Rage & Fury

by Darryl Hadfield

  I looked up at the knock on the door. “Enter.” The door was closed, an uncommon thing in the area I worked in, but I wanted privacy. That was why I ALWAYS had my shit done on time – I didn’t permit my staff to interrupt me; as soon as I’d taken over the company, I’d instituted a policy that if my door was not open, I was NOT available other than by text-only implant messages. I was expecting a new officer to arrive today; the person I was planning on handing over the replenishment duties for needed stock.

  The door opened. “Lieutenant Sekulich repo… reporting for duty, sir!”

  Oh this was truly fucking beautiful.

  “Come in, come in Lieutenant. A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Thank you Captain, I’m pleased to be here.” He started to sit down in one of my two guest chairs.

  “I have not formally acknowledged your salute, Lieutenant, nor have I indicated that you are welcome to sit in my presence at the moment.”

  He snapped back upright again, right hand raised to his eyebrow.

  “You shall accord every officer in this unit the respect that their rank is due, and not one ounce less. Is that clear, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes sir!”

  “You shall not engage in any harassment, overt or covert, of any officer OR enlisted in this company. Is that clear, Lieutenant?”

  “But sir, it was just a jo-“

  “IS THAT CLEAR LIEUTENANT?” This shit-for-brains had ran my ass ragged, and while I was probably a little out of line hauling him up like this, he deserved it – and I could always point back to the abuse he’d handed out when he was nominally my superior while at OCS.

  “Yes sir.” Poor bastard looked about 2 feet tall. Good.

  “You are ordered to assume command of second platoon – which I’ve assigned to run all replenishment tasks.” His eyes bulged as his implant acknowledged my message to that effect while I was still talking. I’d practiced composing messages while I was talking, which wasn’t common. It got people into the mindset that I was some sort of robot, with multiple items processing simultaneously.

  “You will receive, log, store, and track our needed inventory levels. If anything falls to a threshold level, as tracked within the CARS system, “ Combat and Related Supplies, “ you will assure that first platoon is notified immediately. You are responsible for all of the members of your platoon; if you are smart, you’ll listen rather than tell them. You do, after all, have one mouth, but two ears.” I was enjoying this far too much.

  “You will tolerate no excessive breaks or socializing; you of all people should understand the need to control fraternizing between yourself and your troops. I accept no excuses; I will hold you to a far higher standard than you are likely expecting, and it is going to be 100% by the book, no excuses, no failures – or I will have you up on charges so fast you’ll wish to god you’d learned to control your impulses from last year. Am I clear?”

  “Clear, Sir.”

  “How clear, Mister Sekulich?”

  “Crystal, sir.”

  “Dismissed. Get the fuck out of my office.”

  Chapter 23: Learn Fast.

  Sekulich behaved himself; it didn’t hurt that he was one of those rear-echelon motherfuckers (dammit, *I* am right now, too!) who actually liked counting and reports and supply levels (okay, that’s not me). It was sickening to watch. He did well, though, and I acknowledged it in his review, a year later. I was still sick of this logistics bullshit – and then the fairy godmother smiled down on me.

  02 JUN 2096

  In Re:Captain James Wolf

  S/N 20690401142857

  Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, and in accordance with operational needs, subject soldier is transferred to Infantry Command effective immediately.

  Subject soldier to report to receiving unit, 75th Ranger Regiment, Special Troops Battalion, Fort Mcclellan, Georgia, earliest possible transport.

  Receiving commander to review subject soldier PER plus addendums, provided under separate cover.

  Subject soldier temporarily detached to Advanced Training Division of Logistics Command, Fort Mcclellan, GA to attend Basic Airborne Course(BAC). Course Start date 16 June 2136.

  Subject soldier to be assigned at commander’s discretion upon successful completion of BAC.

