Chapter 9

I had a Ph.D. I had an ex-wife. I had a kid I’d never seen but did know a little about. I had an arch enemy, two of them actually, and I had a couple of friends. But I had no job. So, I did the sensible thing. I joined the Marine Corps. That’d keep my mind off my troubles!

“So, you think you’re man enough to be one of us,” said Sergeant McNally.

“Yes,” I said.

“I see here your ASVAB’s a 99. You got some smarts?” he said.

“It’s all there in that thing you made me fill out,” I said. He nodded without looking at the paperwork. Well, it was the Marine Corps, being able to read was not an actual requirement. Learning to kill was, but reading...”

“Okay, I have someone I want you to talk to,” he said. He picked up a phone and dialed. We waited.

An officer, a lieutenant colonel, came in from the back. The sergeant handed the officer my packet.

“Please, uh, Mister Wyatt,” he said, checking the papers for my name. “Would you follow me?” I did so.

“So, sir, you are some kind of genius,” he said. I shrugged.

“Some kind,” I said.

“Why the infantry, and really, why the Marine Corps,” he said.

“Personal reasons, and I hear the Corps is the best for that sort of thing,” I said.

“Mister Wyatt, this is not the French Foreign Legion. We usually recruit men who are a bit younger, and are willing to fight if need be. But you... ?” he said. “I mean personal reasons?”

“A divorce I’m trying to get over. And no, I am not trying to get myself killed. I just want to be able to work hard and maybe become a good marine,” I said. “Okay, and yes, forget my ex.” The man was nodding.

“Well, the hard work we can definitely provide. The forgetfulness will be solely up to you. But, okay, you can go back to the sergeant now. He’ll get you squared away. Welcome to the Corps, Mister Wyatt,” he said, and he was smiling. He stuck his hand out and we shook.

It was July of 1990, and I was a marine. Was I happy? I guess I kinda was. I was away from the bad memories, and I was headed for the Recruit Training Depot at San Diego, California. It turned out to be a wonderful place for wishing you were dead! The training was something I had never envisioned in any nightmare I had ever had the singular misfortune of having!

Finally, boot was over and I was assigned. It was September. I had signed up to be a dirt soldier. But for some damn reason that was not to be. I was assigned to be an office geek. I was the shadow of a bird colonel, who thought I’d be useful to him out ‘on’ the dirt—read HQ—but not ‘in’ the dirt where I wanted to be. The most wonderful news of all: we’d be heading for Kuwait. The French Riviera would have to wait. They say the dirt in Kuwait, well the Middle East, is seriously brown, like shit. We’d be seeing.

She had his phone number; well his parents phone number, and she’d called it. He was there to meet her arrival at Phoenix Sky Harbor International. It was a 2:00 p.m. arrival. If anyone was anxious it was him. He hadn’t seen nor heard from Liz Mailman in a thousand years; no one had as far as he knew. They’d definitely be having lunch together as soon as they’d gotten her luggage and were able to get out of the airport terminal.

“I tried calling Lee’s old number, but it was no longer working,” she said. “Hence, I decided to honor you.”

“Well, thank you for your kind consideration. Being second on the list is chicer anyway,” he said. “But Lee’s not in town.”

“Oh,” she said.

“No, he’s in the brown dirt country, his words,” he said.

“Huh?” she said.

“Kuwait,” he said.

“So, I take it things have changed,” she said.

“Talk about understatements. Oh, and Lee got his Ph.D. and I’m a lawyer—thanks to him,” said Lance. “Oh, and he’s divorced.” She gave him a look.

“Wow, things have changed,” she said. “I’m a pharmacist by the way. I got me a job here in Phoenix, at Walgreens. I start in a week from Monday. The guy they have now is retiring.”

“Hah, I’m starting a new gig myself. I was working at the university as kind of an interim thing until I figured out where I wanted to hang my shield. I’ll be starting at Costley and Michaels same day you start at Walgreens,” said Lance.

They pulled into the lot of the Pasture. She snickered.

“And there is the truth that some things never change,” she said. Her ride snickered.

Over six months now that I’ve been in this man’s marine corps, and now I am in one of the worst environments on the planet, Kuwait. Cold in January, and this was January; windy, unfriendly, and dangerous. There is no upside to the place. Well, there is the airport; that because it’s a way to escape the place.

Still, there was a small piece of good news. I was so loved by the commander that I’d gotten my educated ass promoted. I was now a full corporal. Staff sergeant Biggs assured me that a corporal of any kind in the corps was roughly the equivalent of a flag officer in the other services. Well, sergeant Biggs had been a marine for three hundred years, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.

And far from being a dirt soldier, a killer of bad guys, a front line first to fight marine; I was a communications nerd. Shit. I saw the sergeant approaching. He was looking, something.

“Wyatt, get your pretty pink hind-end out there to the Humvee and load up; we’re moving out,” he said. A team of dirt soldiers were thirteen seconds behind the sergeant and began dismantling our stuff. We’d be on the road in ten. The term road in Kuwait really just meant direction; there were no serious roads where we were.

There were nine vehicles in our convoy. I was in the one at the tail end. We were headed northeast toward the Iraq border. This was not good. I’d been around long enough to know that where we were going meant trouble, bad trouble. Hussein was doing his best to piss off the whole world. His level of success was truly amazing.

And then we were in it—trouble. The RPG made short work of our Humvee, and, managed to get me an award, a medal, a purple heart. Wonderful!

I was awake, and I wasn’t sure why, but that surprised me. I saw sergeant Biggs talking to a nurse; he had his head wrapped in swaddling clothes, well it was only a few weeks since Christmas; I knew that much.

But me? I was in a hospital room. This could not be good. Sergeant Biggs, I needed to talk to him. Then I saw a doctor, clearly a doctor, join the two of them. Then, I slept.