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  “Too easy.” Morgan dropped his helmet into his lap. He wiped his sweaty mop of black hair and stared at the bad guy next to him. “Does it ever drop below a hundred and ten here?” The warlord just looked at him blankly. Morgan then noticed what appeared to be an obvious erection in the warlord’s dress. “That for me or her… or you thinking about the goat you left back home? Keep your eyes on the floor dirt bag! You can disrespect your own women all you want but you’re not disrespecting any of my soldiers.” The sergeant slowly shook his head as Al-Quds cursed him under his breath. “Redwood, we need to get off the highway.”

  “My ass is sore from all the back roads, Sarge!” Redwood shouted behind him.

  “Yeah, well, this road makes us sitting ducks, Corporal. Randy’s buddies are probably out looking for him now.” Al-Quds gave Morgan an evil look.

  “Crap,” Redwood said looking around. Suddenly the lead vehicle started to slow down. The other four vehicles followed suit, and eventually all the hummers came to a halt.

  “What the hell?” Morgan leaned forward.

  “Don’t know, Sarge.” Redwood said. “Everybody’s stopped. Gettin’ a bad feeling in my gut.”

  “Fucking Osborne!” Morgan grabbed his helmet and his M-4 and started to climb outside of the vehicle. “Cross, up on the gun. Redwood, watch that fucker!”

  “Right!”

  Morgan climbed out of the Humvee and glanced around him. They were surrounded on both sides by high fields of dry grass and several rows of trees. Not good at all. He threw a quick look back at his hummer to see Cross on the .60 caliber, keeping watch. The convoys other gunners were also up in their turrets.

  “Morgan?” Sergeant Davis, a wiry Georgian, hustled up next to him. “What the fuck?”

  “I don’t know, Davis. More of the L-Tee’s bullshit, I guess. Keep an eye out. Looks like things might get Butt Crack Funky.”

  “Shit!” Davis said, jogging back to his vehicle.

  Corporal Johnson and Specialist Pearson, from Lieutenant Osborne’s Humvee, approached the sergeant. Both soldiers had hanged-dog looks on their faces. Johnson cleared his throat and squinted up at the senior NCO.

  “Sergeant Morgan, uh, the Lieutenant wants ‘The Holy Wind’ in his vehicle.”

  “Holy Day of Judgment, you dog!” Al-Quds grumbled in English.

  “What do you know? Randy here speaks English.” Morgan grinned. “We stopped for this? There isn’t a fucking sense of urgency going on right now is there?” He shook his head.

  “Well…”

  “Does he want Sergeant Cross up there to interpret?”

  “No, Sarge.”

  “Swell.” He looked around. “Whatever. Grab his ass so we can get back on the road and out of this Chinese circle jerk!”

  CHINESE CIRCLE JERK

  MALI, WEST AFRICA

  Osborne was speaking to a buddy of his back at camp Hansen when Pearson and Duley returned to the lead Humvee with the disheveled Al-Quds. The self-involved officer placed a hand up to stop the two soldiers and continued his innocuous conversation with his frat brother.

  “Raghead never saw us coming,” Osborne said into his handset.

  Duley leaned forward and cleared his throat.

  “Prisoner, sir.”

  Osborne waved him off and said into his handset, “I gotta help my soldiers do their job. I’ll see you back at Firebase Hansen.” He set the handset down in his lap. “This will be a great photo-op. Put him in the back.”

  Morgan looked around the surrounding area and felt himself tense up. He quickly climbed into the passenger side of his vehicle and growled, “Idiot’s going to get us all killed.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Morgan saw a flash of light and shouted, “Incoming!”

  An explosion rocked the first Humvee. The tan vehicle slid several feet then rolled over onto its side, erupting into a ball of flame.

  “Nine o'clock!” Morgan shouted as he bailed out of the hummer and dove for cover behind the fender of the lightly armored vehicle. The heavy thump of the .60 caliber rocked the vehicle as Cross unloaded on their attackers.

  “Dismount!” Morgan yelled over all the noise. He spotted a waterway that ran along the road that could provide some cover for them and shouted to the other soldiers in the convoy, “Get in the ditch!”

  Another explosion and the ground shook as Sergeant Davis’ Humvee was tossed into the air then crashed to the ground.