  …

  Hot Damn, back to a combat unit – and the rangers, no less! I hadn’t done the ranger course, and had no idea who the hell had granted me some kind of waiver or something for it, but I wasn’t going to ask any questions if someone was going to get me the hell out of this damn beancounter unit.

  I immediately went to talk to my CO, and he was somewhat regretful to see me go. I tried hard not to look as happy as I felt.

  “We’re going to miss you, James, you’ve somehow - despite being more of a hardass than anyone else has expected - managed to turn around not only the HQ company, but the whole damn battalion. My RSM tells me that there’s hints that your same degree of ‘go get it done’ is even making it’s way into our other battalions!”

  “Thank you sir, but I am infantry, after all. Perhaps it’s the single-minded focus on the goal that keeps me going – but thank you again. If you don’t mind sir, I need to try to catch the next transport; my orders did indicate ‘earliest possible’.”

  “Absolutely, on your way Captain. You’ll have something nice in your PER for me, after the magic you’ve worked for Second Battalion.”

  I thanked him again and saluted – and after he returned it, I left in a hurry.

  I packed my shit in record time, and looked up the AirFac schedule on my implant – 2 hours until the troop transport left at 1630 hours for McLellan. Double-good; I’ll be able to get into the dojo with Sensei Kim again!

  I was actually at the AirFac an hour early – and since it was still daylight hours, I got to see the troop transport come in, relatively slow… or rather, I saw it’s exhaust. The stealth systems were on, and I could hear the noise but there was no plane to be seen. I watched a small puff of smoke appear as the aircraft’s wheels touched down.

  Moments later, the Apollo troop transport appeared as if by magic, and I could watch it’s bulbous lines taxiing to the facility. I had a hardcopy of my orders, I was ready to go, and had to constantly remind myself that there was another hour to go before the aircraft would lift off. I waited impatiently, until the corporal running the service desk announced over the intercom that the flight was now boarding. Aside from the pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer, I was actually the only person on the plane.

  Okay, enough about Shithole, Kentucky. That place sucked, and I hoped I never had to come back. I racked out – four hours of downtime and nothing to do was the best way to pass the time as I transitioned back to a combat role.

  I woke to a severe shuddering in the airplane. I was strapped in via a four-point harness in troop transport seats. My eyes opened to dim red lights, and the airplane was banking hard to one side, and then back the other direction. The pilots were up front in a closed cabin, with the Navigator, and the flight engineer came stumbling back towards me with a ruck in his hand.

  “MECHANICAL FAILURE! PUT THIS ON!” WaitWHAT?!

  He’d handed me a parachute, not a rucksack! Legs went into their loops first, then arms, and then I attached the cross-strap that was dangling from the shoulder straps. “What’s going on?!?”

  “MECHANICAL FAILURE! STANDBY TO JUMP!”

  “Jump? Nonono, I don’t know how!”

  He pointed to the straps on the front, each in turn. “MAIN! RESERVE! Jump out, count to five, pull main – if it doesn’t open, pull the reserve!”

  The airplane went into a steep climb and I felt my weight grow dramatically. “OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT COME ON QUICK!”

  Jumping to my feet, I followed the flight engineer to a door on the side of the plane at the back – he grabbed hold of a bar a few feet away from the door, then slammed a button and the door opened up. He screamed at me, “JUMP!” but it didn’t ma
tter. I got sucked out the door whether I liked it or not.

  I tumbled in the air, pretty violently. Count to five? Yeah, good luck with that. My heart was beating like the cylinder in a combustion engine – and I probably yanked too early on the cord for “main” that he’d pointed at. This was no small feat – it was goddamn frigid, and I felt like I was hyperventilating.

  Nothing happened. Yep, now I was definitely hyperventilating.

  Pulling on it again, it came off in my hand, so I discarded it. The ground was coming up at me, how fast, I had no idea, but I had zero intention of just letting it happen.

  I yanked the cord for the reserve… and it came off in my hand as well, so I let it go. “Great,” I thought. “I am well and truly fucked!”

