Chapter 1

This story takes place between the events in Zack and Danika a Family Sex Date and Zack and Heidi Playtime.

Memorial Day 2029

In front of him along the back of the stage, Brock watched as the red, white, and blue American flags fluttered in the breeze. Beyond the stage, dotting the rolling green landscape were row after row of evenly spaced white marble headstones each with a small American flag neatly planted in the grass in front of it. To the right of the stage, a large green memorial wreath sat on a frame ready for placing. Today the last Monday in May, was the one day each year set aside to officially honor and morn U.S. Military personnel who died while serving in the armed forces.

Memorial Day turned out to be a warm sunny day. Brock had started to sweat in his Army dress blue uniform as soon as he stepped out of his air-conditioned car. He sat in one of two hundred folding chairs set up for today’s event at the Nashville National Cemetery. Brock focused on the notecards in his hand reading the names and short bios written there putting to memory key details before he had to speak.

Lt Col Brock Steele, Army Reserve, was speaking on behalf of local Tennessee US Army soldiers who had been killed in the fighting in Poland last summer. He shuffled through the cards until he came to the name of the soldier he knew personally, had known, before he was killed in action near the end of the short and violent conflict.

“Here honey, your water.” He took the bottle of water from his wife’s hand.

Julia, his wife, dressed in a conservative blue dress and flats, sat down next to him, clutching her purse and a water bottle of her own.

“Thank you.” He said. “Did Zack and Heidi find their seats okay?” he asked.

“Yes, a few rows back,” she answered as she settled her sunglasses on her face and adjusted her fashionable straw sunhat on her head.

Brock and his wife were in the second row, reserved for those participating in today’s ceremony.

Julia and Heidi had shown up Sunday afternoon having returned home two weeks earlier than planned from Austria. He had been glad to see his wife, but a little notice would have been nice. She said they wanted to surprise them, that they did. Julia, the social butterfly that she was, insisted on accompanying Brock to today’s event. The Governor was headlining today’s Memorial Day Ceremony.

He looked around, the seats were filling up. The first-row seats were reserved for the gold star families being honored today. There were uniformed Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen throughout the audience. His boss, retired Vice Admiral (O7) Ford sat in the row behind him off to his right with other retired senior officers.

Dressed in a conservative dark blue suit with a red tie, only the small gold trident on his left lapel let those in attendance know he belonged to an exclusive club. Twice divorced, his youngest adult daughter, a beautiful brunette, sat next to him smiling at guests who stopped to say hello to her father, the founder, and CEO of Pegasus Group.

At the back, a multiservice honor guard stood patiently ready to bring the colors forward.

“Hello Brock,” a voice he recognized interrupted his thoughts.

Rachel stood in front of the empty seats in front of him smiling a handbag draped over one arm. His serious face turned into a smile on recognizing his therapist. She looked good, dressed in a knee-length summery flower print dress with a modest neckline, just a hint of cleavage on this warm afternoon.

Brock stood and looked at his wife next to him then at Rachel.

“Hello Rachel, nice to see you. He leaned forward and they hugged briefly over the seatbacks. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here.” He said, letting go of her, feeling a bit awkward. The ‘therapy session’ from Friday still fresh in his mind.

Rachel grinned from behind dark Ray-Ban sunglasses. “Yes, If I can, I try and attend this service or Veterans Day each year.” She replied.

Brock nodded and turned to his wife.

“Rachel, this is my wife, Julia,” he said, putting his hand behind the back of his wife as she stood.

He saw Rachel’s head tilted a little as she appraised Julia then she reached over the row of seats with her hand out.

“Julia, this is my VA counselor Rachel, Dr. Kaplan. I’ve mentioned her to you. She’s a very good listener.” He said as the two women shook hands and took each other’s measure.

The two women exchanged pleasantries. His slender social butterfly of a wife a contrast to the pretty, Rubenesque Jewish therapist.

His attention was drawn to the man standing with Rachel with impressive rows of ribbons and awards on his uniformed chest. Older, distinguished looking, he wore the dark olive drab US Army service uniform, with tan pants and jump boots. The green beret of Army Special Forces sat tightly on his head. Brock recognized him.

“Brock, this is my dear friend, Chief Warrant Officer Bob Wilkins.” She said. “He lives in Boone, North Carolina, and drove over for the ceremony.”

He felt a grin break out on his face as he saw the look of recognition on the other man’s face too.

“Good to see you again Chief.” He said as the two men shook hands “I’m glad you came through okay,” he said.

“I did, thank you,” Wilkins replied in a deep voice as his eyes roamed over Brock and his wife.

“How’s your daughter? If I remember correctly, you were on your way back to the U.S. from Israel, when your plans changed.” Brock inquired.

