I could see the wire from twenty feet away. How the hell did he miss it? I shouted as loud as I could. And that was the last thing I remember.
Sanchez told me later, as we were waiting for the PJs—Para Rescue Jumpers, crazy-ass Air Force medics—to come haul my bleeding ass out, that the kid had tripped the wire and taken out the whole front of the cave. The Hajis hadn’t thought it out so well, because the detonation had been so damn big that it had killed most of them, too. They made their own bombs—Improvised Explosive Devices. IEDs—full of pieces of chain-link fence, scrap metal, ball bearings, spent shell casings and whatever the fuck else they could find on the ground. It was a good thing I’d had my tetanus shots.
Watters had caught a few scratches, but not enough to take him out of the fight. My vest saved my life, but it didn’t cover everything. I almost had my right arm blown out of its socket. A big piece of hot metal went straight through my shoulder and removed my AC joint. This is a procedure best left to surgeons while under general anesthesia. Having it done with dirty hot metal while getting shot at is not recommended.
Sanchez told me he saw me get blown about twenty feet, which I don’t remember. A piece of my clavicle was sticking out. Watters was kind enough to push it back in and duct-tape it, but it killed that young Ranger. The poor kid who tripped the wire would never be fit for a viewing at home.
The Hajis who were still alive began pouring fire at us, but without the PK, it wasn’t as effective. For who might be offended at my use of the word ‘Haji’, keep in mind that we never knew the actual name of the locals trying to kill us. Some were Taliban. Some were Al Qaeda. Some were probably just local tribesmen who still thought they were fighting the Russians. No shit. Sometimes, when we were far out in the Kush, the guys trying to kill us were firing bolt action rifles from World War I.
They picked me up and carried me down the mountain. I would have done the same for them, but it didn’t make me feel any less guilty about having my guys expose themselves to save my lame ass.
By the bottom of the mountain, I was awake, but I had bled out pretty good and was wondering if I was going to make it. I was sort of in and out of consciousness, bleeding from a dozen holes in my arms, neck and the big one in my shoulder. A medic came running with pressure bandages.
When the helicopter roared in with an Apache gunship escort, I saw Watters’ big white smile against his dark skin. “Your ugly ass is gonna make it. Send me cookies when you get back to the world.” Then the big homo kissed me and told me he loved me. And because he really did love me, he shoved Ice into my hand, hidden under my thigh. If my bird went down and I lived, at least I’d have Ice with me. It was just the Delta mindset—never go down without a fight. That would remain with me for the rest of my life.
A few PJs came running and popped a morphine syringe into me, and that was that. Last thing I remember was the sound of the mountain coming apart under the fire of that Apache.
Chapter Three
Home?
Coming ‘home’ from Afghanistan was a bit of a blur.
I’d had multiple surgeries at Walter Reed Medical Center to repair my shoulder and remove a few dozen pieces of shrapnel. Turned out that the shoulder was just the obvious wound. The piece of metal in my neck missed my carotid artery by only a couple of millimeters and would have ended this story on page one had not fate decided I needed to play detective.
After a few weeks at Walter Reed, I was ‘officially retired’ with an honorable discharge and a few extra ribbons for my uniform, should I ever have reason to wear it again. Poof. I was a civilian.
Not knowing where else to go, I went back to North Carolina. Twin Oaks was where I’d graduated high school and where my parents are buried, but the truth was, I could have picked any place in the country and been just as much ‘at home’.
I had lived all over the world, changing girlfriends as often as I changed locations. I didn’t mean that in some macho-bullshit way. It would have been great to meet someone, fall in love and all that mushy stuff, but in my chosen profession that didn’t really work too well. I’d met some women here and there, managed to get laid often enough not to go insane, but hadn’t pondered my future with anyone. I really was a good soldier. I ‘had my shit wired tight,’ as we liked to say. Retraining my mind from ‘combat situational awareness’ to ‘relax mode’ was proving extremely difficult…and so was sleeping through the night. I ended up being the vampire of Twin Oaks for my first two months, taking long walks in the dark, hoping to get sleepy. PTSD? I don’t know. I just couldn’t calm the fuck down.
Every time I walked anywhere, I was looking for a field of fire or some object that didn’t belong that might be an IED. After two months in my rented apartment, I still hadn’t bought any furniture. I slept with Ice next to me on a futon on the floor, usually in three- or four-hour intervals, without anyone to relieve me for guard duty.
Living like a Neanderthal.
Trying to figure out what I was going to do for the next fifty years.
My shoulder hurt like hell and wouldn’t move the way it was supposed to. The VA was an hour away. The Army surgeons had been great, but the follow-up was a pain in the ass. A local doctor recommended a nearby physical therapy place. I opted to be tortured at the local PT.
It was a life-changing decision. Actually, it was almost a life-ending decision.
Chapter Four
PT and Amanda
Physical therapy was definitely invented by Al Qaeda. The pain even a petite female physical therapist could inflict on the human body was immeasurable. My first few visits had me in tears—and I don’t cry.
