“Orders,” I said. “Finally.” I handed Paine the warning order. “Get first platoon prepared. We head out at oh-six-thirty. Any questions?”
He skimmed the paper. “None, sir.” He gave a sharp salute and reversed direction. I walked around the corner and almost flattened Doctor Sorensen. He glanced up at me.
“Captain,” he said.
“Doctor.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine, sir,” I said.
“What did you lift in the gym last night?”
“I’m up to twenty-two-fifty on the bench press, sir,” I told him. “I’m limited now by what can fit on the bar.”
He gave a nod. “I should’ve thought of that sooner,” he said. He reached out and pressed on my bicep with two fingers. His hand moved up and he tried to drive his thumb into the spot where my pecs ran into my shoulders. “Any muscle pain?”
“None at all, sir. Not even aches from exercising.”
“Excellent.” He peered over his glasses into my eyes. “How’s your appetite? Still good?”
“I’m on double servings, sir, but I think I’m burning most of it off.”
“Converting most of it straight to muscle and bone mass is more likely. Have you weighed yourself today?”
I’d started weighing myself every day while I was at West Point. For a man my size it’s important to keep off extra pounds. Since beginning Sorensen’s process I’d been gaining weight steadily. “Three-hundred and twenty-nine pounds,” I told him.
“Measured yourself?”
“Sir?”
“Your jacket seems a bit tight. I think you may have grown another inch.”
“It’s possible, sir.”
“Remind me to check during our next exam.”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll pardon me, sir, I need to prepare.”
His brows went up. “What for?”
“Nothing to worry about, sir. Standard recon in Yuma, looking for refugees and infected.”
“I see,” he said. He let it hang in the air. “Colonel Shelly is in, then?”
“I believe he is, sir. I just spoke with him a moment ago.”
“Thank you, captain.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The doctor had been distracted these past weeks. His family was back on the east coast. A wife and daughter, as I understood it. As the situation across the country had been getting worse he’d been debating if they should come out to join him at Krypton.
I was two yards down the hall when he called out to me. “Don’t exert yourself if you can avoid it,” he called out to me. “Stop if you feel any pain at all.”
Asking if I was feeling any pain had almost become a joke with Doctor Sorensen. Once I’d been accepted into the program he’d explained most of the process to me. The hormone and steroid shots. The surgeries. I glazed over most of it, to be honest. It wasn’t anything I needed to understand, and I got the sense he was saying it the same way some officers will work through a prepared speech whether it’s still relevant or not. He had stressed how much it was going to hurt when my muscles started to develop. I remember Colonel Shelly had given another of his subtle smiles at that.
I’d been serving in Afghanistan for seven months when, on a fine Wednesday morning in 2005, my squad was pinned down in a village between Farah and Shindand. One man was shot in the throat. Two took body shots in the sides that slipped past their armor. Another got shot in the thigh. It was deliberate. It forced us to leave him crippled and in the open, or to go after him. When a second round struck him in the shoulder I told the squad to lay down cover fire.
I’m big, but I’d surprised people with how fast I could move long before I went through Sorensen’s process. That surprise and the cover fire threw off the snipers’ first three shots. The fourth one didn’t miss, and I felt a kick in the middle of my back that told me my body armor had saved my life.
I never felt the fifth shot. In his report, Staff Sergeant Drake said there’d been a sound like a huge egg breaking and my helmet exploded on my head. I’d dropped in the dust, my head covered with blood, right next to the soldier I was trying to save. The rest of the squad fought off the snipers, lost two more men, and left me there for an hour before someone decided to make an obligatory check for my pulse.
There are just so many times you can be “one of the only survivors” before people begin to feel uneasy around you.
If I was a superstitious man, I’d’ve resigned my commission at the end of my Afghanistan tour. The thought did cross my mind, and I was going to be finishing that tour in the hospital anyway. But I knew better. The Army was where I was supposed to be and I was going to serve until I died. I had a duty to serve my country. The United States had fought a war against itself, spilled its own blood, so my great-great grandfather could be free. So I could have this proud name.
Could I do any less for my country?
Chapter 14
NOW
They brought Cerberus out in pieces. Each component was sealed in heavy wooden crates. A team of volunteers lugged them out with hand trucks and furniture dollies and rolled them down Avenue E to the Plaza lot. Danielle stood at the intersection of E and 3rd, reacting to every bump or rattle with a flurry of curses.
“Ease up,” said St. George. “It’s packed solid. It’s not going to get damaged by any of this.”
“I know, I know,” she sighed. “Sorry,” she shouted to the two men who acknowledged it with a wave. Two soldiers joined them and they hefted the crate up into the Black Hawk. An olive-drab case replaced it on the furniture dolly. The second wave of soldiers had brought medical supplies, some ammunition, and a variety of odds and ends. St. George had seen one case that seemed to be nothing more than boxes of candy bars.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Yeah,” she said. “If they’ve got half the resources John says they do out there, I’ll be able to give the armor a major overhaul. Implement a couple of ideas I’ve had.”
He looked down E and saw Cesar and Lee bringing out one of the smaller crates. HELMET was stenciled on it in blue letters. The younger man shot him a sullen gaze as they got closer. “And?”
“And what?”
He tipped his head back toward the helicopter. “Are you coming back?”
She followed his gaze. “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. I was talking with John last night. He thinks they might want the suit to stay with them. If it stays, I stay.”
St. George’s forehead wrinkled at the news.
“He’s not sure,” she added. “From what I gather the military’s spread so thin they’ll probably ask most of us to keep doing what we’ve been doing out here. You might be stuck with me.”
He smiled. “It hasn’t been that bad so far.”
“You haven’t been paying attention then,” she said. Her eyes snapped to the soldiers as they took the crate from Lee and Cesar. “Hey,” she called out. “Be gentle! That helmet cost more than that helicopter.”
St. George laughed.
“Hey,” said Smith. He walked over to them. Captain Freedom loomed behind him. “Did I miss something funny?”
They shook their heads.
“So,” Smith continued, “it looks like everything’s moving along. Did you guys decide who’s coming with us?”
“I shall be accompanying you back to Yuma,” said Stealth. She’d appeared behind them in the shadows. “Your Colonel Shelly and I have much to discuss.”
Smith nodded. “Excellent. I’m glad to have you with us.”
“I am not with you yet,” said Stealth. “That is one of the points we shall be discussing. I dislike the idea of removing one of our most powerful assets from the Mount.”
“The colonel isn’t about to leave you with weak defenses, ma’am,” said Freedom. “We’ll work something out.”