Hard Corps (Selected Sinners MC #7)

by Scott Hildreth

  He shook his head. “I mean it. Keep your money. I’m not just saying it; I appreciate your service to the country. When they flew those planes into the towers, I wanted to have the guts…”

  He paused as the car rolled to a stop. After shifting the gear selector into park, he turned toward the back seat. He was roughly my age, but his shoulder-length hair and full beard made him appear slightly older at first glance.

  “Not all of us have the courage to do what you’re doing. Me? I get to drive this cab and make an honest living because people like you are willing to fight to keep this country free. Keep your money. I mean it,” he said.

  “I appreciate it,” I said as I folded the money and pushed it between the back of his seat and the bottom cushion.

  He would find it at some point in time, probably the next time he cleaned his car. I’d never been one to accept charity, and felt I was required to pay for everything I obtained in life, one way or another.

  “Going back?” he asked as I opened the door.

  I got out of the car and adjusted my pack as I responded through the open window. “Until they tell me I can’t, or it ends.”

  “Good luck,” he said.

  I nodded my head in appreciation.

  Luck.

  Some called me lucky. Others described me as gifted. Personally, I felt that I had a sixth sense; one that allowed me to see things as they truly were, and that wasn’t always the way other people perceived them. Knowing what I believed to be the truth allowed me a second or so to react without contemplation or thought, which was often all it took to survive.

  I folded a piece of gum and poked it into my mouth. As I chewed it and shoved the wrapper into the pocket of my trousers, she opened the front door. Her strawberry blonde hair was well past her shoulders, several inches longer than the last time we had seen each other.

  “Oh my God. You didn’t say…” she gasped.

  Short of writing letters, I hadn’t spoken to her in seven months, and hadn’t told her specifically when I would arrive. Although many of the Marines used the calling centers or morale calls on SAT phones to call home, I felt the distraction on both ends was too much if we were to attempt to communicate by telephone. An old fashioned letter delivered in the mail, however, was something nice to read, and it could be read over and over, providing much more than a few moments of pleasure.

  My eyes fell to her feet, and slowly inched their way up her body until stopping at her face. I stood in awe, recognizing her natural beauty, but trying the entire time to hide the excitement of seeing her again. She looked every bit as gorgeous as she did on any other day, which was more beautiful than any other woman who had ever graced the earth with her presence.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” I said, twisting my mouth into a smirk.

  Unlike many of my Marine brethren, I was devoted to Suzanne wholly. Cheating or even lusting over another woman was completely out of the question. I was hers, and only hers, and she knew it. It was a large part of what allowed me to travel to another country and devote myself to a war while leaving her at home without her worrying about my commitment or loyalty – or me questioning hers for that matter. I knew, no matter when I showed up, she would be alone and waiting for me.

  “God it’s good to see you,” she said as she ran down the steps.

  “Come here, Babe,” I said as I dropped my pack to the sidewalk and opened my arms.

  I extended my arms and gazed into her green eyes. They were the most inviting eyes I had ever seen, and they were attached to the most beautiful woman to ever exist. Seeing her cry – even if they were tears of joy – was heartbreaking.

  “No need to cry, Babe,” I said as I wiped the tears from her cheeks with my thumb. “I’ll be home for a while. I’ve got some leave before I have to go back.”

  “But you’re going back?” she said, half asking, half stating.

  I pulled her into me and held her tight to my chest. “Until the war is over, or they find me unfit to fight, I’ll keep going back. I don’t have a choice.”

  As she nodded her head in acknowledgement, I pressed my nose into her hair and inhaled a slow breath. I viewed my time at war as an opportunity to serve my country, and never really felt sorry for myself for what I was required to forfeit to do so. Each time I returned home, I was reminded of the things I missed, and although seeing Suzanne proved to me that God existed, inhaling a hint of her scent was much more satisfying.

  It reassured me that she existed.

  After swallowing my gum, I reached down, lifted her chin slightly, and kissed her. The kiss wasn’t aggressive, extremely long, or close to what most Marine wives received upon their husband’s return to the states, but it was appropriate, respectful, and provided all the support she needed to understand where it was I had placed her.

  On a pedestal above anything and everything on the earth.

  Most men, upon returning home from the war, more than likely greeted their wives or girlfriends with the tip of their dick. I believed there was a time and a place for sex, and was actually quite fond of fucking the woman I loved, but for the next hour or so I needed to simply hold her in my arms, inhale her scent, and talk to her. She’d been through this routine enough times that she knew what to expect from me. Sitting down, eating a meal together, and talking allowed my mind to return back to civilization, and at least for the amount of time I was home, feel like things were different.

  “God, I love kissing you,” she said as our lips parted.

  She leaned back and shifted her eyes up and down my frame. “You look like you’ve lost weight. Come on, let me make you something to eat. Are you hungry?”

  I reached for my pack, lifted it to my shoulder, and nodded my head. “I could eat.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s eat, and then we’ll curl up in a ball on the couch.”

  She turned away, walked up the steps and held the door open.

  I paused at the first step and glanced at the front of the house before allowing my eyes to openly gaze around the yard. Leaves had filled the gutters, and the yard was littered with the various colors of fall.

