by John Holmes
York eyed him mischievously. “Well, there’s trouble, and there’s trouble. What the hell good is it to be a Freak if you can’t use it to your own advantage sometimes? Come with me.”
He grabbed his rifle from off the porch and limped after her in the direction of the mess hall, trying to keep up with her rapid stride.
“What time is it?” she asked as he pulled up next to her.
He glanced down at is cell. “17:12.”
“Good. Odds are they went straight to the DFAC after messing with you. Maybe we can catch them. She sped up and he pushed himself to keep up with her.
At the entrance to the mess hall, they showed their ID to the guard and pushed their way inside. It took a while for their eyes to adjust from the bright sunlight outside, but Smith quickly spotted the guys who had assaulted them, crowded with a bunch of other soldiers in PT uniform over at a table in the corner.
“Let’s get some food, then follow me.”
“Sure thing, Chief.” They picked up plastic trays and loaded up on food, some camel burgers and salad; and then Chief York sat down at a table right next to the Infantry. She made sure she sat with her right side to them, so they could see the crossed wands and medical insignia on her right shoulder. Instead of touching her food, she turned and faced the dozen soldiers at the other table. She stared at them for a moment, and the conversation dropped off slowly till the whole mess hall was silent.
“Which one was the leader?” she leaned over and asked him. Smith looked them over, then nodded to the smaller Hispanic soldier who as sitting further down the table. She stood up and walked over to him.
“Excuse me, who is the ranking NCO here?”
One of the soldiers, not one who had been at the trailer, stood up.
“That would be me, Chief. Staff Sergeant Chivers.”
“Well, Staff Sergeant, I just want to remind you guys of something. Us FREAKS” and she motioned to Smith “stick together. Please tell me, who is it that patches you guys up when you come back from outside the wire, all shot up and shit?
A look of puzzlement passed over Chivers face. “Why, uh, YOU DO, Chief.”
“That’s right. I DO. So the next time one of you NORMALS decide to fuck with us FREAKS, maybe you’ll think twice. Because, maybe I’ll think twice about whether I mend your shot off balls, or leave you a eunuch. Do we understand each other, Staff Sergeant?”
Chivers had no idea what she was talking about, but knew when to go along with the ride. “Yes, Chief. I have no problem with you guys. I know what happened to second platoon wasn’t Specialist Smiths’ fault. I read the reports.”
“Good. Maybe you should pass that info on to some of your troops.” At that, she leaned down and put her arm around the Hispanic soldier who had led the attack on Smith and whispered in his ear.
“Hey honey, when you need some makeup advice, maybe you should come over and talk to me sometime.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He tried to stand up, but she leaned her weight on him, and sparks danced between them. Then she stood up and walked away, laughing.
“HEY, YOU PUTA, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME? WHERE THE HELL IS MY, HOLY MADRE DIOS!!” and he started screaming. The soldiers’ voice had turned high pitched, and Smith, along with everyone else in the mess hall, started laugh. His hair had grown out, and two large breasts now strained his PT shirt.
“YOU TURNED ME INTO A WOMAN, YOU PUTA!!!!!”
“You always were a woman, I just brought it out. Don’t fuck with the Freaks, honey!”
They left the tent to the raucous laughter of a hundred other soldiers. Outside, Smith said “Damn, that was cold!”
“He’ll be fine. It will wear off in 24 hours. He’s also on the rag, too. I hope he’s got a friend with some tampons. Point is, his squad leader is never going to let any of his boys touch you again.”
Smith laughed, but then a thought struck him. “They told us in the school that we should never use magic for evil. I think you were walking a bit of a fine line there.”
York stopped him and smiled. “Specialist, that wasn’t Evil. That was Revenge. Sometimes, there’s a difference.”
Chapter 6 FOB REIGOUX Mage Brigade Support Team 22 Offices
They stood outside the door marked “CPT LANG” and underneath that, “TM CDR, MBST 22” and underneath that, “3rd BDE, 11th MTN DIVISION”.