  “You see ‘em?” Morgan yelled up at Cross.

  “Got the fuckers!” Cross shouted as she fired into the clump of trees the rocket attack had come from. Hot empty shell casings dropped to the ground. The smell of gunpowder and burning rubber filled the air.

  “One o'clock!” Private Castillo shouted at them from the turret of one of the three remaining Humvees. “One o’clock!” he repeated as he started to fire on another enemy position.

  Redwood had slid into the ditch to the right of his vehicle and had been able to fire off a few rounds in the enemy's position, but he doubted he’d hit anything. Glancing over the top of the ditch, he saw a rebel soldier crawling toward the tree line with what looked like an RPG in his hand.

  “Aw shit! Sarge, there’s a bad guy heading for the tree line! I can’t get him from here!”

  “Got him!” Morgan shouted from his position behind the hummer. He locked him in his sights and fired off a three round burst. The rebel stopped moving… permanently. Several more rounds raked the front of the Humvee. Morgan heard moaning to his right; he glanced over to see Corporal Johnson sprawled on his back several feet away from his burning vehicle. The soldier had been ejected from it when the rocket had struck them and a trail of bullets was impacting around the wounded man.

  “Call in air support on those tree lines!” Morgan said to Redwood, who held the radio. Another rocket impacted near Morgan’s hummer. Mud splattered the sergeant’s right side. He leaned into the Humvee and grabbed Cross by the boot. “Get the fuck into the ditch, now!”

  The sergeant fired a few more rounds then climbed back down into the vehicle. She grabbed her M-4 off the seat and scrambled into the ditch beside Redwood who was busy on the radio calling in an airstrike.

  “Duley! Stay down!” Morgan shouted to the wounded troop then turned to the others in the drainage ditch and yelled, “Dj is hit. I’m going to get him!”

  “Stay put!” he said to the convoy’s medic, Doc Kegy, who was already working on a wounded Private Brandon.

  “Shit!” Cross shouted as rounds whizzed by.

  “Just cover my ass!” Morgan said. Looking over where the corporal lay moaning, he yelled, “Don’t move Dj! Stay down!”

  Rounds hit closer and closer to the fallen corporal; at any second, the enemy would have a bead on him and that would be it for the corporal. “Some fucking photo-op! Cover me!”

  “Gotcha, Sarge!” Cross said, ejecting an empty magazine and quickly slapping in a fresh one.

  “I’m going!” The sergeant said, crouching lower. He took a deep breath then made a sprint for Duley. Bullets flew all about him; then there was an explosion and darkness.

  WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

  TRIPLER ARMY MEDICAL CENTER

  HONOLULU, HAWAII

  When Morgan eventually came to, he found himself in a military hospital. The sergeant felt like someone had beat the crap out of him, taken a break, then beat him again. An IV was hooked up to his right arm and he noticed his left shoulder was covered in thick bandages. It hurt like hell. Morgan's next thought was to lift up the blankets on top of him and look underneath. He saw he still had all his parts and dropped the linen back with a heavy sigh of relief.

  “What the fuck happened?” he mumbled to himself.

  “You were shot in the left shoulder and took some shrapnel in your side; that’s what happened.”

  Morgan looked over in the direction of where the voice had come from. An older female nurse walked in carrying a chart. She smiled and set the folder down on a portable table.r />
  “How are you feeling Sergeant?”

  “I feel like that poor donkey,” he winced.

  “Well,” she chuckled. “I guess this poor donkey got pretty messed up.” She walked over to his left side and gently lifted his arm. “I need to check your vitals.”

  “Check away,” Morgan said groggily. “How am I doing?”

  “Well,”—she took his pulse—“you were shot in the left shoulder. It tore up your rotator cuff, but Doctor Jefferies fixed you up pretty good.” She set his arm down then turned and checked his IV. “You’re lucky; Doctor Jefferies is the best orthopedic doc around.”

  “I feel lucky.” Morgan groaned at his aching shoulder. “I think it might be time for some more pain meds, eh?”

  “I’ll go and get you some more morphine,” she said, looking at his dwindling drip bag.

  “Thanks, nurse… uh?”

  “Karen… Nurse Karen.”

  “Thank you, Nurse Karen.” He shifted in the hospital bed trying to get comfortable. “Do you know about my men? Did anyone come in with me?”