Delta had beaten the tears out of me years ago. But sonofabitch. When they started moving my shoulder to places it didn’t want to go, I’m pretty sure I would have divulged national secrets. I always heard this little voice in my head laughing at me when I groaned or broke a sweat, taunting me with, “You got beat up by a girl?”
After the third visit, one of them finally clued me in—take a pain killer before I went.
Good advice.
There were eight therapists working at that place. Several days in, it occurred to me that a therapist named Amanda wouldn’t leave my brain. The woman was kind of perfect. I’m thirty-one now but was thirty at the time. She was twenty-five. She was tall, dark and handsome—which is to say she was maybe five-foot-seven, with long dark-brown hair and green eyes that smiled when she did…and great teeth. I pointed out her great teeth, because if I’d said she had great tits, someone would think me shallow.
By the end of the first month, I refused to let anyone touch me but her. I spent an hour a day, three days a week, getting to know her in little snippets while she tortured me. She had the cutest Southern accent I’d ever heard, with a crystal-clear voice that I could listen to all day. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. When it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, I asked her out.
She said no.
Remember what I said about Ranger school and Delta? We were trained to never give up. Die first, period.
So after my asking politely for another week, then begging her for several more, she finally agreed to go out with me. I was hoping she had been waiting until my shoulder had improved enough so as not to impinge on any physically challenging plans she had in store for me. In real life, she said she wouldn’t date a patient, but my PT was coming to an end, and my begging was finally wearing her down.
We made a date.
Figuring she knew my military background and had still agreed to go out with me, I decided to wear my dress uniform. It was the first time I’d put it on since I’d come home, and I really was not supposed to be wearing it, since I was now out of the unit and this wasn’t a parade or anything. But what the heck. I was trying to impress a beautiful woman, and that called for special tactics.
The truth was, I looked way better in my uniform than in street clothes. With multiple dings and dents in my face from jagged pieces of hot metal, rocks and a
few fists, I had a face meant for a Green Beret or a brown bag. And, after nine years in the Rangers then Special Forces then with Delta, I had acquired quite a chest full of ribbons. While I’d made SFC—in almost record time, I would proudly add—I’d also received quite a few medals, including a Silver Star, which is how the government says, “Wow, you didn’t get killed?”, and two Bronze Stars with V devices for valor. I’d also recently received my second Purple Heart, which was the reason I was no longer in the Special Forces.
So anyway, I picked up my date, who was obviously impressed with my uniform and chest full of ribbons—or maybe it was the flowers. I don’t know. Who can ever figure women? We were going to dinner out near her house, which was about thirty minutes from me, so she picked the restaurant. The place was just right—dark and cozy, but not outrageously expensive. My kind of woman.
It was a three-hour dinner and seemed like five minutes. By the time we finished dinner, we had also finished two bottles of good wine and had both concluded that this was going pretty well. We decided to go out for a drink. Bad idea. More on that in a second.
Amanda wasn’t much of a partier. She’d had a boyfriend for several years, and they’d broken up recently. While she did know of great restaurants, she was at a loss for a cool bar, so we just strolled around downtown and picked one…hence the problem. A guy in uniform can walk into several types of bars. One kind is where they see your uniform and a chest full of ribbons and you don’t pay for a drink all night. I love those bars. Another type of bar is full of mostly men who look like they arrived via swamp-boat instead of car and have never served in the military. We had walked into that kind of bar.
Amanda took a quick look around and said, “Maybe we should go somewhere else.” Smart lady. But I was thinking, Yeah, like one beer here then to your place. So, being in uniform, which always increased the amount of testosterone in the bloodstream, I said, “We’ll stay for one beer. It’ll be fine.” Big mistake.
We walked over to the ancient wooden bar, which was fairly abused-looking—some might say it had character—and I ordered us two Sam Adams. This was not being cheap. This was because beer came in bottles that were freshly opened, and there was no way I was drinking from mugs in that place. This coming from a guy who once drank blood from the neck of a goat to get some liquid while trying to avoid dying of thirst. So I ordered the beers, gave the bartender a bigger-than-normal tip just to prove I wasn’t an asshole and leaned with my back against the bar to face my gorgeous date.
We might have had just one beer and been out of there. We might have ended up back at her place making passionate love until the sun came up. There were all kinds of possibilities. But that was not what actually happened. We were standing there, totally minding our own business, when things went south.
Getting injured and spending a few months home doing rehab had just about turned me back into a human being, and being on a date with Amanda had managed to help me turn off my constant ‘battle-space, head-on-a-swivel, fully amped’ mode. Then this guy showed up. This character looked like something out of a B horror movie.
He stepped right between me and Amanda and leaned over real close to her. “When GI Joe goes back overseas, why don’t you give me a call?”
I could have lived with that. Really. I was cool with being called ‘GI Joe’. But then several loud laughs encouraged him. He put his arm around her, dangled his hand over her breast and smiled, showing the nastiest set of choppers I’d seen since Afghanistan. I mean, seriously, even the Muj would brush their teeth if they had a toothbrush.
Amanda’s face showed absolute horror.
“You should go back to your friends now,” I said calmly.
