For Love or Country

by Jesse Jordan

  Harry climbs into his personal vehicle, a Chevy pickup in fact, and drives off while I walk away. After four blocks I turn right, go two blocks, then reverse course, going three blocks back the way I came where I wait for Christina. She arrives within five minutes, and I climb into the passenger seat of her leased SUV with a grateful sigh. Leaning over, I give her a tender kiss, restraining myself from doing more than that simply because I know that my hands are too rough to touch her beautiful skin. She's not in uniform any more, and even if it's just a simple t-shirt, jacket and jeans, she looks amazing. “You're the best thing I've seen all day.”

  “You too,” she reassures me, then smiles. “Drop the accent.”

  “Of course,” I say, reminding myself. “Do you think there's ever going to be a time that I forget, and you forget, and I just stay with an American accent forever?”

  “I doubt it, I find that Russian rumble of yours too sexy. I guess your original trainers were correct there,” Christina hums as we get on Interstate 81 and head south, bypassing Watertown and going another half hour before getting off. It's a tiny little town about halfway between Watertown and Syracuse, but that makes it easy for us to find privacy and security. “So how was work?”

  “I think Simon just wants to see if I can be a construction worker,” I groan, rolling my shoulder. “It's not that bad, but I could use a warm shower and a rub down.”

  “Don't tempt me, love. It's hard enough only being able to share meals with you every once in a while and then phone calls. The barracks are worse than West Point. All the stupidity, none of the good views of the Highlands. At least nobody does bed checks there. Probably afraid of what they'd find in the beds. Seriously, some of those people are straight up freaks,” Christina says as we take a seat at the diner. “When did the Playboy Mansion get transplanted to New York?”

  “When the Army decided it would be a good idea to put a bunch of single, eighteen to mostly twenty five or so year old individuals together in a building and let them have shared rooms,” I remind her. “Or do I need to tell you about some of the things that I did or knew about when we were living in barracks all the time? Regulations be damned, soldiers want to get their freak on.”

  Christina nods, blushing. “Yeah, I guess. By the way... I'm missing you there, too. I'd be tempted to sneak you into the barracks if I didn't think we'd be running too great a risk.”

  “When we finish, we'll tear the headboards off the first hotel we get to,” I reassure her. “Speaking of finishing, what are your reports saying?”

  “I think I know where the con is in,” Christina says, pausing when the waitress comes over and we order dinner. I order the one pound chicken fried steak with fries, I'm that hungry, while Christina eats more reasonably, a BLT with a salad. After the waitress leaves, she gives me a grin. “That famished?”

  “I am. And I'm going to go to the gym after this, the place next to my apartment stays open until midnight. You see, I know this really hot girl, she likes when I get swole and muscley,” I tease. “I gotta keep that going for her.”

  “I'll keep that in mind. Well, my fiancée might get a little jealous if I tell you this, but you're one sexy man, Zeke,” Christina demurs, and both of us laugh before she grows serious. “Okay, so anyway, I think the con is a classic one. He's cheating on the manpower. How many guys were on the site today?”

  “Today? We had twelve and Gill, the foreman,” I state. “I got to lay concrete, as you can see. What's your records say?”

  “Says that you're supposed to have fourteen. So was anyone sick?”

  I shake my head, thinking. “No, nobody. We've always had twelve and Gill. That's a start, at least. But do you know who's in on it?”

  Christina nods. “I think it's Sergeant Lomarco. Captain Rollins isn't the type of guy who's out of the office enough to be able to be in on it. Sure, he's signing off on things, but Sergeant Lomarco's the guy who's going out on the site inspections.”

  Our food comes, the diner is quick, and we dig in, the crispy coated steak delicious smothered in the rich, slightly spicy cream gravy. “Do you have evidence yet?”

  “No, I'm going to try tomorrow, Lomarco's got an inspection of the sites planned for most of the afternoon, and Anne's going to be gone, she's got a doctor's appointment for April. You'd like her, actually. I'd like to get a chance to meet her husband too, you know, for the whole I-1 thing,” Christina says. “You look like you've got something on your mind though.”