  “I don’t know, Sergeant. You’ve been out for a couple of days. You took a pretty hard knock along with getting shot.” Nurse Karen started for the door then stopped. “You have some visitors here. Would you like to see them?”

  “As long as it’s not my ex-wife, we’re good.” Morgan winced as he absently rubbed his shoulder. The sergeant saw a Styrofoam cup on the table next to him with a straw poking out of it sitting next to a cup of green Jell-O. He clumsily reached for the Styrofoam cup and took a long pull of the cool liquid. He thought it just might have been the best water he’d ever tasted.

  “Sarge?” A familiar voice came from his right. Morgan looked over to see Corporal Redwood and the patrol’s medic, Doc Kegy, walk into the room. Morgan smiled at seeing the two soldiers alive and well.

  “See you took the easy way out,” Redwood joked.

  “Doesn’t feel like it,” Morgan grimaced, hoping the nurse would hurry up with the morphine. “Doc, good to see you.”

  “You too, Sarge. I thought you were a goner for a minute,” the young medic said.

  “That makes two of us. What the hell happened?”

  “Well,”—Redwood pulled up a chair and sat his giant frame down next to the bed—“you went to grab Duley and another RPG landed next to our hummer. The blast knocked you down hard but you got up and dragged Corporal Johnson over to the ditch. That’s when you got hit by sniper fire. The doc worked real hard on keeping you from bleeding out.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “Easiest part of my day,” the medic smirked.

  “Duley?”

  “Hell, Sergeant, he’s better off than you. Broken arm, but he’s fine,” Kegy said, sitting down in a chair on the other side of the bed.

  “Davis? Osborne?”

  “No… we lost Molson, Pearson, and Castillo too.” The Doc looked down at his lap. “Tomasso and Brandon were wounded. Shot, but they’ll recover.”

  “Damn,” Morgan said quietly and lay back in the hospital bed. “What about Sergeant Cross?”

  “Funny story… well,”—Redwood rubbed his bare chin with a giant hand—“I guess it’s not all that funny. Evac finally got there and one of the helos was flown by one of Osborne’s buddies, Captain Anderson. Anyway, the douchebag wants to take the lieutenant's body and the Holy Wind’s remains before any of our wounded.” Morgan shook his head. “So Sergeant Cross grabs this fucker and punches him… hard. Gives him a black eye and tells the driver he’s taking our wounded first, including you.”

  “Cross.” Morgan smiled. “What happened?”

  “This POS Anderson, well, he threatens to have the Sarge court-martialed, but he did take all of our wounded first.” Redwood saw the unopened cup of Jell-O and glanced over at Morgan. “You gonna eat that?” The sergeant shook his head ‘no’ as Redwood scooped it, along with a plastic spoon, up in his oversized paw.

  “Sergeant Cross saved your life,” Doc Kegy said.

  “Shit,” Morgan let out a breath. His shoulder was starting to burn. Where was that nurse? “Where’s Sergeant Cross now?”

  Redwood swallowed a mouthful of the Jell-O and looked over at the medic. “I guess they want to bust her down to private. Last I heard she was cleaning latrines over at Bamberg.”

  “Swell.” The pain in Morgan's shoulder was growing worse. Sergeant Cross was a good soldier; she’d saved his life and now was getting screwed for it. “Get me a phone, would ya?” He groaned. “I know some of the senior staff at Bamberg.”

  “S…sure,” Kegy said, reaching for the landline on a table just as Nurse Karen hurried into the room with a clear bag in her hand.

  “Sorry, Sergeant.” She stepped past Kegy and hooked up a fresh morphine drip bag to Morgan’s IV. “Gentlemen, visiting hours are over. The sergeant here needs to get some rest.”

  “Sarge?” Kegy asked, motioning to the phone.

  “That’s okay, doc.” Morgan groaned as he clicked the drip release in his hand. He had a feeling his shoulder was worse off than Nurse Karen had let on. “I’ll get on the horn to Fort Hood first thing in the morning.”

  “Okay, Sarge.” Redwood unfolded himself from the chair and set the empty Jell-O cup down on the table. “We’ll be back tomorrow. You get some rest.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for coming by.” Morgan nodded weakly. As the two men walked away, the sergeant drifted off to a drug induced sleep.