“Good memory Colonel. Leah finished IDF basic and tanker school. Now she’s been selected to attend the tank commander’s course.” Bob said with the look of a proud dad on his face as he stood close to Rachel.

Brock had the missing pieces of the puzzle now, of who was Leah’s dad.

Rachel looked at Brock then Bob, “You two met in Poland?”

He could still picture the moment Bob flagged him down at the German petrol station in Frankfurt an der Oder just off the highway at the Polish border. Bob dressed in civies came up to Brock who was dressed in his battle dress uniform was pumping a few liters of diesel into his Porche hybrid. He showed Brock his CAC card identifying him as a Warrant Officer 5 (CW5) in the North Carolina Army National Guard. Bob said he had orders from 20^th Special Forces to get to Poznan as fast as he could and await further orders. Could he get a lift as his train stopped at the border leaving him looking for a ride.

Overhead the sky had been alive with military jets, heavy missiles, and drones. Tall dark columns of smoke rose into the sky from the Polish side of the border. The only vehicles trying to enter Poland were military and a few cars like his carrying soldiers. The highway in the other direction was packed with vehicles fleeing the fighting. Electromagnetic interference and jamming had shut down his GPS and made keeping in touch with anyone at 5^th Corps HQ or back home nearly impossible. At the border, they picked up two more enlisted US Army soldiers trying to get back to Poznan.

“I picked him up at the Polish border. I was driving from Berlin trying to get to V Corps in Poznan and he was looking for a ride.” He said to keep the story simple.

Bob added a couple of details, “The Colonel and I along with a couple of active-duty soldiers had to fight our way past some Russian Spetsnaz, but we managed.” Bob said as if things like that like that happened every day.

Both Rachel and his wife were looking at him. Yes, that afternoon things were a bit touch and go but they got to Camp Kościuszko in Poznan, to find V Corps HQ a madhouse in the final stages of moving to an alternate command post location outside of the city. The American base had been hit by Russian missiles that got past the air defense systems damaging multiple buildings in the hours since the Russians launched their attack from the Kaliningrad ex-clave and Belarus.

“Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests if you will find your seats, please. We will get started in 5 minutes.” A woman standing at the podium said into the microphone.

Julia spoke up. “Rachel. If you don’t have plans, why don’t the two of you stop by after this is over. We’re having a Memorial Day BBQ. A few of Brocks’s soldier friends will be there along with some other guests.”

He added, “Yes, come. It will be fun. My friend Charlie Wilks, who’s a Vet will be there, and I have one of the best pit masters in Nashville cooking for us.”

Rachel and Bob exchanged looks. “We would love to,” Rachel said before they went in search of seats.

Brock and Julia sat down as a gold star family was escorted to the seats in front of them. Again, Brock looked at the note cards and the names as a female Army Sergeant (E5) wearing an olive-green service uniform with a skirt sat down in the empty seat next to Brock, on his right.

“Hello, Sir. Do you remember me?” the young woman with Hispanic looks said.

Brock looked at her then put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her.

“Of course I do. Specialist or Sergeant Mescal.” He said noting she had been promoted since he had last seen her. The Army Intelligence Sergeant wore a Combat Action Badge, a Bronze Star with a V (valor), and Purple Heart ribbons on her chest among the three rows of awards on her left breast. Mescal was one of the two enlisted soldiers he had picked up at the border on the first day of the war.

“Are you going to speak about Denzil?” she said referring to a friend of hers who had been killed in action. Brock had known the young specialist (E4) for only a few days but the former high school running back turned Army electronic warfare specialist had impressed him with his courage and smarts in those first days of the war.

“I am. Then I hope you will join us for dinner at my house afterward and we can talk more.”

Mescal grinned at Brock and then turned her attention to the stage. She was half Apache half mut Mexican and very proud.

Zack kept an eye on his parents from six rows back. His dad stood out in the crowd of uniforms as he wore his non-regulation black Calvary Stetson with his dress blue uniform this afternoon. They all stood as the honor guard trooped the colors to the front of the stage. The Governor, Nashville’s Mayor, a Senator, the General in charge of the Tennessee National Guard, and a few other VIPs stood at the back of the stage in front of their seats at attention.

His sister Heidi stood quietly next to him in a scoop-necked short-sleeved pale blue summer dress, gold-tinted Ray-Ban Aviators protected her eyes from the afternoon sun. Zack took his West Point baseball cap off and placed it over his heart as they recited the pledge of allegiance. Next, a pretty, young Airman sang a beautiful rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner in a pleasant country voice. As they all sat down, the color guard marched to a place of honor stage right, near the ceremonial wreath.