  I chew the next bite of my steak carefully, nodding. “I do. I think that this case is too easy for us. I'm wondering... well, I'm wondering if it's a training mission.”

  “You think this is all a setup?” Christina asks. “One big pretend issue?”

  I shake my head, and take a bite of fries as I think about my words. “I'm sure it's a real situation, but... this is too easy. This is the sort of stuff that the CID or the Inspector General should be able to dig out with a good audit of the books on all sides. So why send the two of us, with all the stuff that we've been training on?”

  “We gotta start somewhere,” Christina says, and I nod. “Besides, it's getting us out of the house in Virginia. And while I miss having you next to me at night, it's nice to be back in the uniform in some ways. And I do feel like we're on the trail of doing something useful at least.”

  “True. Still, I want to get this done as quickly as we can safely get it done. I can get the sign in sheets that Gill makes us fill out each morning, do you think you can get the files from your office to get the evidence we need?”

  Christina nods, and takes another bite of her BLT. “Sure. Okay, so we have a plan. Now, I had a request for you as we finish up dinner here.”

  “What's that?”

  Christina grins and swirls her finger through a blob of cream sauce on my plate before sucking it lusciously off, pantomiming exactly what she's thinking before pulling her finger out with a pop. “Think we can find an empty Lover's Lane somewhere between here and your apartment? And that I might be able to convince you to skip the gym just for tonight?”

  My cock is already stiff and throbbing seeing what she just did with her finger, she doesn't have to convince me any more. “I'm pretty sure we can figure out something. Hey....”

  “Hey what?” Christina asks, grinning.

 

 

  Call me biased, but in my opinion, 'I love you' sounds best when it is said in Russian

  Chapter 23

  Christina

  “So you're really going to come over for dinner?” Anne asks, a little excited. “Awesome!”

  “Hey, it's got to be better than whatever they're serving in the mess hall Saturday night, and besides, I'd love to talk about swimming with you. I mean, I know you guys are both bicyclists, but when you told me you did open water swimming too, I sort of geeked out. You still compete?” I ask, wrapping up the last of the paperwork for the day. Sergeant Lomarco is sitting at his desk, but he's got his bag together already, and I can tell that he's just marking time until five o'clock. Either way, he's been ignoring his 'airheaded' assistant and the civilian worker for most of the day. Which is fine by me, I don't mind him overlooking me in the least.

  “Oh, I still do some stuff, but after the second baby, I found that the training for long open water swims just wasn’t as much fun any more,” Anne says with a laugh. “I’d rather bike with the family any day. I still do some pool stuff though, mostly for fun, and it keeps the tush in shape. No, I’ll leave the competitive swimming to the young and foolish. No offense.”

  “None taken,” I reply. “Hey Sarge, do you like swimming?”

  “You know I don't,” Lomarco huffs. “Jesus Brooks, I told you that two days ago.”

  “My bad Sarge,” I pretend to whimper, ducking my head. “I'll... I'll just get these reports done.”

  “Take off at close of business,” Lomarco says, and I lift my head, knowing that he was going
to say that. It's all part of my plan, and I launch into my prepared monologue.

  “I would Sarge, but like, I promised the Captain this report by Monday morning, and like, I kinda got a date for Sunday. So I can't come in, and I don't want Captain Rollins to get into trouble, and with PT in the morning I can't get in early on Monday morning either and I just don't know what....” I babble intentionally. I'm trying to batter down Lomarco with the one thing I know the man hates, chatter. Especially since I've started pitching my voice just a little higher, and I'm adding a whine to my voice while I continue. “So I was thinking that like, instead of trying to make trouble I can just hang out a little late. It's only like...”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Lomarco groans, rubbing his temples. “Fuck, I'm glad you're in a garrison unit. You'll get the entire goddamn company killed if you get put in a combat unit. Either that or we send you to Gitmo to torture the prisoners, you can yap them into confession.”