  NO! I am NOT going to die this way, not without a fight!

  The straps for this thing were fairly simple – one around each of my legs, one over each of my shoulders, and a chest strap connecting the shoulder straps, in front of me. There was no way I was going to take this thing off to get a better understanding of it, so I started reaching around behind my back, still tumbling end over and around and around. I closed my eyes tightly and pursed my lips together (because they were blowing all over the place) to try to block out the sensations hitting my face. I remember feeling light-headed and dizzy – I thought at first it was due to the spinning and rolling, but later realized it was because of the lack of oxygen at the altitude I’d jumped at, coupled with the wind and the temperature at altitude.

  My fingers found the seams of a flap, and I traced them back as far as I could reach, feeling for any ‘give’ – tugging periodically. I felt something loosen and blow past my hands. I was still falling, but at least I was making progress.

  My fingers finally found something.. AHA! A pin with some sort of tension on it. I yanked… and then it yanked me. I screamed out loud; one of the straps around my leg had ridden up into my crotch, and my testicles were caught inside it. I grabbed the risers (although I didn’t know them by that name at the time) and pulled up with one hand while I shifted the strap with the other. Then, I jammed my hands into my armpits – they were freezing cold.

  We must have been fairly high up when I jumped; I found out later that it was just shy of 25,000 feet. I’d free-fallen for nearly a minute before I got the ‘chute open; I was able to see in the fading light (my implant, when queried, read 20:32 local time) that there was a lot of space below me. I collected my wits about me, mentally preparing for the trek towards the nearest civilization – I could see a city not too far away, in the fading light.

  The oddest part of this, at the time, was that I could still see the sun above the horizon as I descended, but by the time I was on the ground, ten minutes or so later, the sun had already set, and there was very little light to see by. I’d watched the occasional vehicles driving past on rural roads below me on the way down, but it was well past dusk when I landed hard, jolting one ankle. It didn’t hurt bad enough that I couldn’t walk on it, so I figured it was time to try to find civilization. I began collecting up the canopy, trying to stuff it back into the backpack – I had a new appreciation for the cost of a T-12B non-maneuverable parachute after my time in logistics, and I was going to turn this one back in.

  “Captain Wolf, what a pleasant surprise seeing you here.”

  I turned, Rage out of it’s sheath and in my hand, when I heard the first syllable – and saw a Colonel walking toward me, rank insignia on his chest barely glinting in the low light.

  “Colonel… Bradburry??? What the fuck are you doing here, Sir?”

  “Oh, hadn’t you heard? This is *the* hangout spot for all the cool kids.”

  “ahem.” I turned and saw Colonel Watts – wearing Brigadier General stars – and RSM Ballard behind him, both walking toward me.

  “Okay, what the fuck is going on here? No disrespect intended, but this is looking less and less like an emergency.”

  Watts was the first to speak. “Captain, that’s no way to report to your commanding officer now, is it?” I could hear the mirth in his voice. “I’ll forgive it this once, since we needed to get some hard data on your ability to think on your feet – or, in this case, off of them.”

  I gawked at him. “This was a setup? What the fuck sir??? I could have died!”

  Ballard, that same goddamn smirk on his face as always, I’m sure, piped up. “Ahhhh true – but DID you?”

  “Give the kid a break, Sean. He’s had a rough flight, don’t you know… “ Bradburry’s voice was odd to hear – I hadn’t spoken to him in a decade, hadn’t heard anything about him. “James, you’re… going to get a few more surprises tonight, although none quite so, shall we say, unpleasant as this most recent one was.”

  “You are, ostensibly, a casualty of an in-air accident. Sergeant Breshears, the flight engineer, is quite sorry for the malfunction that I’m quite sure he had no knowledge of – those jump doors are pesky, and can come open at any time, I’m sure. Lieutenant Paulson, the pilot, and Captain Willis, the aircraft commander – all three of which, by the way, aren’t Aviation guys at all – were supposed to kick you out about 5000 feet higher, which would have bought you another 10 or 12 seconds, but hey – it worked out great.”