Chief York read the gold leaf letters again and again while she waited with Specialist Smith and Corporal Bognaski. They had been told to report at 13:00. She looked at her watch. 13:03. Ten minutes later, 13:13. She sweated and watched a black fly crawl across the gold letters. It disappeared in a flash of light. Nasty blew imaginary smoke off his fingertip. He aimed at another fly just as the door flew open, sending the spark shooting in front of the pissed off soldier who came storming out of the office.
“AT EASE!” shouted Specialist Smith. The soldier, wearing the star and wreath of a Command Sergeant Major, got in Bognaski’s face as the Corporal stood ramrod straight, hands behind his back at Parade Rest, trying to suck in his overly large gut.
“YOU!” The man stabbed his finger into Bognaski’s chest. “I’D RATHER TAKE THIS INCOMPETENT DIPSHIT OUT PATROL WITH ME” he yelled and he pointed at Smith “THAN YOUR NASTY ASS. I SHOULD STRANGLE YOU RIGHT NOW!” With that he started to raise his hands to the Corporals’ neck, and Nasty shrank back in fear. A look of disgust appeared on the Sergeant Major’s face, and he muttered “Ah fuck it.” He stormed past them, nodded and said “Chief” to York, and banged his way out of the screen door worked into the mud bricks of the old Durkistani fortress, slamming it shut on the way out.
Smith spoke first. “What the hell was that all about?”
Corporal Bognaski laughed. “I blew my nose on his neck, riding in the turret of his truck yesterday. It was an accident, I swear.”
He was interrupted by Captain Lang stepping into the doorway of his office. The officer didn’t say anything, just drew his lips into a tight line across his dark Caribbean face, and crooked his finger in a “come hither” gesture to all of them. Then he turned and stalked back into his officer.
Nasty whispered to Smith “This is just like in Top Gun where Maverick and Goose are going to get their asses chewed by the boss, but instead he sends them to Top Gun School. Maybe we’re going to …”
York hissed between her teeth “Would you shut the F up!” and he fell silent as they walked in. Each stood at the position of attention in front of his desk while Lang shuffled some papers. He sighed and sat back.
“Corporal Bognaski, you first. I just did an inspection of your quarters.” He stood up and leaned on his desk. “WHY THE HELL DO YOU HAVE” and he looked down at a notebook “TWENTY THREE BOTTLES FULL OF PISS UNDER YOUR BED?”
“Uh, well, Sir, after Smith got attacked, I, uh, didn’t want any of the locals to get my DNA or anything.” He was flushing red under a layer of dirt.
“Bullshit. You’re just too damned lazy to walk to the latrine, and your NCOIC isn’t around to put a boot up your ass. When Staff Sergeant Carson gets back, I’m going to let him deal with you. You will, however, take a shower today, as soon as we are done here. Staff Sergeant Carson is on his way in here and he will shove a boot up your ass. Do you understand me?”
“Yessir. I’m on it.”
The Captain turned to Chief York and started ripping into her about the screwing with the Infantry guys. Smith watched, but he was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. A slight buzzing feeling had started in the base of his skull, growing more and more as he tried to listen. He felt it in his teeth, then his whole head seemed to vibrate. He fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands. The recently healed fractures in his skull seemed ready to split apart.
Lang and York had stopped arguing, and Bognaski knelt next to him. Smith waved him off, wiping blood from his nose where it had started to leak out in a thin dribble. The buzzing had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and he felt like he
was recovering the next day from a night of drinking cheap Mexican Tequila. Then he threw up on the floor, and gratefully took a bottle of water York handed him
“X, are you alright?” The Captain used his nickname, like officers sometimes do with subordinates, but Lang was truly worried.
“Yeah, I’m OK, Sir. Just got this really weird vibration, buzzing in my head, then it stopped. I feel hungover. It was really, really powerful. Felt like my head was going to shake apart.”
Bognaski and Lang looked at each other at the same time, Chief York said “What?” and then Nasty jumped up, spread his arms, and shouted at the top of his lungs, a primal scream that seemed to come from the bottom of his lungs. A field of energy reached out to surround the four of them just as the world exploded in fire and darkness.
