Short Season

by DJ Scott

  “Are the Marines already aboard?”

  “No sir. The 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit was disembarked from Iwo Jima to add to our forces in Korea. The 11th MEU from Essex disembarked two weeks ago in Naples and was flown to Qatar and Bahrain. If Ocean Reach becomes operational, the plan is to mobilize the reserve alert regiment, the 28th Marines, and to augment them with several other units. They would be flown to Diego Garcia to board the ships.”

  “Reserve troops, is that what we’ve come to?”

  The Captain did not flinch. “These are first class Marines, Mr. President. The vast majority are combat veterans.”

  “We are heavily committed in multiple theaters,” Sonny Baker said. “This kind of contingency op is exactly what the reserve alert unit is for.”

  Wallace took a deep breath. It was a bitch working a bigger than expected war with a diminished military budget. “Very well, then. Captain, how long to get these ships and Marines in place?”

  “Ten days from when you give the order, sir.”

  To everyone’s surprise, Brendan Wallace did not solicit opinions or comments from the gathered intelligence chiefs or from his National Security Advisor. He looked at the display with the task force organization, then he looked down at the table.

  “Make it happen,” he said, then rose and headed for the door.

  Chapter 13

  September 2, 2017 0030Z (September 1, 2030 EDT)

  Ann Arbor, MI

  Detective Kelli Moore and her partner, Jerry Costanza, had been waiting for more than two hours in the back of a hot, cramped undercover van. Their target, a suspect in five campus sexual assaults, should have arrived at the house on Detroit Street more than an hour ago. That piece of information had come dearly—she had allowed a small time coke dealer to skate on a good arrest, though the man was so stupid he would certainly be busted again. The worst part was she hadn’t expected the stakeout to last long, so when Costanza bought a hot pastrami on rye at nearby Zingerman’s Deli; she’d decided to wait until later. The smell of pastrami was making her crazy.

  “Here we go,” said Costanza, with his mouth full.

  The suspect was climbing out of a car right in front of the house.

  She made a quick note of the license of his ride. “Looks like he got a lift.” They had expected him to arrive on foot.

  “No way we can get him before he goes in. We don’t know how many are inside so let’s take him on the way out. Our information is that he’s buying a few smartphones so he should be in and out. One thing we do know about this guy; he likes to keep moving. I’ll slip around to the back, you cover the front.”

  Moore got out, followed a minute later by her partner. She walked down the block, around the corner, and made her way through two back yards, until she was out of sight behind several trees with the back door of the house in view.

  Just over twelve years ago, Kelli Moore would have been voted ‘least likely to be a police officer’ by her senior class at upscale Grosse Pointe North High School. The tall redhead excelled in school as well as cross country and lacrosse, the latter a sport she played mainly because her father had told her not to. He’d also expected her to join her brother in the family’s private banking business. When she announced one day at dinner that she’d accepted an appointment to the Naval Academy, the reaction was . . . satisfying.

  At the academy, she continued to perform at the top of her class, and also lettered in cross country. Then a member of the track team had pounced on her in a hotel at an away meet. Not the type to scream for help, Kelli Moore channeled her rage into her defense. She succeeded in fracturing her assailant’s jaw and knocking out three teeth by a brutal blow with her elbow. The young man was allowed to drop out, after a number of surgeries, and was never charged. Moore did not object; the knowledge that he would never eat anything tougher than macaroni without pain was enough for her. The remainder of her time at Annapolis was marked by a cool wariness on the part of her male classmates, but a covert pride and admiration from the other women.

  Graduation let her spring another surprise. Her mother—her father had cut her off entirely—had expected her to enter an appropriate field such as intelligence or—better still—supply. So she was more than a little surprised to see her at graduation in the dress uniform of a Marine Corps second lieutenant. She chose military police, which in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan, was as much a combat branch as infantry. At the Basic School, a grueling six-month course for new officers, Kelli Moore was in her element. During the five-day urban combat operations exercise, she achieved the highest score ever recorded. She was also second in her class in pistol marksmanship, being bested only by a former enlisted Marine who had previously served as a combat pistol instructor.

