She stood up and let me escort her from the office.
“Sorry, baby,” I said quietly.
“That’s okay,” she replied, her voice tired. “I don’t want to cause more problems out here. Besides, I can get some stories from Leatherneck so the paper won’t be shortchanged.”
“If anything happened to you…” I began.
She interrupted me quickly. “I told you, Sebastian, I’m not going to take risks. If you care about me, you won’t either.”
“If I care about you?” I snapped, my temper flaring.
“You know what I mean,” she said calmly, “and keep your voice down.”
There were too many people watching us, so I zipped my lips and left Caro outside her room, trying—and failing—to keep my eyes off her.
We’d just finished chow and I was sucking down the piss-weak coffee, when Sanders reported that the helo would be here soon.
“Supply chopper on its way,” he announced, then picked out a platoon to retrieve the goodies before the locals decided to put their thieving hands all over it.
A few minutes later, we heard the distinctive thrum of the Black Hawk’s twin engines chewing up the air around it, and small parachutes began raining down.
Once the swag had been collected and relocated to the compound, guys gathered around to sort out the supplies: ammunition, water, fresh rations, but only a small bag of mail and no parcels. I wasn’t surprised by that—water was heavy and took up a lot of room. Larger items of mail would have to wait their turn or be stockpiled at Leatherneck.
Suddenly, my name was called.
“Hunter: you got mail, sir,” and one of the younger guys I hadn’t met yet waved a thin envelope at me.
There was no return address on it so I wondered who the hell it was from. I pulled it open and started reading.
My beautiful boy,
I hope I can see you reading this, because I want to watch as your eyes darken with lust and your lovely mouth widens in a smile, and maybe you’ll shift uncomfortably as your glorious cock hardens, pushing against the rough khaki of your uniform. Because then I’ll be imagining the moment I take you inside my mouth or inside my body, your breath hot on my back as your naked flesh…
My eyes widened in shock, followed by a grin that I couldn’t hide as I glanced up to see Caro watching me, a knowing smile on her face. She winked at me, then carried on helping sort the mail, although I could see she was still watching me from under her lashes.
I read through the whole letter, sitting in the dirt, leaning against the mud wall of the compound. Hot damn, my girl really was good with words. I was so fucking turned on, so happy that she’d written to me so I had something of her to keep by my side, so fucking grateful to have her in my life. I closed my eyes and let my head rock back against the mudbrick wall, imagining everything that she’d written.
Then one of the other guys scrunched up his own letter and dropped it in the dirt.
“What’s up man?”
“Fucking ‘dear John’ letter,” he answered bitterly. “She said she didn’t want to spoil my last few days of leave, so she thought she’d wait till I got out here to tell me she was seeing someone else. Bitch.”
Yeah, pretty much every one of us knew what that felt like. Girls went for the uniform—not so much the months of being left behind with an empty bed and time on their hands. Some couldn’t help the constant worrying, they said. Another reason for not getting attached, although that had all changed for me now.
The sun had sunk behind the mountains and the compound was shady for once. I was just thinking I should check on my terps and call into the comms room when the guard on duty in the observation post yelled loudly.
“Incoming!”
Everyone scrambled for their body armor and weapons. I slapped my helmet over my head and yanked on my Kevlar vest, but I lost sight of Caro and my heart lurched.
The first RPG exploded about 200 yards outside the compound and a spray of dirt rocketed 90 feet into the air.
I grabbed my M16 and ran to the nearest observation post. Then the durg-durg of the heavy machine guns started.
Another RPG exploded: 100 yards this time. Looked like the Taliban gunner was getting his sights lined up. Not fucking good. But there weren’t any further shots and I wondered if it was just to stop us from getting any downtime. If that was the reason, I was a little surprised that they didn’t wait until night time so they could disturb our sleep: fucking amateurs.
Before the all-clear had been called, I ran to Caro’s room and stuck my head around the door, making her cry out in fright.
“You okay, baby?”
“Yes, fine. Don’t worry about me,” she replied breathlessly.
I nodded and sprinted to the comms room.
I guess I’d spoken too soon, because after that the Taliban had a new tactic: sleep deprivation. Intermittently throughout the night, they’d fire random RPGs that never landed near enough to be dangerous, but stopped the guys getting any rest. Not that sleeping in body armor was that easy anyway—at least not until complete exhaustion had set in.
I spent the night in the comms room listening to a combination of insults broadcast in broken English, threats of what they’d do if they captured us, plus two terrorist cells talking to each other.
By dawn, we were all tired and pissed.
Guys were starting to line up for breakfast when I heard some of them singing the old Beatles classic ‘I’m So Tired’—the lines that said the guy had his mind on the blink because he hadn’t slept a wink.
When I looked out of the comms room, nine fuck-ugly Marines were singing and grooving, surrounding a smiling Caro who was singing along with them and shaking her hips. More guys joined in, making me want to punch the ones who were staring at her ass, but then Grant appeared from his office, and even he couldn’t help smiling. I didn’t know the guy had teeth.
I nearly choked when the boss threw Caro a salute and she waved back. Only my gal. Damn, I was proud. Yeah, I may have mentioned that before.
The patrols that day were kept short. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing that Caro would be safe in the compound—well, as safe as Helmand Province got. I was sent out with Sanders and an EOD operator to check out if there was any unexploded ordnance from the night’s RPG attacks. The guy wore his dog tags on his boots because he said that those would be the only things left if an IED took him out.
I hadn’t been there long when Jankowski arrived with orders to join him and his unit in another patrol to the foothills. I left my best terp with Sanders, a 17 year old kid named Gawhar. I trusted him more than the others; he seemed solid, but that wasn’t saying much.
We pushed further into the hills, only turning around when we started losing the light. We’d stopped for a five minute break to give us a chance to drink some water and eat an energy bar. Chiv had been listening in on the portable radio when he waved me over.
“Fuck man, you need to hear this.”
As I listened, all the blood drained from my face. A Taliban cell was gloating that they’d killed an ‘Infidel’ journalist. I thought I was going to be sick. It was only when I heard the words ‘Kandahar’ and ‘Bastian’ repeatedly, that I realized that they weren’t talking about Caro.
Chiv radioed back to the compound when he saw the look on my face, just to check Caro was safe.
We booked it back quick march anyway. Seeing her sitting outside in the quad was the best fucking sight ever. I breathed out a deep sigh of relief, hating that I couldn’t go to her, and stood with the other guys as the kitchen re-opened to heat up some shitty chili-flavored MREs.
I’d just started eating when Grant ordered me into the office and told me to sit down. That was a first.
“Seb,” he began. Fuck, if he was using my first name it must be serious. “You met the journalist Elizabeth Ashton. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand she was a friend of Ms. Venzi’s.” Was? “Ms. Ashton was killed by sniper fire near Camp Bastian today,” he said, his voice cold and angry. “It’s a publicity killing. They know she was a journalist and the fact that she was a woman makes it even more newsworthy. The locals know that Ms. Venzi is here—I wouldn’t be surprised if the Taliban have already put two and two together and figured out she’s journalist.”