inside there's an army waiting (for their marching orders from you)

storm_petrel

They’re down in Texas, Fort Hood, warm-weather September, 2009. It should be feeling like vacation, but it’s not. The brass wanted Jensen, mostly, and the rest of them went along because Clay has the not-unreasonable fear that if he leaves any of his team alone stateside for any length of time, they’ll get poached or re-assigned. Sometimes he just worries that they’ll get into trouble.

That’s also not an unreasonable fear.

This afternoon, this brutal afternoon, Clay’s been lecturing on strategy tactics in urban combat—thinking about Sarajevo back in the nineties, as he thumbs his way through the mind-numbing slides—and he’s been staring into the powerpoint projector for too long. There’s a dull ache starting to push out from behind his eyes, and the room’s got shit ventilation, so when they finally hit fifteen hundred break time, he heads for the outside world.

Outside, the wind’s picking up, and clouds are starting to scud in across the big sky. In the distance, he can see Jensen emerge from the treeline with a dozen or so—well, they have to be kids, mostly because they make Jensen look venerable. The Army’s brought together a handful of their best tech specialists and handed them off to Jensen for the week, mostly in the hope that he’ll produce a series of field-functional operatives. Looking at this group, it’s highly unlikely, but Clay figures they live in hope. Jensen’s always been a bit of an outlier among the technical boys, mostly because the sound of gunfire doesn’t make him flinch.

There’s close enough to hear, now, snatches of conversation, Jensen saying, brightly, “—that, my geeklings, is why C4 is so goddamn awesome.”

Jensen says something else that the wind carries away and Clay snorts, straightens up, because the faster Jensen gets these kids up to speed, the faster they get back in the field. Right now, Clay would rather face down rocket fire than that goddamn powerpoint projector.

And then one of the kids, a gawky long-armed redhead, swings around to answer Jensen. The entrenching tool he’s carrying arcs over his shoulder, a dull silvery flash in the afternoon light, and suddenly Jensen goes down like his strings have been cut.

Clay’s moving before he’s actually realized what’s happened. He’s covered half the distance, a hundred yards in ten fucking seconds, before someone starts howling for a medic.

That was five hours ago.

Jensen’s dead. Blank-eyed and the lights out, in a body bag in the morgue. The base doctor said highly localized skull fracture, with death immediately following . Roque had to physically drag Cougar away from the table where they had Jensen laid out, blood congealing on his temple, eyes shut, so white and so goddamn cold already.

Jesus , thought Clay. Jesus fucking Christ.

They’re in one of the good rooms, suites reserved for brasshats and VIPs, and if they’re close enough to the morgue to smell it, well, no one’s mentioned that yet. Pooch is sitting on one of the bunks, stony-faced, a glass in his hand, drinking steadily from the bottle of Jack Daniels. Cougar’s curled up on the bed in the corner, facing the wall.

No one’s tried to talk to him yet.

Roque comes in and sits down at the table next to Clay. He opens his mouth, like he’s about to say something, and thinks twice. He rests a hand on Clay’s shoulder instead.

A minute later, no sound in the room except Pooch swallowing, and then Roque says, “Have you called his sister yet?”

Clay hasn’t called Sarah Jensen Corwin yet, because he has no fucking idea how to tell her that her brother’s dead in the base morgue, dead on American soil because some idiot turned around too fast and didn’t know how to properly stow a goddamn shovel. Dead Army husband, dead Army brother. He’s done this before, but it’s never felt like this, a slow cold pulse of nausea in his gut. What the fuck is he even going to say ?

And then, abruptly, Cougar sits up.

He hasn’t moved since this afternoon, hasn’t even twitched. It’s so unexpected that Clay tenses hard, and Roque’s gaze snaps towards him. Cougar’s eyes are red and wet and more than a little crazy, and Clay’s about to reach out to steady him, the reaction automatic, when Cougar hisses, “Listen.”