  “Come on Lomarco, she's being nice and trying to get her job done,” Anne admonishes him, and Lomarco glowers. While Anne isn't in uniform, she has what the Army likes to call 'soft power.' “Just let the girl do her report, you know Captain Rollins can lock up anyway.”

  “Fine,” Lomarco growls, grabbing his backpack. “I'm going to the gym, I've gotta counter this fucking estrogen bomb somehow. See you at PT Monday.”

  Lomarco leaves, and I give Anne a grateful look, not for saving me from harassment, Lomarco's griping only makes me laugh on the inside, but instead because she just cemented my privacy to get my work done. Anne though doesn't realize this, and smiles back. “Don't let him get to you, Christina.”

  “Thanks. But I really should get this report done. What about you?”

  “I got a little girl who's got karate class at six, so I'm going to bounce. Tina is really looking forward to trying for her green belt next month,” Anne says, gathering her stuff up. “I'll stick my head in with the Captain before I go.”

  “Thanks. And tell Tina I'd like to see her show off on Saturday!” I call honestly, typing away at my computer. I'm not really doing anything, I've been typing nonsense into a Word document for the past ten minutes, the report was finished hours ago.

  As soon as Anne leaves I get up, going over to the filing cabinet. I've poked around as much as I can digitally, but what I need isn't digital, what I need are the inspection reports that Lomarco's been writing. Those get filed away, but nobody outside the office sees them because Lomarco creates and signs off on printed ones that he turns in to Captain Rollins.

  There are lots of things not adding up such as skimming on supplies, things that Ivan's seen. Such as using one less bag of cement on each carport. No big deal on a normal basis (it changes the depth of the carport slab by just about a quarter inch), but when you multiply that by a total of two hundred houses being built, that's a few thousand dollars. And that's just one area, already some of the quarters are complaining about cold in the winter, I suspect that they've cut that little bit in insulation, and in electrical wiring, and a dozen other little places.

  The big item though is the manpower, which can be a couple thousand dollars per month. Ivan already hooked me up with a report from the job site, but I decide to call him up anyway, just to be sure. I pull out my phone from the 52nd and call Ivan, setting the phone on top of the file cabinet. “You alone?”

  “You should ask me that when I'm in a hotel room,” I tease, and Ivan chuckles. “Come on, let's get the info we need and then we can talk about it. By the way, I got invited to Anne's house tomorrow for dinner. You wanna go?”

  “Sounds good,” Ivan says. “So what do you need?”

  “Hold on... okay, here we are. I've got the on-site inspection that Lomarco did yesterday. Can you pull up the picture you took of the time cards yesterday?”

  While Ivan clicks in the background, probably using his laptop to go through the pictures he's been taking, I pick up my phone and look for a place to put Lomarco’s reports. They're so new they haven't even had a chance to be reviewed by Captain Rollins yet, so there has to be something definitive here.

  “I got the time cards here,” Ivan says. “Thirteen guys, we started at eight thirty and went to five thirty with an hour for lunch. I've got them all photographed right here.”

  “Hmmm... well, then why does Lomarco's report state that there were fifteen guys on site? Here, I'm sending you a picture of the report, bounce the names for me?”

  I quickly snap a picture of the report, with the names in Sergeant Lomarco's own handwriting, names included. I see Ivan's alias, Zeke, and smirk. “Okay, there. So, what do you see?”

  “There's two names here that I have no idea who they are. Jason Quallis and Carl Kovacs. They're listed as carpenters, but there's no carpentry work being done right now, and I've never met them.”

  I hum, and take photos of the next three reports. “Okay, then I want you to check these as.....”

  “You bitch.”

  I look up and see Sergeant Lomarco in the doorway, his lip and nostrils quivering in anger. “Who are you talking to, Brooks?”

  I pick up my phone and put it in my pocket, stepping back. I didn't hang up, so hopefully Ivan's able to hear all of what's being said. “None of your business. You're stealing from the government, Sarge.”