“What are you gonna do about it, soldier boy?” he sneered then squeezed her breast. I reached for the man’s throat and squeezed his trachea hard enough to cause him to immediately release Amanda. His eyes bulged. His face went red, then a nice shade of purple as he automatically went to his tippy toes. He started doing what we in Ranger School called ‘the happy dance’. That’s when your arms and legs start moving around searching for oxygen and you look a lot like the cartoons of Snoopy dancing.
Amanda put her hands over her mouth and managed not to scream. I whispered in the dirt-bag’s ear that we would be leaving now and he’d better just find a seat somewhere. That actually was my plan—to choke him out and leave, and by the time he came to, we’d be in the car heading to her house for a seven-hour kiss goodnight.
Now…in the movies, when a guy in a bar hits another guy in a bar over the head with a bottle, the bottle breaks harmlessly and no one gets cut. That’s Hollywood. In real life, when this guy’s buddy hit me, the bottom of the bottle felt like a baseball bat and it did not break. The only thing that broke was my head. I saw little stars and the world started going black.
Fortunately for me, the floor broke my fall. Equally fortunate was that two guys quickly jumped on me and pulled me over on my back to make sure I would stay awake for the beating of my life. I had just about nodded out when they started punching me back awake. The punches to my face woke me back up—or maybe it was the sound of my nose breaking. The chokehold on the guy at the bar had been well thought out and carefully executed so as not to inflict lethal force. When the two guys on top of me began trying their best to break my face open, a little switch inside my brain flipped, and I no longer had to think about anything. First Sergeant Walker had arrived.
I remember Amanda screaming. I couldn’t see her, but I hoped she wasn’t being raped or killed. She was really screaming bloody murder, as they say. I think it was my bloody murder she was screaming about. I remembered the sound of the first goon’s neck snapping. I had managed to work my arms around his head and I broke it on autopilot.
The second guy? I remembered using the blade side of my hand to hit his throat as many times as I could. I still had Grizzly Adams lying across my legs and couldn’t move. It’s funny the stuff a person thinks of at the weirdest times. Chopping away at this guy’s throat, I was thinking, ‘All these motherfuckers are wearing flannel.’ I know, bizarre. But this bar was right out of Deliverance.
About the time I was pushing Grizzly off my legs, and Flannel Boy was gurgling and dying next to him, the original asshole who had started this whole disaster pulled out a big old hunting knife. That was really lucky.
He moved toward me across the bar room as I was getting to my feet. I could only see out of my right eye, my left having been closed by Grizzly before I’d sent him to the happy hunting lodge in the sky. The guy with the knife was holding it blade pointing down in his fist, meaning he was going to have to raise his arm and go for an overhand strike. If I had a dollar for every time I’d had to defend myself against the rubber version of a knife during hand-to-hand combat schools in Delta, I’d have that fishing boat.
So this wild-man came across the bar with his knife—and I knew it sounded stupid, but I was thinking, Holy shit, he’s wearing flannel, too. And he came at me and raised the knife like I knew he would, and I kicked him in the you-know-what, and with a quick wrist-lock, took the knife and sent it up into his solar plexus right into his heart.
We both went tumbling to the floor at that point, me out of complete exhaustion and a serious ass-whooping, and him out of, well…being dead. It was at this moment, when I was flat on my back trying really hard to stay conscious, that I saw every cop in town flying into the bar.
I figured one beat-down was enough for the day, so I feigned death. I didn’t have to act very much. I felt fairly dead. Then I heard screaming and remembered I had other responsibilities, so I tried to get up. That action was met with a nightstick being pushed into my chest and a stern, “Don’t you fucking move!” from a very tall policeman.
I collapsed back on to the floor and tried to wink at Amanda. She was being comforted by a female police officer who was slowly leading her in my direction at Amanda’s agitated insistence.
At that point, I vomited blood all over myself.
My nose had been broken and lots of blood had run down from my throat into my stomach. My stomach apparently didn’t want it there. That was enough for the cop who had been ready to thump me to call for an ambulance. He told me he would cuff me in front instead of behind if I promised not to cause any trouble. I politely passed out.
Chapter Five
Ouch
I woke up in the hospital. That is to say, handcuffed to a gurney. A young doctor was standing over me.
“How are we doing, Sergeant?”
That’s right. I’d had my uniform on when I went out that night. I had forgotten that somewhere along the beating, and now wore a silly hospital gown. I wondered if Amanda had taken off my clothes and seduced me when I was unconscious. Nah. Probably some giant male orderly.
I started to answer the doc, but it didn’t come out so well. What I wanted to say was, “What’s this ‘we’ shit? I didn’t see you there getting your ass whooped.” But my jaw had been bruised pretty good, along with a broken cheekbone and a broken nose, and my face felt like a large purple ball. In fact, I remembered watching the Afghans play a game like polo on horseback, where they used mallets to knock this dead goat around. I felt a lot like the goat. My headache was beyond migraine, and my right shoulder, which Amanda had helped heal almost back to normal, was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Instead of my wise-ass answer, I said something that sounded like, “Vuvuvuvv.”
“Yeah, you took a pretty a good beating there, soldier. I understand from your lady friend that you were assaulted while trying to protect her.” He leaned real close to my ear and whispered, “Don’t say a fucking word to anyone until you get a lawyer.”
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