I was walking through pitch darkness, the only lights the pale, yellow glow of the barracks in the distance, leakage through doors and windows sealed against the humidity and the insects, which didn’t bite but buzzed about annoyingly around any light source. The hum of the portable air conditioning units was an insectoid whine of its own against the buzz of the alien bugs, lulling me into a torpor.
I hadn’t, I realized, reclaimed my carbine from Captain Covington yet. He’d stuck it in his office when the MP’s had taken me away and there’d been so much to talk about when I’d returned that neither of us had thought about it. I should meet with him tomorrow and get it back.
The thought had barely made a casual amble through my head when I saw the three figures step out of the shadows of a single section of wall that was all left standing from a wrecked building. They were human. I could tell that from the shape, and I let go the breath that had caught in my throat. The relief faded when I got closer and could make out their faces.
I didn’t know the other two men, but the tall one in the center was Jared Butler, an E5 buck sergeant, one of Freddy’s squad leaders. I’d seen him talking to the man a few days ago on the Iwo Jima before we launched for the operation. I assumed the other two were in his squad and they all had the look of men who had joined the Marines after being given the same choice I had: go to war or go to jail.
Butler moved out to block my way and I started to walk around him, ready to run if I had to, but the other two spread out and cut off my avenues of egress, just like we were in battle.
“Those guys who died,” Butler said without so much as an attempt to conceal why he was there, “they were my friends. The ones those Tahni shitbags killed. The ones you tried to protect.”
“Get out of my way, Sergeant Butler,” I told him, trying to keep my tone firm and calm. “I’m tired and I want to hit the rack.”
“I bet it is tiring, Lieutenant,” he said, mouth curling in a sneer that turned his ugly face into something even uglier, “spending all day ratting on your fellow Marines.”
I could have pointed out to him that I’d spent all day with the MP’s and the JAG lawyers because Captain Cronje had tried to rat me out, but I knew it would have been an even bigger waste of time than it had been with Freddy. Not only was this guy not inclined to listen, he was too stupid to make the distinction. He was one of those Marines who’d topped out at squad leader and would never, ever move higher, no matter how long the war lasted or how many other people above him got killed.
I let my eyes flicker across the three men. They were unarmed, so at least there was that much. All three were bigger than me, but I didn’t know how much actual fighting they’d ever had to do. Strength and size are important in a fight, but experience is the real key, all other factors not being too far unbalanced. Knowing what’s it’s like being hit in the face and not panicking about it is half of winning a fight.
Still, there were three of them…
“Butler,” I said, “I want to point something out to you that you might not have thought through completely. You think I’m a snitch, an informer. And yet, you’re trying to intimidate me, maybe even assault me, when I’m a superior officer and if I did snitch about it, you’d all wind up in the brig for the rest of the war.”
“Naw, man,” Butler said, laughing, cracking his knuckles in a way that only idiots thought was intimidating. Though it did make me want to crack my knuckles too, in the same way a yawn is contagious. “Ain’t got no helmet cameras to show to the pigs here. It’s just us, and our word against yours.” He leered. “And the word of some of our officers who’ll swear we were back at the barracks all night long.”
Ah. So, this wasn’t just an asshole and his two asshole buddies taking it on themselves to teach me a lesson. This came straight from Cronje. That made things much more complicated. I began looking the three men up and down for weak spots. I was going to get hit, probably going to get hurt, and I wanted to make sure I did as much damage to them as I could in the process.
“Where you from, Butler?” I asked him, trying to distract him from what was about to happen. The less he thought about it, the less prepared he’d be. “Not Trans-Angeles, I can tell that by your accent.”
“I’m from Houston ‘Plex,” the big man said, sounding proud of it. “Ciudad Perdida, the 416’s.”
The Greater Houston Metropolitan Complex, if he’d wanted to be exact, one of three megacities in what used to be the state of Texas, along with DallasWorth and Nuevo El Paso, though that one included parts of old Mexico as well. Not that anyone in Mexico cared. Ciudad Perdida was the Underground neighborhood, 416 was the housing block, and probably his gang affiliation. I didn’t know them. The gangs in Trans-Angeles didn’t consider any other cities as having real gangs, just violent social clubs.
“What did you do to get yourself enlisted?” I wondered, turning slowly, the three of them moving to keep me at the center. “Must have been pretty serious. Not just holding contraband or shaking down the kiosks for protection. Guy like you would have taken the ride just for
