The Severance (23 page)

“You don’t look so good. Do you need me to carry you, Sir?” Big Joe asked, breaking the silence.

Jake chuckled weakly, “We’re trying not to draw any attention to ourselves. I don’t think you carrying me around like a rag doll would help.”

“I’m a little worried about the bleeding, Sir,” Big Joe said, looking at Jake’s arm and the blood still dripping from his uniform sleeve.

“Joe, you can lose up to a quart of blood without being in too much danger. I think I got most of the bleeding under control. It looks worse than it is,” Jake said, hoping that it was true.

The two men walked in silence again, carefully avoiding the occasional passing soldier or vehicle. When Jake stumbled over a large piece of gravel, Big Joe grabbed his collar to keep him from falling. From then on, Big Joe kept his hand on Jake’s shoulder.

“Can I ask you something, Sir?” Big Joe asked, breaking the silence again.

“Shoot,” Jake replied.

“Did you really shoot a detainee?”

“Yup. I sure did.”

“Why did you do that?”

Jake took so long to answer that Big Joe thought he was sleepwalking. “I had a soldier killed by an IED in Iraq. Marcus Williams, good soldier, good human being. He died in my arms.” Jake paused again and Big Joe put Jake’s arm around his shoulder. “Well, one late night, my platoon was out and we just happened to catch a guy with leftover pieces of det cord and other IED materials. He—he started bragging about killing my soldier.” Jake stumbled again and tried to sit down. Big Joe jerked Jake up and forced him to walk on. Jake had to keep moving.

“He said that he’d already laid another IED. So I asked him where the trigger was or the bomb. He started laughing about killing Williams. I got mad, pulled out my pistol and shot him. Simple as that, Joe.” Jake began to cough and wheeze. He was as pale as Walters had been.

“Man, I wish Doc was here,” Big Joe said.

“M-me too,” Jake said.

“How’d you get out from under it?” Big Joe asked, watching his platoon leader’s life ebb away.

“I called my dad and he basically made it all go away. Then I got tapped to lead this platoon.” Jake coughed. “That worked out well.”

He dropped to his knees. The will to keep moving was gone; he had to stop. He reached his hand out to Big Joe. “Just let me rest for a little while—”

Big Joe called out, “You still with me, Sir? Sir!”

“Jeez, Doc, how much longer is this going to take?”

“This is the last suture, just a second—there we are. All closed up.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll be fine. A little bit of fluid replacement and some rest are what he needs. I’m a little rusty at suturing, but I don’t think the scarring will be too bad.”

“Excellent. Hey, what’s in the needle?”

“This is epinephrine; most people call it adrenaline.”

“What’s it going to do?”

“Well, I could bore you with the technical details about adrenergic receptors and glycogenolysis, but the short version is it’s going to give the good captain a nice jump start.”

His vision temporarily blurred by the tent’s fluorescent lighting, Jake could see little when his eyelids jerked open. Still, he had an unexplainable need to move around. Attempting to sit up, he was met with resistance in the form of Doc Ramirez‘s hand on his chest.

“Lay back, Sir. You can’t jerk around with the IV in you,” Ramirez said.

“What happened?” Jake asked, looking around the tent. The entire platoon was assembled around his cot. The feeling of so many eyes on him made Jake uncomfortable.

“You passed out trying to get back to the tent. Joe had to carry you back. Sorry it took me so long, but it wasn’t easy stealing the stuff to fix you up,” Ramirez said.

Jake looked down at his injured arm. Where the stab wound had been, there was now a pristine gauze bandage taped to his arm. In his other arm, a needle led up to an IV fluid bag.

“You’re all stitched up, but I need you to start a course of antibiotics to prevent infection.”

Big Joe was still standing protectively over Jake’s cot. Jake gave the hulking soldier an approving nod and a thumbs-up.

“Don’t mention it, Cap.” Joe said nonchalantly.

“Sergeant McBride?” Jake called out.

“I’m here, Sir,” McBride said. Just outside of Jake’s line of sight.

“H-how we doing?” Jake asked, rubbing his head.

“Long story short, we’re good,” McBride said, moving around and sitting directly in front of Jake.

“Walters?” Jake asked.

“He’s alive,” McBride said. Jake nodded his head at the news, processing the implications.

“Is he talking?” Jake asked wearily.