And Clay stops, because there’s yelling in the hallway, getting closer, and something is clearly going down that’s really not base situation-normal. And then Cougar bolts for the door so fast he knocks the bottle of Jack Daniels straight out of Pooch’s hands.

“Son of a bitch,” says Pooch, and goes after him, because letting Cougar get out of arm’s length tonight is a bad fucking idea. Clay’s right behind him.

He skids to a stop in the hall, Roque crashing gracelessly against his back, and he couldn’t move with a gun to his head, shock fixing him in his tracks. There’s two MPs in the hallway, and they’re hanging on to Jensen.

Jensen’s got half the rubberized sheet from the body bag draped over him like some kind of sick-joke toga. His bare legs are sticking out underneath, and his feet are black and dirty. There’s blood still drying on his face and he’s yelling at the top of his lungs.

“What the actual fuck, let me go you fucking asshole, I swear to god, someone had better own up to this right fucking now —” And then he sees Cougar, and his eyes widen. “ Cougar ,” he snarls, and this is it, this is as close as Clay’s ever heard Jensen come to actually losing his shit. “You better fucking tell me who thought this was funny, because I’m going to fucking kill them—”

Cougar barrels into Jensen so hard the MPs actually dodge out of the way. Jensen staggers, taking on a hundred and eighty pounds of wiry sniper, but he’s still wild-eyed, still yelling, “What the fuck, Cougar, are you fucking crazy?”

“You’re dead ,” says Cougar, and Jensen shoves him back.

“ Motherfucker do I look dead? ” he howls, all on one breath, and then Pooch is there and he and Cougar manage to get Jensen under the shoulders before he falls over.

Ten minutes later, they’re in the infirmary. The doc who declared Jensen dead that afternoon spends about fifteen seconds trying to get them to leave. Then Roque says something that Clay conveniently forgets in case he’s ever questioned about it at a military tribunal, and the doctor goes white and backs off.

Jensen’s sitting on the bed, eyes wide and still a little manic, but fucking alive. He won’t let go of Cougar’s hand, or maybe it’s the other way around. “Colonel, I woke up in a body bag, please can we make it so that never happens again? I woke up in a cooler in a body bag, I would really like it if that didn’t ever fucking happen again.” He’s pale, but his colour’s starting to come back, flushing his face. He’s fucking alive .

***

Jensen tries to make a joke about it, a couple of times, afterwards—“Someone should call Romero, because I am clearly the best zombie—” but he knocks it off pretty quickly when he realizes no one else thinks it’s funny. Clay doesn’t even think Jensen thinks it’s funny, and that’s a first. Given that Jensen can see the humour in getting pelted with Soviet-era grenades by gangsters in Belarus, that’s saying something.

***

It’s 02:46, January 2010, and Clay’s asleep in a hotel room in New York when the phone rings.

“Something’s happened to Lin,” says Jolene, her voice steady in his ear, just a tiny undertone of terror, so faint he can hardly hear it. Clay sits up fast in bed. “They won’t tell me what happened,” she says, “But Lin said he’d call me after the flight today, and he didn’t.”

Clay shoves the phone under his ear, grabs for his pants. He hammers on the dividing wall to wake up Roque.

It’s a new model chopper that they’re rolling out somewhere in California, and for some reason Pooch’s name had come up as a demo pilot. He’s been out west since last week while the rest of them have been back east, catching up on their sleep.

It takes six hours to make it out to San Diego, on a military charter. Jolene beats them by forty minutes.

She’s poised by Pooch’s hospital bed when Clay finally pulls rank and bulls past the doctors, poised and tense, but there’s something—something in her eyes. Something really bad, something out of a war zone, like she’d kill him, kill him with her bare hands if she had to.

Clay blinks, and then it’s gone, just Jolene, looking exhausted and composed and she says, “Took you boys long enough.”