  After the rigors of the Basic School, the Military Police course at the Army’s Fort Leonard Wood presented no challenge. The challenges started with her first assignment as a platoon commander with the Marine security forces in Baghdad’s Green Zone. There she learned that her responsibilities as a platoon commander had very little to do with herself, her needs, or her ambitions, and everything to do with her mission and the needs of the men and women under her command. The first time she came under fire on a security sweep she had to overcome her aggressive instinct to attack head on, and to work with her experienced platoon sergeant to develop a plan to pin the snipers down with direct fire while two squads enveloped them from the side; all the while staying alert for an ambush or IED. Finally, standing on the shoulders of her tallest Marine, she was able to throw a grenade through a second story window of the building with the snipers nest. One squad then rushed the front and after a brief fight found two snipers killed by her grenade, while two more in another room were killed by her troops.

  That evening she was debriefed by her CO, a tough grizzled major from New Mexico. “Lieutenant, when you got here those bars on your collar gave you your Marines’ obedience. Now you’ve got their trust and respect. Well done.”

  Kelli Moore had never valued anything in life, before or since, as much.

  In 2013, as a newly-promoted captain, she deployed to Afghanistan where she was tasked with route security. During a mortar attack on an EOD unit, Moore received several small shrapnel wounds. Despite her injuries, and angry as hell, she took a squad of Marines up a rocky hillside and, under intense enemy fire, maneuvered into position to destroy the mortar while killing five Taliban. For this she received a Bronze Star, as well as the Purple Heart.

  The next two years were spent doing investigative work after which her commitment from her academy education was over. Feeling she had nothing left to prove, Kelli Moore accepted a job with the Ann Arbor Police Department, but missing the Corps, she also joined the Marine Corps Reserve.

  The creak of a door caught Moore’s attention. She peeked around the tree and saw her suspect, lit by the back porch light, walking down the back steps and into the yard. “Game over,” she whispered softly.

  The suspect, a large blond man wearing a muscle shirt which displayed huge tattoo-covered arms, stopped. He glanced around, then took off across the adjoining yard.

  “Shit.” She took off after him, grabbing at her shoulder mike. “Jerry, he’s moving north on Detroit Street.”

  In black jeans with ankle high boots and a short jacket, Moore was not exactly dressed for the chase, but she was having no trouble gaining on the muscular felon. Before they made the next cross street, she was able to reach out and grab the back of the suspect’s shirt. A quick jerk, and the big man was on the ground with her heel on top of his hand and her weapon leveled at his face.

  He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead. Damn, this meant a stop at the hospital. Costanza pulled up in the van while she was cuffing him. He applied a dressing to the wound. They read him his rights and were off.

  As they drove by the deli, Moore still regretted her decision not to get dinne
r.

  Chapter 14

  September 2, 2017 0315Z (Sept. 1, 2315 EDT)

  University of Michigan Hospital

  Dr. Mike McGregor was placing the third of what would be twelve stitches in the manacled suspect’s forehead. “So Officer Moore,” he said with a grin, “strange how you keep getting the resisting arrest types. Didn’t I put a cast on one of yours just a few weeks ago?”

  “That’s Detective Moore, and that idiot’s arm had already been broken by the guy he was trying to rob. How long is this going to take, anyway?”

  “I think we’re going to need a CT scan. His lawyer will insist we rule out a brain injury.”

  Moore groaned. She had been working since noon and there was no end in sight. “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

  “Nope. If there really is a problem, he could be dead by tomorrow. You are quite the hard ass Detective—I can see why you were such a good Marine.”

  Moore bristled. “And what gives you the right to insult Marines? Or hard asses for that matter?”

  “Long and sad experience. I could tell you all about it over drinks some time.”