  Most men would perceive a yard full of leaves as a pain in the ass. Work. Time that could be spent watching a football game.

  Me?

  I saw it as exactly what it was.

  Beautiful.

  I grinned, exhaled, and followed her into the house.

  God, it feels good to be home.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Early Spring 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

  The First Battle of Fallujah.

  I grew up the only son of high school sweethearts who fell in love, married, and remained true to each other until my mother passed away. My father never remarried after her death, claiming his only love to be my mother, and further explaining that allowing another woman into his life, at any level, would be disrespectful to his deceased wife and only love.

  I respected him for his position on love, relationships, and as a father. As a child, my friends often claimed their hero to be a television character, someone in a movie, or even a superhero from a comic book.

  Me?

  My father was my only hero.

  He took me deer hunting for the first time when I was twelve. Although I was young, I had spent my short life around weapons, learning to respect them, understand their inner workings, and how to properly handle them safely. My father described me as a natural, claiming one day I would be in the Olympics as a marksman, but I knew otherwise.

  I wanted to be like my uncle, who was a former Marine and a Vietnam war veteran. My father’s brother, and a man who didn’t demand respect – but received it from those who understood him. He was less apt to speak than any other of my relatives, but when he did, his advice was always well thought out and easy to apply to life.

  As we sat in the tree stand waiting for a deer to cross the trail a hundred yards ahead, my father questioned whether or not I was ready, and, ultimately, if I was ready, would
I be able to make a shot at such a distance?

  I later learned after they were shot, most deer ran through the woods for a hundred yards or more before finally bleeding so much that they expired from blood loss. A perfectly placed shot – straight up from the back side of the front leg, half way between the bottom of the chest and the back – was the only thing that would drop a deer in its tracks.

  Filled with confidence, and hoping to make my father proud, I waited for a deer to cross the path in front of us. As the morning sun began to rise above the base of the trees, a buck stepped into the clearing, raised his head, and sniffed the air as if something was wrong.

  As his shoulder twitched from either fear or an inner knowledge of impending threat, I squeezed the trigger.

  The deer fell where it stood.

  Two days later, as we sat and ate a meal of venison steaks, potatoes, and an apple pie my mother had prepared, I began to understand the permanency of death. My father, while describing the impossible shot I had made to my mother, was filled with pride.

  As I listened to him speak, I didn’t necessarily feel proud, but I was far from ashamed. I felt powerful, large, and almost invincible. The taking of a life wasn’t something every man was able to do, but I understood death as the completion of the cycle of life, and something completely necessary for all living things to endure at some point.

  Making the choice to end the cycle of life wasn’t something I took lightly as a child, or as an adult. As I grew older, I eventually stopped hunting. My belief at the time was that it wasn’t necessary. For me at least, hunting was a sport; and killing – for sport – was something I decided was wrong.

  ***

  “We need to get off this roof before he shoots all of us,” the young Marine complained.

  In searching the building for insurgents, we had encountered a Marine Scout Sniper and his spotter. The sniper had been shot, was close to death, and the spotter appeared to be in slight shock. There was no doubt he had received considerable training to be a spotter for a Scout Sniper and to be a combat ready Marine, but nothing could ever replace the experience from actually being in combat, which was something he obviously hadn’t had the luxury of experiencing.

  “First tour?” I asked as I crawled toward the abandoned sniper rifle.

  “Yes, Sir. We got here two days ago for this operation,” he responded nervously. “We really need to get down from here. We’re sitting ducks.”

  “Well, that’s not going to fucking happen. Your sniper has a hole in his shoulder the size of a baseball, and I intend to kill the motherfucker who shot him before he shoots someone else. Now, take a breath, remember your training, and give me an accurate fucking distance to my target,” I barked as I leaned my M4 against the parapet of the roof.

  I flattened myself into a prone position and placed my cheek against the buttstock of the sniper’s rifle. After pulling off my helmet, wiping the sweat from my brow, and closing my left eye, I peered through the scope toward the target. The man on the rooftop who had been taking pot shots at an approaching convoy was taking a new position at the corner of the roof and lowering his rifle to what appeared to be a sandbag rest.

  I’m guessing eight hundred plus.

  The mid-day sun provided aggravating temperatures, but also made finding my target rather easy. With half of a mile between us, the bullet from the .308 caliber rifle would reach him in roughly one second. In that same second, he could take a shot, change his position, or take cover behind the upper roof line.

  If his intention was to shoot Marines, I knew I didn’t have a second to waste.

  I compared the four story building across the street to the building half a mile away and decided the distance based on the reduced appearance in size. After I studied the blowing dust for a moment, I reached up, and began to adjust the scope for an 800 yard shot. The wind was from my right to my left at what I guessed to be 6 miles an hour, which would carry the bullet from the right to the left slightly in the 2,600 feet it had to travel to get to the target.

  As Cunningham and Grayson sat in wait and Whitmire tended to the wounded sniper, the spotter peered nervously through his spotting scope toward the target. I inhaled a deep breath and paused.

  “Eight hundred and twenty meters. Wind from your immediate right to your left. Push right point two,” the spotter said.