  ZIMA AND CHOCODILES

  CAMACHO’S COMPOUND

  Ian Black paced around the ornately furnished room like a caged tiger. He walked a few angry feet then stopped and looked up at the swirling ceiling fan. All that the fan succeeded in doing was to push the warm air around the spacious chamber. He set the cheap glass of bourbon down on the top of an end table then lightly sat down on the huge cowhide couch. Black glanced around the room and shook his head at all the faux south-western design. A huge pair of longhorns hung from the wall over the brown cushioned bar. A black, velvet, Elvis painting and one of a bullfighter covered the adobe finished walls. Serapes draped some of the other leather chairs in the spacious room.

  Black took a swig of the bourbon and frowned. He didn’t know if it was the shitty alcohol or the room decor that was making him sick. He quickly drained the glass of bourbon then poured himself another from a bottle on the magazine-strewn coffee table in front of him. The old money millionaire glanced at the Zenith Christopher Columbus watch on his wrist and cursed. Ian Black wasn’t used to being kept waiting; especially in someone else's crappy office.

  He pulled his shirt sleeve over the two hundred thousand dollar watch and loosened his silk tie. He could see the vents in the white painted adobe walls for the central air conditioner so he figured it was off just to make him uncomfortable. Black smirked as he stared at the huge empty desk in the middle of the room. Shrewd, very shrewd. The multi-millionaire leaned back against the rough cowhide and nodded. Maybe he had underestimated Robert Camacho—or ‘Bob the Butcher’ as his men called him behind his back. He placed the bottle of bourbon down on a stack of Ferrari, Playboy, and exotic pet owner magazines and chuckled. Then again maybe he hadn’t. Black felt a waft of cool air as the door behind him opened.

  “Señor Black,” a high-pitched voice with a thick Mexican accent said, followed by the shutting of the door. “Sorry to keep you waiting. An urgent matter came up that had to be dealt with.”

  “A half hour.” Black looked at his watch as the diminutive Camacho strolled casually past him and stopped behind the large oak desk. “At least you could have provided some entertainment.”

  The thickly mustached drug lord opened his hands and smiled through a mouth full of gold capped teeth. “I am sorry… uh… Ian is it? May I call you Ian?”

  Black nodded, irritated. When Camacho pronounced it, it sounded like ‘I an’. “Like I said, something urgent came up. I have plenty of entertainment planned for you later.” He sat down in an expensive leather chair a
nd adjusted his white linen jacket. “I just fed one of my lieutenants, Aguirre, to my tigers. He called me ‘Bob’. I hate Bob. You can call me Robert. Not Roberto; it’s Robert. Or as they call me around here, El Jefe.”

  He turned and pulled opened the door on a small refrigerator behind his desk, removed two ice cold bottles of Zima, and set them in front of him. He twisted the caps off of the bottles and handed one to Black as the frost wafted from the top. “My mother loves everything American. She tried to cross the border when she was pregnant with me but didn’t make it.” He smirked. “Always wanted me to be a big American movie star. I would have too, but I am unable to cross the border at this time.”

  Feeling a little put out but needing to make this deal, Black stood and grabbed up the bottle; all the while listening to the little drug lord ramble on. “Look at me. I’m wealthier than most American movie stars and I’m even in the process of financing my own movie. It’s called 'Shaolin Aztecs'. I’m to be the leading man, but I digress.” Camacho took a swallow from the Zima then wiped his lips. Black did the same. “Good?”

  “Yes.” He nodded as the horrible alcohol burned his cultured throat. Hell, where do you even get Zima these days?

  “I have plenty when you finish that one.”

  “No, thank you, Robert.” He put up a hand, desperately fighting the urge to call him Bob; being fed to a tiger sounded slow and painful. “I had a few shots of this bourbon you oh so generously left me.”

  If he picked up on Black’s sarcasm, El Jefe didn’t show it as he shrugged and took another swig of the Zima. The American could feel the air start to cool in the room. Apparently Camacho had thought more of his own comfort than keeping Black miserable. That was also a good sign; Camacho was self-involved, a weakness for Black to exploit.

  “Zima,” The drug lord held the cold, sweating, bottle in a manicured hand. “My men tell me it’s big with your American college kids.” He took a drink. “Okay, I-an. What is it I can do for you?”