Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (6 page)

“You can’t let the junior man get away with that, you know,”

Kindy told them.

Nomonon and Jaschke looked at each other.

“He’s right,” Jaschke said.

“Watch me,” Nomonon said back. He got up and swaggered over to another table of women.

“Hey, babes, who wants to dance?” he boldly said. They laughed at him, and a couple said, “No thanks,” while the rest simply shook their heads. Red-faced, Nomonon marched back to his table. Gail got there with a fresh pitcher of beer just as he resumed his seat.

“What did I tell you, Mikel? You should take lessons from Hans on how to treat a lady.”

“What?” Nomonon squawked, looking offended.

“Hans asked politely, in the manner of a man who just wanted

to dance. You strutted over there like you expected them to rip their blouses off and spread their legs for you. Not the way to win a woman’s heart.” She spun about and flounced away.

“Don’t say it,” Nomonon snarled at Jaschke. “Don’t say anything.” He made sure the squad leaders at the next table knew he was talking to them too. In another part of the room, Corporal Harv Belinski wasn’t about to be outdone by a mere lance corporal. He got up and walked, not strutted, to a nearby table, bowed to the six women seated there, and asked, “May I have the pleasure of this dance with one of you?”

Four of the women gave him skeptical looks, but the fifth, bopping along to WizzinWacks’ “All Day Short,” looked in his eyes and said, “Thank you, I’d love to dance.” But when he reached for her hand to lead her to the impromptu dance floor, she said, “No touching.”

Ellis and his partner were still dancing when Belinski and his reached the front of the MusiKola. There was room enough for two couples, but when a third, Sergeant Williams and a woman who looked like she might also have three stripes on the sleeves of her dress reds, tried to join in, the space was entirely too crowded. But Marines are resourceful, and in moments enough tables and chairs were pushed out of the way to make a reasonable dance floor. It wasn’t much longer before the available space was filled with dancing couples. In another half hour, the only table that held only men or only women was the one with the two sheepdogs, who did everything but stand up and howl to make sure the wolves knew they were there to protect their flock, and woe be to the wolf who dared trespass. That was the scene into which Gunnery Sergeant Alf Lytle and Staff Sergeant Kazan Fryman, respectively the platoon sergeant and first section leader of second platoon, Fourth Force Recon Company, walked. The two Force Recon leaders almost instantly assessed the situation and, without needing to exchange any words, acted. They headed directly for the sheepdogs, sat at their table, introduced themselves, and engaged the women in conversation. The sheepdogs may have been intent on protecting their flock, but Lytle and Fryman were just as intent on running interference for their wolves.

And who knows, maybe the sheepdogs actually wanted some wolvish company.

FIVE

Fourth Force Recon Barracks, Camp Howard, Marine Corps Base Camp Basilone, Halfway

“There’s never a corpsman around when you need one,”

Sergeant Wil Bingh moaned late the next morning.

“Arrgh,” Sergeant Brigo Kare said in agreement. They occupied overstuffed chairs in the squad leaders’ lounge of the Force Recon barracks. Bingh sprawled, Kare curled fetuslike. It was the morning after the Snoop ’n Poop had been invaded by the reinforced platoon of off-duty female Marines. The two were in the company’s squad leaders’ lounge because when they got to the barracks the night before, second platoon’s first section squad leaders’ room was locked and the door barricaded from the inside. When they banged on the door and demanded entry, Sergeant Kindy, from inside, told them firmly to go away. When they persisted, Kindy unbarricaded the door, slipped out, grabbed them by their scruffs to march them to the lounge, where he deposited them on the overstuffed chairs and told them he’d let them know when they could return to their room.

Kindy wasn’t bigger than Bingh and Kare, but he wasn’t shit-faced drunk like they were, which was why he’d been able to handle them so easily. Bingh and Kare were among the last to leave the Snoop ’n Poop in the wee hours of the morning. By then, more than half of the Force Recon Marines who had been in the place had left, as had all of the women Marines; unlike the men, who were still on leave, the women had to report for duty in the morning. Some of the stragglers, as had some of the earlier Marines to leave, went in search of rooms in Havelock to spend the night. The rest, as had some of the earlier departers, caught a liberty bus back to Camp Howard and the barracks. But not all those who left earlier left alone. Alone in this case meaning with only other men.

So there they were, Sergeants Wil Bingh and Brigo Kare, muscles and joints kinked and cramped from sleeping in the chairs, heads aching and mouths dry, suffering from monumental hangovers.