Pooch smiles, but it’s weak, something seriously wrong about it. Clay blinks, and then takes a slow breath, brushes it off. Paranoia. Near-death experiences take their toll. It’s not like it’s never happened before. They’ll get Pooch past the shrinks, back into the field. This will pass.

They’ve always gotten through before.

***

April 2010, and they’re in a bad fucking spot.

And this is beyond a fuckup, this is the god damned heavyweight champion of fuckups, but Clay doesn’t have time to dwell, because there was a third guard patrol they didn’t know about—fucking intel failures, and Clay is going to kill someone—and that patrol walked right into Cougar’s nest.

He killed two of them before they got him down and ripped away his throat mike.

And now Gutierrez has him on his knees, down in the courtyard. They’re got cover back here in the trees, but that’s going to be gone the second Clay gives the fire order. On comms, he can hear someone—Jensen—breathing as he runs, getting into position, harsh and trying to get it under control.

Gutierrez has Cougar’s radio in hand. Clay’s got the right angle, can see him lift it close to his mouth, hears the wet, fleshy exhale when he toggles the frequency open. “You have one minute to give yourselves up,” he says, shifting his bulk from one foot to the other as he scans the trees. “One minute, and then I blow your sniper’s fucking brains out.”

One minute, and that’s maybe just enough time for Pooch and Jensen to get in position on the far side of the compound. The detonator timers on the generators out back still have more than two and half minutes on the countdown, so they’ll have to buy some time. Clay glances at Roque, signals the move. “Fast and hard,” he says, quietly, and Roque tenses beside him.

Then abruptly, one of Gutierrez’s men steps up to where Cougar’s kneeling, a blunt-barrelled revolver in his hand. Cougar shows his teeth, but he doesn’t shift, doesn’t say a word.

And this is it, they have to move, and Clay opens his mouth to give the order when the guy grabs Cougar’s hair and suddenly screams, high and sharp as he jerks back, and Clay has a split-second to think razor blades in his fucking hair because Cougar always wanted to make sure no one ever tried to grab that twice. Cougar laughs, short and sharp, and the guy’s gun hand twitches up hard, and he pulls the trigger.

Clay remembers yelling, and moving, and the charges blowing. Not much else. That’s bad.

That’s very bad.

And the building’s starting to burn, and there’s bodies on the ground everywhere, and Jensen has the blankest expression Clay’s ever seen on his face.

“Don’t,” says Jensen. His voice is low, toneless. “I got him.” He boosts Cougar’s body over his shoulder, like he weighs nothing, even in all his gear. When he straightens up, Jensen’s face is crumpling and Clay has to look away.

It’s a long hike back to the chopper, single-file along the overgrown trail, Pooch on point, face grey and eyes bleak, Roque covering their six, grinding his teeth so hard Clay can almost hear it ten yards up the trail. Jensen is crying, silently and furiously, the whole way. Clay wouldn’t know if he didn’t hear Jensen’s breath hitch every minute or so.

His own eyes are burning dry, and it’s such a goddamn waste he wants to punch something, but he keeps going, grimly, one boot in front of the other, blinking hard every time Jensen chokes down a noise. He doesn’t know how he’s going to get Jensen through this, or Pooch. And there are days when he doesn’t think he can handle this job anymore, and he’ll never get used to this, the way it takes, and it takes and it takes —

“Boss,” says Cougar.

Clay stops dead, and Jensen makes a sound that’s not really human, and he and Cougar both go down.

Roque’s pounding up the path behind him, and Jensen’s trying to kick his way back to his feet, but all Clay can see is Cougar staring up at him from where he’s lying in the dead leaves, wide brown eyes and serious mouth and one eyebrow raised, and so fucking Cougar like half his fucking head hadn’t just been blown away .