  “In your dreams, Doc.” Her tone was sharp, but she could not help but smile. She had recently broken up with a junior faculty member and had no interest in dating another nerd, even if he did have an infectious smile. Besides, there was something more going on behind those pale grey eyes, and this was not really the time to find out. She took a chair to wait for her suspect to be taken for his CT scan. While waiting, she unconsciously fussed with her short red hair.

  Just then Albert Johanssen, evening supervisor for hospital security, walked in. Moore knew him better as the First Sergeant with the Headquarters Company of the 1st Battalion 28th Marines, a unit that also served at the Ann Arbor reserve center. “Evening Detective. Looks like you have everything under control.”

  “First Sergeant, thanks for stopping by. Yes, we’ll be out of here as soon as your overly cautious doctor gets a CT scan of this guy’s head.”

  Johanssen gave her an understanding grin, “Give him a break. He does know what he’s doing.”

  “I hope so; I’m tired and hungry and want nothing more than to get this moron booked and to get some dinner. By the way, your doctor says he knows Marines, what’s with that.”

  “Oh, we were together back in Iraq with the 1/5.” Kelli Moore was surprised, and it showed in her bright green eyes.

  “What? He was a medical officer?”

  “No, a corpsman, HM2. Now he’s our battalion surgeon. I think that after his fiancé died—you knew about that didn’t you?—he was sort of drifting. So when I got off active duty and took this job, I told him they were putting a new headquarters here. That’s when he decided to get back in.”

  Moore was learning way more than she had bargained for. “Fiancé? Do tell.”

  “A few years ago. Danielle was Canadian, a grad student in architecture. Got killed in some kind of construction accident in Toronto doing an internship. I never met her, but everyone says she was perfect for him.”

  The detective, not wanting to probe into that sensitive area, but in fact intensely curious, changed the subject. “I thought that physician’s assistant, Lieutenant Ellis, was your battalion surgeon.”

  “She’s the assistant surgeon; they just started allowing PA’s into the assistant surgeon job a few years ago. You probably see her more since Doc is on the road a lot visiting the companies, getting the physicals done, and keeping an eye on the corpsmen.”

  Just then the transport team arrived to move her suspect to radiology. “Good to see you First Sergeant,” she said as she followed the gurney out of the ER.

  God, that nerdy doc was a Corpsman. Probably pulling shrapnel in some nice, safe Green Zone hospital.

  But . . . if so, what had he done to impress the First Sergeant?

  Chapter 15

  June 9, 2005 0045 Z (0115 AST)

  76 kilometers North-Northeast of Al Bukamal, Syria

  (5 kilometers west of the Syria-Iraq border)

  A few seconds following the detonation of the GBU-31s, LCDR Castelli stood up to assess the damage.

  “Commander,” Delgado said, “that’s not a good —”

  Castelli screamed.

  Castelli had stayed down long enough for the bomb shrapnel to pass over, but he hadn’t considered that some of the debris would travel upward in a long slow arc. Not until a piece of rock about the size of a baseball smashed into his right thigh just above the knee.

  McGregor was already fishing a battle dressing out of his bag. Around him, he could hear the thuds as other pieces of debris—metal, masonry, body parts—hit the ground around him. As soon as they stopped, he was at the wounded officer’s side. A quick assessment told him everything.

  “This is bad Staff Sergeant, really bad,” he said. “The bone’s broken. I can mostly control the external bleeding, but not the bleeding inside the leg. In a few hours he can put a lot of blood into that thigh. And he sure isn’t walking anywhere. Do we have medevac?”

  “Don’t know, Doc. Something else the Lieutenant Commander kept to himself.”

  Gunfire and muzzle flashes, far too close.

  Lance Corporal Delgado crawled up the far side of the wadi to look for the enemy patrol. “Two of them, maybe twenty meters —”

  A short burst of fire, and a spray of arterial blood from Delgado’s neck. He was dead before McGregor could reach him. Luis Delgado would never again walk the sands of the Sonoran Desert.