“Corpsman up,” Kare moaned.

“Water,” Bingh groaned. He pulled his sprawled limbs inward as the first step in rising, thought better of it, and went limp.

“You try,” he rasped.

“Try what?” Kare opened a bloodshot eye and rolled it toward Bingh.

“Getting up.”

“Why?”

“Find a corpsman. Get water.”

“Uhn.” Kare slowly began straightening from his curled position, stopped when his upper hip encountered the arm of the chair, preventing him from rolling onto his back. “Can’t.”

“Can’t isn’t in the Force Recon lexicon, Sergeant!” a jovial voice boomed at them, making both sergeants flinch and groan in agony. “My, my, I spy—two sergeants who did far too much partying last night.”

Bingh’s eyes painfully fluttered open and oriented themselves on the source of the entirely too cheerful and loud voice: Hospitalman Second Gruff, one of the company’s five corpsmen. Like the two Marines, Gruff was in civilian clothes. Unlike theirs, his were clean and neat and had not been slept in.

“Did you get any?” Gruff asked jovially.

Bingh’s valiant attempt to glower at the corpsman died a painful death; even his lips hurt. Kare didn’t even try; he would have had to turn his head to see Gruff, and turning his head was simply too difficult.

“I didn’t think so,” Gruff said. “If you had, you wouldn’t need these.” He held up a large bottle of water and a smaller bottle of what Bingh immediately recognized as hangover pills.

“Gimme,” Bingh groaned as he thrust an arm in Gruff’s direction and partly rose from the chair. He moaned and fell back.

“Wha . . . ?” Kare struggled into a position from where he could see Gruff.

Gruff smiled cheerfully as he twisted his wrists, shaking the bottles that dangled from his fingers. “The cure,” he murmured.

“You’re a sadist, Doc,” Bingh mumbled.

“Torturing sick men you could cure so easily,” Kare added.

“Say pretty please.”

“Kill you if you . . .” It took more effort than Bingh could manage to complete the sentence.

“P-Pretty p-please,” Kare croaked.

“Yes, Sergeant Kare, Doc Gruff has the cure for you.” He circled Bingh, making sure he was out of easy reach, to Kare’s side and decanted a pill from the smaller bottle. “Drink this down with a liter of water,” he instructed, dropping the pill into Kare’s open mouth and handing him the water bottle. He turned back to Bingh and pulled another bottle of water from out of nowhere. “Wil?”

“Oooh . . .” Bingh worked his mouth to dredge up some saliva. “P-Please.”

“Pretty please. With a cherry on top.”

“Kill you.” Bingh struggled without much success to climb out of the chair.

“You know, Doc, he probably will if you make him get better on his own,” said Sergeant Kindy from the entrance to the squad leaders’ lounge. Unlike the other two squad leaders, Kindy was freshly shatshoweredshaved and wore fresh civvies. He was also grinning like a legendary cat.

“Hmmm,” Gruff mused. “You may be right, Him.” He turned to Bingh. “Open wide, like a fish going after a worm on a hook.”

Back to Kindy. “You look nice and fresh. Did you stay in last night, instead of going out carousing like these two?”

Kindy’s grin widened. “Only part of the night, Doc. Only part of the night.”

By then, the hangover pill and water were taking effect on Kare so he was able to turn himself around and sit up. “Him,”

he asked softly so as to not upset his still unstable equilibrium,

“are you saying you had, ahh, contraband in our room last night, and that’s why you wouldn’t let us in?”

Kindy’s grin grew more broadly yet. “What I don’t tell you can’t be used against me in a court-martial.”

“Lemme at ’im,” Bingh croaked. The pill and water hadn’t had time to do much for him so it took massive effort for him to lever himself out of the chair. He stood tottering for a moment, then leaned forward until he had to step to avoid falling on his face. He moved forward by alternately leaning, nearly falling, and stepping. Kare got to his feet and followed him past Kindy into the corridor, toward the squad leaders’ room, along with Gruff. Kindy hung back but went along as well. The pill and water worked on Bingh, and by the time he reached the squad leaders’ quarters, he was almost walking normally. Inside, he wasn’t able to look and see everything from one place; each of the squad leaders had his own small room, cubicle really, separated from the common area by low partitions. Bingh made a circuit of the main room, looking into each cubicle. His and Kare’s racks were unslept in, as was Sergeant Williams’s. So was Kindy’s—but his had fresh bedding. Bingh sniffed loudly. Sniffed again. “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the musk of a woman,” he snarled. He turned around, looking for Kindy, saw him. “You brought a woman into the barracks

last night? Are you out of your ever loving mind? Do you realize what could happen to you if the officers found out?”