“No, and he never will. The doctor said he had a severe stroke. His brain went without oxygen for over ten minutes before the base paramedics got to him. He’s in a coma right now; if he ever comes out of it, he will most certainly be severely brain damaged.”

Jake nodded his head slowly. It had been exactly the news he’d wanted to hear. Some things were worse than dying; living in a vegetative state was one of them.

“Hell of a way for things to go down,” Jake said.

“I’d say the man upstairs was looking out for us on this one. Far as I can tell, we’re in the clear.”

“I seriously doubt it,” Jake said, examining the IV needle in his arm.

“Nah, Sir, we’re good. The G-Men think the money’s lost in Indian country, and the only guy that could contradict that has machines breathing for him. I’m telling ya, we’re good.”

“We’re going to have to deal with C.I.D.”

“Far as they know, their guy had a long overdue stroke. Bena was able to slip away in the confusion, so it’s just Ramirez and me answering any tough questions if they come up, which they won’t. Ramirez was able to take a look at Walters’s medical records at the hospital. He was a walking heart attack. There was no way that he should have been allowed to be in the platoon, let alone the Army,” McBride said.

“Seems you got everything figured,” Jake said.

“Hardly, Sir. If I had everything figured, we wouldn’t have been in all this shit to begin with.”

Jake could not resist giving McBride the business one more time. “Well, you did flashbang me, punch me in the face, and lie to me for months. So I would hope you feel a little sorry,” he commented. The hurt he had felt was beginning to dull. He’d never forget, but he might be able to forgive.

“So you’re still going to hit me in the face with a sock full of washers?”

“No, it’ll be a sock full of drywall screws,” Jake said. Both men shared a forced grin.

“I spoke to the battalion commander on the phone while I was at the hospital,” McBride said. “He wanted to know the five Ws about Sergeant Olsen’s stroke. He wanted to talk to you specifically, but I told him you were consulting a chaplain because you were pretty messed up about the loss,” McBride said.

“Okay.” Jake told himself he had to trust McBride again, but he hoped not for long.

“He wanted an incident report. I went ahead and wrote it. You should take a look at it before you talk to him,” McBride said.

Parsons stepped up.

“Thanks, Sir,” he said.

“For what?” Jake asked.

“You made things right for Petey. And protecting The Severance.”

Jake nodded his head slowly. He was too weak and tired for much conversation. But he needed to know one last thing from McBride.

“Do you think the commander knew about Walters?” Jake managed to ask.

“Hard to say, Sir. If he did know that Sergeant Olsen was C.I.D., he doesn’t know about The Severance,” McBride said. Jake let himself admit McBride’s logic was solid. The commander would have gladly traded in 4.6 million dollars in for a promotion to full colonel.

“Sir, there is one thing,” McBride whispered, close to Jake’s ear. “I had to renegotiate Bena’s, Ramirez’s, and Big Joe’s shares, seeing that Walters blabbed about how much was in The Severance. Otherwise nothing has changed.” Jake looked at Doc Ramirez and nodded slowly. Ramirez winked.

“Cost of doing business, I suppose,” Jake said. It didn’t really matter. Right now, he counted himself lucky to be alive and not on a ventilator machine like Walters.

The tent was finally quiet; all the guys had gone to dinner. Jake imagined them joking as usual, relieved and happy that The Severance was still theirs. For his part, Jake took a pain pill, drank some bottled water, and tried to come to grips with his many issues. Happily, Jessica had not tried to kill him, but she was probably pregnant with his child. If she held to her plan to put the blame on Wesley Parker, he would be home free. Maybe. If there was one thing Jake knew, it was that there were no happy endings. Life’s unhappy events never actually ended at all; they just reshaped themselves and continued forever.

Like his revenge killing for Marcus Williams. Some of the men had exalted him then; some had betrayed him. The worst of them had done both. He asked himself if he was, indeed, a bad man. For his crime, the Army had made him into an attack dog, given him a gang of curs, and turned them loose. Jake chuckled to himself. The bosses hadn’t kept a tight enough leash on their tough guys, though, and because of that oversight, the platoon had The Severance.

It was time to go home. Who knew what he and the other soldiers would face there? Jake raised his water bottle in a toast. “Here’s to Kodiak Platoon and its disposable heroes. For us, the war will never be over.”