by LA Witt
Conduct Unbecoming
by
L.A. Witt
Copyright Information
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Second edition
Copyright © 2017 L.A. Witt
First edition published by Samhain Publishing, 2012-2017.
Cover Art by Garrett Leigh
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]
ISBN: 978-1-943426-74-4
About Conduct Unbecoming
First class petty officer Eric Randall is less than thrilled about taking orders to Okinawa. Three long, lonely years on a crappy island that’s thousands of miles from his daughter? Oh. Yeah. Sign him up. But as long as he’s stuck here, he might as well make the best of it, so he discreetly checks out the local gay scene, where he meets Shane Connelly.
What starts as a one night stand leaves both of them wanting more, but then Eric finds out Shane doesn’t just outrank him, he’s an officer. DADT may be repealed, but an enlisted man getting involved with an officer falls under conduct unbecoming a gentleman and could cost both men their careers. They both have kids to take care of, future civilian careers to consider, and retirements on the line.
Still, they can’t resist each other. They discreetly spend nights together, and their mutual desire to explore the beautiful island of Okinawa is a perfect excuse to spend days together. As long as no one asks and they don’t tell, there’s no reason anyone has to find out.
But secrets like this tend to make themselves known…
This 95,000 word novel was previously published.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Sequel: General Misconduct
About the Author
Chapter One
Eric
“Dude, Okinawa is a fucking shit-hole.”
My cousin Jim’s words repeated over and over in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to give a fuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe the place was a shit-hole like he said. Maybe it was worse. Fine. Whatever.
Wedged into an uncomfortable seat in coach, equal parts physically and emotionally drained, I watched the map on the screen document every mile the plane had traveled. I couldn’t have cared less about the tiny green dot that was my destination. After nearly twenty-four hours of sitting in airports and flying, with that green dot rapidly approaching, all I could think about was the person I’d left behind.
How the fuck was I supposed to get through three years living this far from my daughter? The year in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan hadn’t even been this daunting. Three years?
When she’d dropped me at the airport this morning—yesterday?—and we’d said good-bye, Marie hadn’t cried like she did when I left for Iraq or Afghanistan, but she’d had tears in her eyes. Sure, she was excited that I’d given her my car, but that didn’t soften the blow by much. The girl could handle a lot, and she could keep herself together better than most people I knew. Like anyone, though, she had her limits. If I knew her, she just made it out of the airport parking garage before she had to pull over and cry. If she made it that far, she did better than me.
We could do this somehow. I’d just try not to think about the fact that by the time we lived on the same landmass again, she’d be twenty. I was leaving during her junior year in high school, and I’d be back with just a few months to spare before I could buy her that first beer.
I sniffed sharply and swallowed the ache in my throat. Taking a deep breath, I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes shy of 2300, and my ears had popped twice, so we must have been descending. About fucking time too. My flight had been delayed a couple of times, and my 2145 arrival was now scheduled for 2315. Didn’t really matter, though. My body clock was so fucked up from almost an entire day of traveling, I couldn’t figure out what time it was or what time I thought it should be. Every time I looked at a clock, my mind went “Really? I thought it was…fuck, I don’t know what time I thought it was.”
Out of curiosity, I opened the window shade and peered outside.
Darkness obscured most of the island that would be home for the next three years. City lights glittered with considerably less intensity than those of Tokyo or San Diego. Scattered headlights wound between buildings just beyond the airport, and the occasional tiny, bobbing light indicated a boat out in the ink-black water. Distant pinpricks of light suggested power lines and cell towers along uneven, maybe mountainous terrain, and faintly glowing areas implied cities and towns extending much farther into the distance than I’d have expected on such a small island.
“Trust me, man,” Jim’s voice echoed in my head. “That place blows. Everything’s so Americanized, it barely even counts as living in a foreign country. The people fucking hate us, they can’t fucking drive, and oh my God, there is nothing to do.”
Great. Yet another reason I’d probably finish out this tour just like everyone else who came here: bored out of my mind, itching to go back to the States, and with a substantially higher alcohol tolerance than I’d ever imagined possible. As if two combat tours and my last stateside command hadn’t already ratcheted up my alcohol tolerance to unhealthy levels.
I exhaled and pulled down the window shade. Didn’t really matter what the island or the command were like. This could be the shittiest command in the Navy on the shittiest piece of dirt in the world, and I still wouldn’t feel any worse than I did now. Three years without my kid? It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours, and the distance already hurt like hell.
The plane touched down as gently as planes ever do. Smoother than the three-bounce landing in Narita, anyway. Hell, we could have come in sideways and rolled a few times for all I cared. I was just happy to be on the ground, even if this was the last place in the world I wanted to be.