  Lomarco doesn't know who he's dealing with, I can see that. He's confused, I've been acting like a brainless airhead for so long that he doesn't know what to do, so he goes back to what he does know. To his eyes, I'm a Specialist, and he's a Sergeant First Class. “Brooks, I'm going to hold out my hand, and you're going to give me that phone. Then you're going to walk out of here, and not say a thing about this ever again.”

  “Like hell I will,” I growl in reply. Sure, the Christina who walked into Company I-1 at USMA nearly three years ago might have wilted, Lomarco is so much like my father. But I'm not that same Christina Logan. I'm stronger, I'm better, and I can stand up for myself. “Why'd you do it, Sarge? The money?”

  “Damn right the money,” Lomarco says, stepping inside and closing the door behind him, locking it. “The Army won’t let me be a real soldier anymore, not after my knee injury. So fuck the Army. Now, give me that phone.”

  “What, so you can get rid of the photos and then the reports? You know, you got too greedy, if you'd just kept it up with the wasted manhours, nobody’d have figured it out. But you had to go for that extra cheddar, skimming on supplies too,” I taunt, drawing him in. He's got three inches and forty pounds on me, I'm not going to be able to bull my way past him. But what I can do is some of the stuff that Ivan's taught me. “You can't just make me shut up with this. Or are you going to do more?”

  “I may just have to. Damn shame, young Specialist like yourself ends up driving her car off the road and into a gorge or hitting a tree. So young, so full of promise, and dead before you're even twenty three. Just another statistic on drinking and driving.”

  Lomarco picks up a stapler off of Anne's desk, it's the one nearest to the door, and steps forward. There's only a narrow aisle between the desks, and he's figuring to just rush me down, to use his size and strength to stun me.

  What he doesn't expect me to do is step into him, so that instead of the stapler crashing into my head, it flails harmlessly over my shoulder. If I had a little more space I'd have turned and thrown him using my lower center of gravity, but instead I use an inside trip that Ivan taught me, twisting with Lomarco as his weight starts to go over me. My desk gets in the way of totally taking him down, but it gives me leverage.

  Lomarco's face twists in pain as I jam him against my desk, grabbing his free left hand and twisting hard. He's off balance now, but I cannot give him even an inch of mercy. I pull, maintaining my control as I take him to the ground, twisting his hand up and behind his back, pinning it with my knee as I grab the back of his ACU collar, keeping the pressure there. “Sergeant Lomarco, you're under arrest...”

  He twists, trying to throw me off, and I get ba
ck quickly, pulling my phone out of my pocket to make sure the data isn't damaged. The screen is uncracked but Ivan's hung up, and I set the phone aside, hoping that he's calling for the MPs, or coming to my aid, or something. I have to handle things myself for now though, and I'm ready.

  Lomarco gets to his hands and knees, and I strike fast, not going for his head which I know he's expecting, but instead for his hip and lower back. My boot heel crunches into his hip, popping it out of socket and flattening him into the floor while I jump out of the way. Lomarco groans, his hand on his ass as he tries and fails to get up. “Don't try Sarge, just wait for the MPs.”

  “You're not going to get away with this, bitch. I'm going to have you up on charges. I know the MPs, you idiot.”

  I grab Anne's office phone, calling for the someone, but before I can, there's a thunderous knock on the door. “Open up, it's Captain Rollins!”

  I reach behind me and unlock the door, and Rollins yanks it open. “I just got a call from the MPs, what the hell is going on?”

  “The source of your problems, Captain,” I reply, tucking that stray lock of hair back behind my ear again. “You need to get the MPs here.”

  “You really want to tell them?” Ivan says as we drive to Anne and Vince's house. After Sergeant Lomarco's arrest, I've still got a little bit of work to do tomorrow and Monday before we can go back, mostly just making sure that all the paperwork is squared away with the Fort Drum MPs before we return.

  So, we're taking this opportunity to go make a social connection. Sure, we're 'blowing cover,' but not too much, and besides, it'll be nice to just relax and confirm the connection to someone else. Ivan, on the other hand, is still caught up in his 'status' as a spy. But I want him to understand, no matter what the rest of the world thinks, I love him and I'm proud to call him my fiancée.