  “Sir, can you please explain to me what the hell is going on?”

  “Remember I said I was a recruiter?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I am. Just…. Not your usual recruiter. I’m a part of the 75th Rangers, have been since I left the 69th Infantry regiment in New York. I’m the G1 Officer for the Covert Operations Battalion. You’re nominally tracked on the rolls of the Special Troops Batt, but we need you for some other stuff. Your career would have led you here earlier, as enlisted, but then you ended up surprising us all with your conduct in Croatia. We had to slow you down before you over-ran our position!” He chuckled to his minor pun.

  “General Watts here, is the 75th Ranger Regiment CO. Ranks don’t quite work like you’re used to, in the regiment, but we’ll get to that later. Ballard is, for his sins, still a regimental sergeant major – and he just couldn’t miss the fun for the world.”

  The three of them started walking, and I followed along, carrying the ‘chute I’d gathered up. During the short walk to an ancient JLTV (Joint Light Tactical Vehicle), they explained how they’d set me up, using their own guys to stack the odds. I started feeling a little cocky – this was a lot of trouble to go to, to pull me in. “So you set me up to kill me, would have let me die, just to prove I can think fast on my feet?” I was sitting behind Bradburry, driving, with Watts in the front passenger seat and Ballard to my right.”

  “Well, not entirely, kiddo, we also wanted to check your reflexes.” The punch came out of no-where, and I just barely turned my head to take it as a glancing blow off my jaw. I had rage back out for the second time in 5 minutes – and as Ballard followed through on the attack with his fighting knife at my neck, he stopped as Rage’s point slide, tickling, under his armpit. He’d stopped, so I had, as well. “General? This is going to get messy real soon.”

  “Stand down, both of you.” Ballard started drawing away – and I didn’t.

  “That’s four unpleasant surprises inside the last half hour. I’m not exactly open to anymore, sirs.” I was not fucking happy now.

  “Pull over, Doug.” Bradburry pulled the JLTV to the side of the dirt road we were still on, and General Watts turned back to me.

  “No more surprises – at least, none from anyone in the COB unit without a specific explanation that you’ll get in advance, Captain. We had to be sure you hadn’t lost your lethal edge. Now, would you please put that toothpick away? Ballard doesn’t need another scar.”

  “His control’s a bit off, General. I’ve got some of the tip in me already.” Ballard had a sour look on his face. Not surprisingly; the last time he was that close to Rage, it was to safeguard it for me, and he was generally holding the OTHER end.

  “Yes, but – as a wise ass once said, ‘but
did you die?’” Watts retorted.

  “That’s wise MAN, not wiseass, sir.” Ballard’s voice sounded a little strained.

  I pulled rage back, and pulled the dark gray cloth from around my collar that I’d gotten from Ballard a few years prior, and used it to wipe Ballard’s blood off of the tip before putting it back to bed. Ballard saw the material in the dim light of the interior and I could see his mouth smile. “Dunno, Sergeant Major, I think the general had it right the first time.”

  “From the general looks of you and your conduct, son, no. Wise Man. You’ve learned a lot, learned it well and have kept it up.” Ballard sounded earnest. I hoped he was smiling because he was truly meaning not to try to kill me again. I don’t know that I could have stopped myself from finishing him if he pulled any more funny business.

  The drive ‘home’ was way longer than I’d expected – which is probably because we weren’t going to the base… at least, not the base that I’d expected. 75th Ranger COB was, due the covert nature of it’s missions, based out of a much more private facility further west from the “known” Fort Mcclellan base entrance – actually, it was in Alabama. We apparently still had access to the main base and related facilities (mostly for support needs), but this gave us a place to play without everyone else watching what we were doing. I got a few other updates, but I was highly suspicious about a lot of things at this point.