I followed the other passengers off the plane into the airport. In the terminal, most of the brightly colored signs were in both English and Japanese, but I couldn’t comprehend them anyway, so they may as well have been in Swahili. Or Martian, for as far from home as I felt.
I trudged down the walkway with the other passengers, hoping they weren’t quite so aimless. Someone must have had half a clue, because at some point we were in baggage claim.
Within minutes, the belt started, and one by one, bags appeared from behind the black rubber flaps. It hadn’t been a crowded flight, so it didn’t take long for my lugg
age to show up.
I picked up my seabag and slung it over my aching shoulders. With that and my laptop case, I shuffled after the slowly moving crowd of passengers. We’d already cleared customs at Narita, so I went straight from baggage claim to the automatic glass doors that divided arriving passengers from the crowds of people waiting to meet us. I scanned the crowd for my sponsor, the person my new command had assigned to pick me up at the airport and help me get to where I needed to be. Over the next two weeks, his job was to help me find a car, get a cell phone, learn my way around the various bases, and check into our command.
A guy in civvies and sporting a sandy-blond high-and-tight stepped out of the crowd. “MA1 Randall?”
I extended my hand. “You must be MA2 Dawson.”
He nodded and shook my hand. “We’re off duty, so call me Chris.”
“In that case, I’m Eric.”
“Well, welcome to Okinawa, Eric.” He gestured at my bags. “Need a hand with this stuff?”
“Think I’ve got it. Thanks, though.”
“No problem.” He nodded toward the exit. “This way.”
I followed him to another set of automatic glass doors, and when they slid open, we stepped outside.
My first breath of Okinawa was so thick it almost choked me. I coughed and swore.
Chris laughed. “The humidity takes some getting used to.”
“I’m sure.”
He led me into a fluorescent-lit parking garage and stopped behind a beat-up silver Toyota. Obviously, he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told me about buying a beater instead of dropping serious money on a car.
“You’re only here for one tour,” he’d said via e-mail a few days ago. “Just buy a piece-of-shit hoopty ride that runs. It’s all you need unless you’re into drifting or something.” Evidently, he practiced what he preached, because I was pretty sure the rust and salt were the only things holding the car together.
He popped the trunk, and the lid squealed on its corroded hinges as he raised it all the way. We loaded my luggage into the trunk, and after he’d slammed the lid, I started toward the passenger side, but Chris stopped me.
“Other side,” he said.
Fatigue and jet lag conspired to keep me from understanding him for a few long seconds. Then I remembered cars were right-hand drive here.
I got in on the other side, and as Chris started the car, he said, “You want me to stop so you can get a bite to eat or anything? Or just get you back to the barracks?”
“Barracks,” I said. “I ate something in Tokyo, and I’m about ready to fucking collapse.”
He chuckled and turned around to back the car out of the parking space. “I’ve made that trip a few times myself. I know exactly what you mean.” As he shifted into Drive and started out of the garage, he added, “Just wait until you go back stateside. The jet lag going that way is fucking brutal.”
“I could think of worse things,” I said, more to myself than him.
By the time he pulled out of the garage and onto the road, I was already mentally writing up a leave chit so I could fly home. As if they’d grant leave when I was barely feet dry on the island. It’d be months before I could accrue enough leave time to go home, unless there was some kind of emergency. I didn’t even qualify for that once-a-year free flight back to the States until I’d been here six months, and then it was still a matter of getting leave approved. Leave which I’d burned like it was going out of style when I thought I was staying in San Diego for three more years. Leave which would take months to accrue again so I—
Whoa.
The curving road suddenly dumped us on a highway with a view of the city, and… This was not the Okinawa I expected.
The city of Naha was nothing short of sensory overload. Bright neon signs, most of which were in Japanese, lit up windows and storefronts. Casinos rivaled those on the Las Vegas strip for their ostentatiously colorful displays advertising huge jackpots, slot machines, and something called Pachinko. Buildings didn’t quite qualify as skyscrapers, but they cut an impressive profile along either side of Highway 58, suggesting Naha was much more cosmopolitan than I’d anticipated seeing anywhere on Okinawa.
And much more…alien. The vast majority of signs were in Japanese kanji, which flew right in the face of my cousin’s accusation that Okinawa was heavily Americanized. I had taken his comments at face value and hadn’t prepared myself for this. Not that I’d had the opportunity, since I’d gotten slam orders and barely had time to get my shit together to move, but this? This was all so bizarre and weird, and I was completely…lost. Dropped in the middle of a place that was a lot more Japanese than it was American, when I’d expected the polar opposite, and unable to shake the feeling that I was more alone than I’d ever been in my life.