Chapter 7 FOB REIGOUX Mage Team 73 Offices
The protective shield of energy held for several seconds, enough for both Lang and Smith to recover and lend their strength to the spell. They were slammed against the wall, inert in the sphere, as the building collapsed around them, blown directly away from the explosion. Inside, the noise was dampened, but they could see debris rushing past them. Heavy timbers, bricks, office furniture, parts of vehicles and bodies rushed past them, crashing and swarming around their shield. The shield held, but started to flicker, and sweat was pouring down all their faces as they worked to dissipate the incredible amount of kinetic energy that was raging past them. The barrel of a howitzer came straight down on them with loud CLANG, skipped off the shield, and buried itself in what was left of the floor of the office. Around them the roof and walls had been stripped away, and tons of gray and brown dust swirled about.
“HOLD!” shouted Captain Lang over the roar, and they did until everything started to settle down around them. With a final huge WHUMP, the air stilled. Debris continued to rain down on them, and overhead a cloud of dirt and ash loomed over them.
“I’ve have to get out there! They are going to need me!” yelled Chief York.
“No one is going anywhere except away from the center of the explosion area. We have to get out and assess what damage has been done, and then get in touch with higher. After that, you can set up an aide station, though I don’t know how many casualties there will be to treat.”
Hazy sunlight started to filter through the cloud. Leaving Smith to maintain the shield, they picked their way across the devastation to higher ground, where they could survey what was left of the Forward Operating Base. Along the way they viewed a scene that looked like something from Dante’s Inferno. Dead bodies lay piled up among wreckage. Not a single soldier they passed was alive. Few were even whole, and body parts lay scattered about amidst the wreckage of a whole base.
As they stumbled over the wreckage, Chief York grew more and more agitated, swiping her hands in front of her eyes and muttering to herself. Bognaski put his arm around her shoulders and helped her as they climbed up a small ridge. Fires were starting to burn more fiercely, the oily smoke of burning diesel, normally hard to ignite, mixing with the highly flammable kerosene like Aviation fuel for the helicopters.
“OK, ground it. Smith, drop the shield.” It flickered out, and they drew in a breath of air, but immediately coughed it out again. The air itself was still filled with swirling particulate, sand and dried dung and ash. They quickly covered their faces with makeshift cloth filters.
The team stood to look back at what remained of the base, several hundred meters away and slightly below them. It looked smashed flat, and a molten crater still slightly glowed in the center. The wreckage of their own building, which had been located half a kilometer way from the TOC, was splayed out in a fan shape, away from the crater. Bognaski squinted, trying to see through the dust and the fires. “Holy crap, was that a nuke?”
Smith looked up from where he was trying to get York to take a drink of water from a bottle he had in his cargo pocket. “No, there wasn’t any radiation. I took time to put a sensing spell into the shield. I think if it was, we would all be dead right now.”
“Good thinking, Smith” said Captain Lang, then he eyed York. “Is she OK?”
“I’m not a healer, Sir. I don’t know what’s wrong with” and at that, York’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she started to go into convulsions. Her body flailed around on the ground, and Smith tackled her and tried to hold her still.
“GRAB HER FEET!” he yelled, and the Corporal and the Captain each grabbed a leg, trying to hold her down while she flailed about. Smith got her in a headlock and put his hand to her jaw, and spark jumped from his finger. She fell to the ground, unconscious and not moving. Captain Lang stood up as Bognaski felt for a pulse. It was there, strong, but she didn’t move.
“She’s out cold! What the hell was that?”
Smith took off his blouse and balled it up, putting it under York’s head. Bognaski took his off also, covering her. Smith spoke first. “It’s something called Soul Shock. Healers are susceptible to it in mass casualty events. I read about it happening after 9-11. They are too sensitive to all the death, and go into convulsions and shock. It can kill them, and the only thing you can do is put them under into the souls have gone.”
Bognaski looked at him with a bit more respect. “Good deal, X. I knew keeping your head buried in book all the time was good for something. You saved her life.” He reached up and they bumped fists.
“Just payback. I owe her mine.”