  Point two is too much, kid. We’ll do this my way.

  I exhaled all of the breath from my lungs.

  Sorry, motherfucker. I’ve got to make it home to see my wife, and to do so, I need to make sure you don’t make it home to yours.

  I gave no acknowledgement of the stats provided by the spotter. After squeezing the trigger, I waited for him to acknowledge the kill.

  “Holy fucking shit. Target down. Enemy KIA,” he said excitedly.

  I inhaled a shallow breath, turned toward the spotter, and nodded my head. The sound of small arms fire continued from every direction as the report of mortars thumped in the distance every few seconds. All but immune to the sounds and sight of death, I turned toward the three Marines I was in charge of.

  “Whitmire, we need to get him to our fucking Corpsman. Hell, I don’t give a fuck if you’ve got to find one of the 82nd’s medics, we need to get him off this fucking roof,” I said.

  As I raised myself to a crouched position, hiding behind the cover of the parapet, the spotter moved his scope to the side and shifted his eyes toward me. “Nice shot,” he said as he scanned my blouse for my name. “Sergeant Jacob. Nice fucking shot, Jacob.”

  “We can swap spit later. I need to get your sniper to a medic,” I said.

  “Roger that,” he said as he stood from his bench.

  What the fuck are you doing?

  I waved my hand from side to side and pointed toward his feet. “Stay down, god damn it! You don’t know if…”

  The thwack of the bullet hitting his chest was sickening. His eyes widened with concern as he stumbled rearward, eventually falling onto the roof between where I was crouched and where Cunningham was positioned.

  “God fucking damn it,” I shouted as I gazed down at his body.

  I shook my head and stared off in the distance, wondering how much longer the sniper would be able to last with the fist-sized cavity in his shoulder.

  After securing my weapon, I bent down to pick up the fallen spotter. As I peered into his eyes, I realized I didn’t need to check for vitals, he wasn’t WIA, he was KIA.

  Son-of-a-fucking-bitch.

  I reached between his legs with one arm and grabbed his wrist with the other, raising him over my shoulder. I clenched my jaw at the thought of one more dead Marine and one soon to be dead Marine, and thanked God the three men under my command were still alive.

  “Cunningham, lead the way. Take the rear staircase. Whitmire, behind me. Grayson, secure the M40, the spotter scope, and the rest of their gear, and take the rear,” I said as I tossed my head toward the staircase at the rear corner of the roof.

  Upon reaching the street, we were met by a First Lieutenant, obviously new to combat, half-lost, and out of his element.

  As the driver sat nervously and waited, the Lieutenant stepped from the Humvee and waved his arm toward the adjacent buildings.

  “We’ve got a sniper on the roof six hundred meters east, and…”

  “Sir, the enemy sniper has been eliminated. I’ve got one Marine KIA and one Marine WIA, soon to be KIA. We either need a Corpsman or to get this man to a hospital,” I said as I lowered the dead spotter from my shoulder.

  “That sniper KIA, is it confirmed?” he asked.

  It was as confirmed as I needed it to be.

  “Yes, Sir,” I responded.

  He nodded his head eagerly. “Who are you with?”

  “We’re with the two-seven,” I responded. “I’m the Fire Team leader, and we were separated from our squad. We’re searching…”

  “Sergeant Jacob, two-seven. Got it. Load those men in the back,” he said as he waved his
hand toward the rear of the Humvee.

  Apparently he didn’t give a shit who we were with or what our objectives were. I motioned toward the rear of the Humvee, helped load the two Marines, and turned away. As I watched them speed away, I realized for us, nothing had changed. We had been separated from our squad, and the entire city was a chaotic mess of gunfire, RPG’s, and mortar fire.

  We’d be lucky if we lived through the night.

  The Marines, no different than any other branch of the military, had a command structure. The structure was in place for a reason, and was necessary in the eyes of every Marine. It never ceased to amaze me, however, that while in combat and taking heavy fire, things seemed to go to hell in a handbasket at every level of the command.

  I shifted my eyes back and forth between each of the men, “We’ve got no radio, no support from our squad, and no NCO other than me.”

  I flinched as a mortar impacted the building directly beside us. I gazed up and down the street for any signs of the enemy, relieved to see nothing or no one. Buildings were smoldering, half of the structures were collapsed from bombs we had dropped, and what remained was being searched by the Army’s special forces and Marines, none of which I immediately recognized. The enemy, as always, was hiding in wait.

  Our trip onto the roof had eliminated a sniper and potentially saved the lives of many, but left us with very little support or immediate hope of finding the remainder of our squad.

  “We’re going to try to make it back to our squad, and if you listen to me and follow my command, I can’t make any promises, but I haven’t lost a man on my team yet,” I paused and surveyed the area for anyone I recognized.

  To describe the scene as lawless would be to grossly understate the truth. In every direction, men were firing weapons. Marines and the Army’s 82nd Airborne fired M16’s, M4’s, M203 grenade launchers, and SAW’s at buildings, noises, who they perceived as a threat, and down the alleys between buildings. Fire was returned sporadically, but not from an identifiable location.