Jensen’s wrapped around him now, fierce and awkward, face pressed against Cougar’s shoulder. He’s saying something, but it’s muffled against Cougar’s jacket, and Roque is cursing too loud to make it out. At this point, Clay thinks, as his brain latches on to the most logical thought it can, it’s probably better if he doesn’t know what Jensen is saying. Especially since he also sees the way Cougar’s stroking the bare skin of Jensen’s neck, too fucking gentle to be anything else.

***

“All right,” says Clay, in the calmest tone he can manage. “There’s a logical explanation for this.”

They’re sitting in a loose circle next to the truck. Pooch probably cleared a hundred klicks over the rough jungle road in under an hour. No one’s tracking them today.

Pooch has his head resting on his knees. He hasn’t really looked at anyone since Cougar starting talking again. Clay can tell he’s been working up to something, and finally Pooch looks up. His eyes are dark with something, and Clay realizes with a jolt that Pooch is actually terrified , and that almost hits him harder than anything else has today.

It has not been a good day.

“When the chopper crashed,” says Pooch, finally, slowly. “The test chopper, the A-91.” He stops, stares at the ground. “I think. I didn’t get out before it caught fire.” He shakes his head. “I—it was burning, and I was inside.” His voice trembles, suddenly, and Clay sees his hands clench into fists.

Then Jensen grabs one of his hands, with the one that’s not still threaded into Cougar’s jacket, and slowly curls his fingers back until Pooch grabs his hand. He takes a deep breath, and keeps going. “When I woke up, I was on the ground with the EMTs and—” he looks up, and his eyes are wide. “It was too fucking crazy, right? I didn’t—I couldn’t even tell the fucking shrink. I just— imagined it, near-death bullshit and all that.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” says Roque, pointing at the blood and fucking grey matter streaked all down Jensen’s back. “You call that imaginary?” He rounds on Clay. “And the time we pulled Jensen out of the fucking morgue , what do you call that?”

Clay doesn’t know what to call it, but he knows what he believes, deep down.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is motherfucking enemy action.

***

The problem is, where’s the fucking enemy ?

What is he even supposed to think? Well, fuck me, sir, my men aren’t dying in combat like they’re supposed to, sir. They keep coming back.

So they keep going. What else are they supposed to do?

***

Clay wasn’t close enough to see Roque’s boot hit the tripwire—fucking stupid , careless, and Roque must have been distracted for half a second, but it was enough—but he’s close enough to hear the fragmentation grenade detonate.

After, when the traffickers are all put down, Clay walks out into the middle of the warehouse, into the blast radius. There are small fires crackling in the debris. Debris. The floor is wet under Clay’s boots.

Roque’s keffiyeh is tangled in—something. Clay picks it up, carefully unwinding it as it comes away, red and black on the camouflage green.

Cougar is whispering something, soft and muttering under his breath, and Jensen sounds like he can’t breathe. Pooch takes a long, rattling inhale, and says, “Fuck. Fuck .”

And in Clay’s head, something suddenly goes very quiet and very still. “Get out,” he says, and he brings Roque’s keffiyeh to his eye, wiping away a spatter of blood, twisting it hard between his fingers. “Go secure the fucking perimeter.”

“Boss,” says Cougar, so quietly Clay can barely hear him over the lingering tinnitus. “You think he’ll—”

“Think that was an order, Sergeant,” says Clay, almost gently. His fingers twist the scarf hard enough that threads start to pop. Pooch grabs Cougar’s shoulder, and jerks his head at Jensen. Jensen’s staring at the blast radius, wide-eyed and too fucking still now, but he moves when Cougar catches his wrist.

Then there’s no sound except the low crackle of the flames, the occasional crash as a chunk of wall masonry give way. The smoke stings Clay’s eyes, explosive residue and—

Clay sits down, very carefully, facing the wall, away from the blast radius. Tucks his knees up against his chest, the survival position for retaining body heat and slowing the onset of psychological shock. Holds his M4 in the comfortable, two-handed resting grip.

After a while, there’s a sound behind him. Something moving, slow and wet and implacable in the rubble. Clay doesn’t look back.