Captain Lang brought them back to reality. “Let’s get some defensive spells up and running. I expect the cavalry will be here soon, but an enemy as good as this guy might have a secondary follow up attack in the waiting. Smith, come with me, I’m going to head back down, see what survivors I can find. Nasty, stay here, and try to get in touch with RC-South. You might not be able to, there was a shit load of magic used here and thing are way scrambled.”
“Yessir” they both answered. Specialist Smith and Captain Lang descended into the inferno that had been, ten minutes before, home to more than two thousand US fighting men and women and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. Now it was a funeral pyre.
Chapter 8 Outside the remains of FOB REIGOUX
Before Lang and Smith came back up the hill, Bognaski was using jets of fire from his fingertips to knock down mortar rounds, detonating them in the air before they could rain shrapnel on their position. He was flashing them faster and faster, as the Islamist gunners attempted to bracket the position. Lang was followed by two soldiers. One had dried blood running down his face, and his attention seemed to wander off every few seconds. When they reached them, the one with the wounded head looked down at Chief York, grunted, and then blood showered out of his nose. He collapsed on the ground and lay unmoving. Smith bent over and felt for a pulse as the blood continued to pour out of his nose, then dribbled off. The young mage leaned back and shook his head.
“Something in his head must have given way.”
Bognaski looked up from where he had been muttering a defensive shield spell while the enemy mortarmen humped new rounds to their guns “That was messed up it was just like Courtney Cox in that David Lynch move, Wild at Heart. She was in a car crash, and she walked over to Nicholas Cage and Laura Dern and all the sudden she has blood pouring out of her and she dies.”
“Hey, motherfucker, what the hell is wrong with you? Foster was my troop!” The other soldier, whose name tag read DUCHAK, raised his rifle like he was going to buttstroke Nasty in the face.
“AT EASE, SOLDIER!” yelled Captain Lang, and Smith stopped the rifle in midswing, hexing the forward motion and spinning the sergeant around.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything’ said Bognaski. “I’m just …”
“He’s in shock, just like you are, Sergeant Duchack. I need to get on the radio and raise some air support.” He motioned to a SINCGARS backpack FM radio that he had salvaged from the wreckage. “Time to mourn the dead later. “
The sergeant, who looked like he had been corn-fed from birth before he played li
nebacker for some Nebraska football team, seethed with anger, and Smith thought he might have to use something more powerful on him than a Hex. However, he just muttered a halfhearted “Yessir” and turned outward; but not before ripping off one of Fosters dog tags and sticking it in his pocket.
The incoming fire was stilled by a flight of AH -64 Apaches that roared overhead, pumping a few dozen 2.75 inch rockets into the hillside. The infantry Sergeant calmly walked them into the enemy position, and they mortars quickly fell silent.
The Apaches were followed by a Special Operations MH-60 that sped up the valley floor, bobbing and weaving, flying nap of the earth. It flared out fifty meters from their position, and a half dozen figures quickly fanned out, covering the perimeter as the helo increased rotor speed, lifted, pivoted, and hurried back the way it had come. The figures assembled into a fire team, and made their way to the Mages position. The point man, wearing the distinctive dark grey beret of a Mage Strike Team member, lowered a shotgun and cracked a smile as they came up.
“Well, Halloo Nasty! Fancy seeing your fat ass here!” The point man turned out to be a woman, with cropped red hair peeking out from under her beret.
Bognaski turned brighter shade of crimson than her hair. “Uh, Hi Brit. You ain’t still mad at me, are you?”
The next man up, a huge black guy cradling a 240-B machine gun like it was a rifle, answered for her. “No, you dirtbag, but I sure as hell am! When this is over, you an me, we is gonna talk.”
Smith turned to Bognaski. “Corporal, you know these people?”
“Mage Corps is a small world, Smitty. This is the Lost Boys. Mage Strike Seven. They keep the Normal bad guys off our back while we duke it out with the enemy mages. Jonesy, I swear to God, I did NOT change your cards in our last game. I dealt fair.”
A lean, hawk faced, brown skinned man, carrying a Dragunov Sniper Rifle, joined in the conversation as if he had been in it all along. “Corporal Bognaski, it is not right to cheat at cards. Miss O’Neil wanted me to bounce a bullet off your head, but considering the present circumstances, we shall let things slide.”