As Chris continued driving, the occasional familiar symbol emerged from the scenery, but even they were alien here. Traffic signals were horizontal instead of vertical. A giant bowling pin was all that gave away the purpose of one brightly lit, kanji-inscribed building, and the golden arches gleamed above some more kanji that presumably spelled out McDonald’s. A few blocks later, the red-and-white likeness of Colonel Sanders stood out from a bunch of incomprehensible signs, though the text on the Kentucky Fried Chicken sign was in Japanese. Even the familiar…wasn’t.
God, this was weird. It was like an alternate universe where everything I knew was skewed and warped into something I didn’t recognize, underscoring how lost I felt. How far I was from home. From anything. From anyone.
It wasn’t my first time in a foreign country—hell, I’d been to two war zones—but every light and every sign in a language not my own drove it home that I was nowhere near Kansas anymore. A million miles from everything I knew, surrounded by an alien landscape, I was keenly aware that I was the alien and I wasn’t going home anytime soon.
I rubbed my eyes and sighed, then focused again on the strange world around me. Maybe it was an exercise in futility, but I was hell-bent on adapting to this place. Getting used to it. Making sense of it.
And maybe I was just tired, but I could swear I had never seen so many vending machines in my life. Of course, they stood out--while the rest of a particular block might have been dark, the alternately red-and-white machines glowed with rows of colorful drinks. And sometimes there would be a cluster of four or five machines. Then half a block later, another one. Or another cluster.
Am I losing my mind?
“Am I imagining all these vending machines?” I asked.
Chris laughed. “Nope. They’re everywhere. Just wait until you see one out in the sticks. I’ve seen them next to sugarcane fields, in cemeteries, all over the place.” He gestured at what appeared to be a convenience store with a green, white and blue sign that read Family Mart. “You’ll see shitloads of those too.”
Well, at least I wasn’t losing my mind.
Yet.
After a while, the scenery changed. The flashing, glittering lights faded. Buildings weren’t as tall—maybe two to three stories at most—and weren’t packed together quite so tightly. Along the right side of the road, a chain-link fence with three strands of barbed wire across the top lined the sidewalk. A base, I guessed.
“We here already?” Already? Jesus, I’d been traveling for at least the better part of twenty-four hours. Already, my ass.
Chris shook his head. “Nope, Kadena’s further up. This is Camp Foster. Next base is Lester, then after that is Kadena.”
Great. I hoped when he said “further up,” he didn’t mean more than a few miles. Then again, this island was the size of a potato chip crumb. If we drove much farther, we’d wind up on the mainland or something.
Scanning as much of my surroundings as I could see, though, it occurred to me that while the island looked tiny on a map, it was a good-size chunk of land in person. I wasn’t sure how small I’d expected the place to be, but I couldn’t help thinking it was bigger than I thought it would be.
Big, small, didn’t matter.
I was stuck here. No turning back, no early parole. There might as well have been a fence all the way around the island’s perimeter, keeping me here until the Navy was damn good and ready to let me out. Who knew a landmass could be so fucking claustrophobic?
“This is Kadena.” Chris drew me out of my thoughts as he turned off the highway and pulled up to a base gate. “You’ll be staying on this base until you find permanent housing.”
“How far is this from White Beach?”
He shrugged. “Ten or fifteen clicks.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And I’m staying here even while I don’t have a car?”
“I’ll be driving you until you get your car and license,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.” He rolled down the window. The sentry took our IDs, looked them over, then handed them back and wordlessly waved us through.
At the barracks, I checked in, and we took my bags up to my room. Then Chris left for the evening, and I could finally settle into something that wasn’t a hard plastic chair in a terminal or a sardine-can seat on a plane.
It was oppressively hot outside, and the air conditioning in my room was like an icy slap in the face. Naturally, there was no adjusting the A/C. It was either on or it was off, and with the heat outside, I didn’t dare switch off the cold air.
Lovely. I’d have to bundle up in my room and strip down to shorts and a T-shirt whenever I went outside. It was only temporary, though. When I finally found a more permanent place, it would damn well have adjustable A/C, or I’d install it my fucking self.
As for tonight, sleep. Sweet, sweet, no-longer-crammed-into-a-damned-plane sleep.
I had just energy enough left for a desperately needed shower. Once I’d dried off, I turned on my laptop long enough to tap into the barracks Wi-Fi and send e-mails to my daughter, ex-wife, and ex-boyfriend to let them know I’d made it safely.
Then I closed my laptop and left it next to my seabag on one of the beds. As I did, a couple of travel brochures that had been fanned across the table caught my eye. Though I was so exhausted I could barely see straight, curiosity got the best of me, and I picked them up. Golf. Hiking. Boating.