled and raised his beer to salute Hawk.

  Against his will, Hawkins smiled along with him. But God help him if Miller was wrong and the bad guys got their hands on those toys too.

  He was still smiling when Dalton appeared at his side. “So, Hawkins. Your assignment is all set and approved.”

  That information chased the short-lived humor right out of him.

  Blake, looking amused, turned to Dalton. “You’re really going to make him go through with that?”

  Pretty Boy bobbed his head. “Damn right, I am. A bet is a bet. It’s all set up and ready to go.”

  Hawk glared at Blake. “You know what this is about?”

  “Oh, yeah. He wanted me to do it originally, but apparently I’m not right for it now that I’m no longer enlisted Army. Not that I was going to do that shit anyway.”

  “If the commander told you to do it, Blake, you’d do it. Believe me. How do you think I got roped into it last year? The commander ordered me.”

  Hawk had the sudden urge to rip his own hair out of his head. “What is this it you’re both talking about? Come on, Dalton. I lost. I admit that. I’ll take the stupid assignment, but you at least have to tell me what it is.”

  “The orders will be waiting for you back at Hohenfels.” Pretty Boy said it with a warning glance at Blake. The look said he better not spill the beans in the meantime.

  Why was everyone being so mysterious?

  “Hey, Hawkins? You got a girl?” A new voice coming from somewhere behind Dalton asked.

  What the hell did his love life have to do with anything, and who the fuck was asking? Leaning past Dalton so he could identify the speaker as the computer god himself, Hawk frowned. “No. Why?”

  “Because after this assignment, you will.” Matt Coleman joined their conversation uninvited. “Maybe too many of them. Not too long ago, the team had to physically protect BB here from his adoring female fans at a bar. Of course, that wasn’t such a chore. Especially the one who took her shirt off so he could sign her tits.”

  Fans? Adoring female fans ripping their clothes off? Hawk glanced at Blake, who shrugged. “Don’t look at me. That was before my time.”