  McGregor stayed low and gave a quick, sad, nod to Johanssen who was by then crawling up the side of the wadi, weapon ready.

  Johanssen popped up, took a quick look, and fired a short burst. He then dropped down and moved quickly to his right.

  Fifteen meters along the rim, Johanssen rose just high enough to get his elbows down in a steady firing position. He saw the insurgent prone with an AK-47 aimed directly at his last position. He fired three quick shots. “That’s one. They never expect you —”

  There was another burst of fire, this time from the other direction.

  Johanssen whirled to confront the new threat when the insurgent, who had moved quickly away after Delgado was shot, fired again. Johanssen gave a grunt and dropped, gripping his ankle.

  McGregor was actually closer to the shooter than Johanssen, but he was in the shadows while the big Marine was in full moonlight. Rather than exposing himself to grab his M-4, he drew his Beretta 9MM pistol from its thigh holster and took aim. The man was focused on Johnassen, giving him that precious extra second. He fired four shots.

  The enemy was thrown back and spun around, falling on his side.

  McGregor ran forward to disarm him. A glance told him there were two wounds, one in the right chest and one in the upper abdomen. This guy would bleed out before he could do anything. He took the man’s weapon and threw it over the side of the wadi. A quick search of the wounded man’s pockets yielded a satellite phone which he put in one of his cargo pockets.

  McGregor returned quickly to Johanssen and could see the big man was in extreme pain. He wasn’t groaning, but he was pale and sweating profusely. The bullet hole in his boot was the obvious problem and the absence of an exit wound made it clear the bullet was still in his ankle.

  “Let’s get this boot off so I can check you out.”

  “No time, Doc,” responded the Marine. “There’s another guy out there. He’s the one who fired that long burst of cover fire for the one who got me.”

  “Dammit Joe. I should have been backing you up.”

  “Okay, apology accepted, Doc. Now pull it together.” Johanssen was wheezing through gritted teeth. “It’s a simple problem, find that guy and kill him or we all die. Right here and right now.”

  “Sure Joe, I’ll get this asshole. But we’re probably going to die anyway.”

 
“Here, take this, it might come in handy.” Johanssen handed McGregor an M-67 fragmentation grenade which he clipped it to his body armor. “I’ll cover the wadi. Hand me my rifle.”

  McGregor did so and turned without another word, walking along the dry stream bed to the south.

  After about thirty meters, the wadi became shallower and provided very little cover. McGregor began to crawl to the west, using his night vision to search for the last insurgent. Nothing. If the guy was smart, he would have crossed the wadi and would now be approaching from the east. If so, McGregor would have to move quickly.

  He crawled back down into the wadi where a curve shielded him from the two wounded men. He sat for a moment to consider his options.

  There was a metallic click.

  At first he thought it had come from his own men, but no, it was to the east and close, very close. The insurgent must be moving slowly towards the wadi and had probably grazed his rifle or magazine on a rock.

  What now? Stand for a quick shot? No, this guy probably has his muzzle pointed right at the wadi with his finger on the trigger. Move north? No, moving over the rocks this close to the enemy would certainly give him away.

  Then he felt for the grenade on his vest.

  Knowing that he had only a few seconds, he worked the pin free as fast as he could and released the handle. The insurgent would certainly hear the sound of the firing pin and the handle flying free.

  McGregor held the live weapon a second, a process known as cooking the grenade, which everyone who ever taught him anything said was a stupid, stupid thing to do because the burn time of fuses varied. Hearing nothing, he tossed the grenade over the side. He heard a quick movement and half expected to see the grenade flying back, but in less than two seconds there was a tremendous ‘crack’ and a flash. He waited the few seconds it took for his eyes to recover from the flash then stood quickly, finger on the trigger, and scanned the rim of the trench-like wadi.