“Find out what?” Kindy asked, all innocence, looking all around. “You’re saying a woman’s in here? Where? I don’t see a woman.”

Fists clenched tightly at his sides, Bingh advanced on Kindy.

“You brought a woman into the barracks last night?” he snarled.

“And made me and Brigo sleep in the lounge, and you want to act like nothing happened?”

“What happened?” Kindy demanded indignantly. “Nothing, that’s what!”

Doc Gruff stepped in front of Bingh, blocking his advance.

“Calm down, Marine. Nothing happened.”

When Bingh went to step around Gruff, Kare grabbed his upper arm to hold him back. “Let it go, Wil,” he said. He immediately regretted the sharpness of his tone—he wasn’t recovered enough yet from his hangover to not feel a painful physical reaction to his own voice.

“But—”

“No ‘buts,’ ” Gruff said. “Nothing happened. And if Kindy got lucky and you didn’t, so what? It’s the breaks of the game.”

“I had to sleep on a chair in the lounge!”

“Beats sleeping in the mud on Ravenette.”

Bingh turned his still bloodshot eyes on the corpsman. “This isn’t the bush. This is different.”

“You could have gotten a room in town; you didn’t have to come back to the barracks,” Gruff insisted.

“Wanted to save m’ money for more liberty,” Bingh mumbled.

“We’ve slept in the lounge before, Wil,” Kare said. “Come on, let’s grab a shower. We’ll both feel better. Then we can take Him back into town and see who gets lucky tonight.”

Bingh looked at Kare for a moment, then said, “A shower. You’re right, I feel like shit.” He twisted his arm out of the other’s grasp and aimed himself at his own cubicle, shedding his clothes as he went. A moment later, a towel wrapped around his hips, he was headed for the squad leaders’ showers. When he heard the water running, Kare stepped up to Kindy and said, “You son of a bitch,” and punched his shoulder. It was a friendly punch, but still hard enough to sting. Havelock

Not much more than an hour later, the three squad leaders were sitting at a table in a Havelock diner, having a steak-andegg breakfast even though it was late in the lunch hour. They were far from being the only Marines in the diner but, thanks to the hangover pills Doc Gruff had given Bingh and Kare, they were in much better shape than many of their fellow diners, who were still showing the effects of the previous night’s drinking. Others of their number looked quite chipper and self-satisfied—Bingh and Kare had a very good idea of why they looked so pleased with themselves and glowered at them. Then:

“Either of you know where D’Wayne is?” Kindy asked between bites. The others shook their heads. Kare thought for a moment, swallowed a mouthful of steak and eggs, and said, “The last time I remember seeing him, he was hanging out by a side door at the Snoop ’n Poop.”

Bingh thought back, then nodded. “Right, I saw him there too.” He looked at the other two and mused, “I seem to remember, the woman he’d been dancing with slipped out that same door right before I noticed him. Good-looking woman.” He glanced at Kindy. “When we find him, I’ll bet he looks just like this guy.”

Kindy gave him an eyebrow-raised, “Who, me?” look, but opted for taking another bite of steak instead of saying anything.

“Him,” Kare said, chewing slowly and swallowing, “I don’t remember you dancing with any one woman in particular. So who’d you nail?”

“Brigo, please!” Kindy said with exaggerated indignance.

“A gentleman never discloses such things.”

“I know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Yeah, who?” Bingh demanded. He hefted his mug and took a sip of hot kaff.

“No, no, no,” Kindy said, waving his fork. “You believe I had a woman in our quarters last night, and that’s why I didn’t let you in when you came knocking. If I say, then you’ll know. If I did bring a woman into the barracks—and I’m not saying I did, because we all know that’s a violation of regulations—I’d be admitting I did something wrong. You can’t expect me to convict myself now, can you?”

“You already admitted it when you said a gentleman doesn’t talk about it,” Kare told him.

“Ah ha! But not telling can also mean maybe I didn’t.”

“You’re jerking on us, Him,” Bingh snorted. “Confess! We both know you did.”

“Are you going to see her again?” Kare asked, and took a bite of toast.