He reached for the hand of the person on his right. He glanced at Danika and gave his friend a weak smile as she took his hand. She and her dad were in attendance along with Lindsey, her busty mom who wore an elegant wide-brimmed sunhat and a tight dark blue dress. Her dad Brad, a National Guard A-10 Warthog pilot, wore his blue service uniform and a narrow flight cap with a gold oak leaf pinned to it. Major Van Winter sat on Danika’s right, and like his sister wore Aviator Ray-Bans as he focused on the stage.

Zack didn’t really pay attention to the opening ceremonies as the various VIPs got up to speak about America’s wars and service members lost in service. He was lost in his thoughts as the governor was introduced. His sister and mom arriving home yesterday in the middle of his Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game had been a surprise. No reason had been given for the early return. Heidi just said mom came back to their apartment in Vienna on Thursday night and said to pack they were leaving, heading back to Nashville. Otherwise, he hadn’t had much conversation with his sister yet.

His thoughts were all over the place. Bouncing from ‘deflowering’ Monica on Friday, to thinking about his time in Berlin last summer while his dad was fighting in Poland to memories of fucking Danika’s sexy mom and everything in between that had happened in the last few months.

Staying alone in Berlin had been hard at first. His mom and sister had already moved to Vienna. His dad, an Army Reserve Armor officer did his ‘drill weekends’ in Poznan, Poland home of the US Army’s V Corps headquarters. As soon as his dad got his deployment orders his mom wanted Zack to take the train to Vienna. But he wanted to stay where he had friends and was closer to his dad. His mom hadn’t pushed hard until Russian missiles started hitting near Berlin and by then it was too late, most transport was shut down or was overcrowded. Eva had stayed with him most nights, using her body to comfort him as they watched the war news. He also spent a lot of time video-calling Hannah just hanging out.

After the Governor concluded his remarks the National Guard Adjutant General stood and went to the podium and began speaking.

For Zack his biggest surprise and the hardest day had been near the end of the ‘12 Day’ war. He had been shocked to watch his journalist aunt interview his dad live from a battlefield on the outskirts of Warsaw. Destroyed vehicles and the broken bodies of enemy soldiers littered the fields around his dad as he spoke to his sister Katalin, an independent journalist.

His dad had commanded Task Force Steele, a battalion-sized armored force that had in desperation, counterattacked into the flank of a much larger Russian armored brigade that had broken through the Polish lines. His dad, exhausted, stood in front of a big M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, his green tanker coveralls burned and ripped, covered in stains that could have been blood or oil.

With his half-sister Katalin in tow, his black Calvary Stetson pulled down over his matted hair, they walked along a ridgeline overlooking the smoking battlefield as his dad talked in a dead tired professional voice about the fight. Major Steele choked up in the end, wiping back tears, as he talked about the sacrifices his soldiers made that day. Not quite Col Killgore from Apocalypse Now fame with his ‘I love the smell of Napalm ... it smells like, victory,’ line but that July his dad moved a lot of hearts back home with his frank emotional words about his soldiers sacrifice as he stood on the battlefield an enemy vanquished. Zack was proud of him.

His aunt’s interview had been broadcast live all over the world making his dad and the soldiers of Task Force Steele heroes. Katalin’s videos of the attack that stopped the Russian armor cold just outside the Polish capital had been raw and violent. The battle his dad took part in had been called the Second Battle of the Vistula and like the first in 1920, the Russians had been beaten and sent packing.

Katalin won awards for her reporting. His dad got a Distinguished Service Cross, Purple Heart, and promotion to Lt Colonel. Pegasus Group soon promoted him from VP of Operations to Chief Operating Officer (COO) and they moved back to Nashville that Fall.

In front of him, his dad stood and moved towards the podium. He paused to shake hands with and give hugs to a couple of gold star families seated in the front row as the crowd waited.

July 2028 Poland

Major Steele sat in the commander’s seat of the big boxy Light Reconnaissance Vehicle (JRV) as they pulled out of Camp Kościuszko’s partially wrecked motor pool. The deputy commander of V Corps Intelligence the G2, grabbed Brock as soon as he walked into the underground operations center. The Colonel(O6) gave Brock an urgent task, go out and scout, find the fight, and report back since Corps HQ was not getting the intelligence they needed. He pointed at the map and told Major Steele to start scouting east of Warsaw in the direction of the Belarus border.

The Deputy G2 showed him the expected positions of the 1^st Armored Division’s, 2nd Brigade Combat Team (BCT) near Warsaw that he could tie in with on the radio net. Brock saluted and left; it was a big ask from the Colonel, but he would try. He took all his gear from storage and tossed it in the back of JRV as he met the soldiers he had been given.

With the jamming of radio communications and attacks on critical infrastructure, the US Army’s V Corps and its subordinate units did not have a clear tactical picture of what was happening. All that was known was the Russians took advantage of the distraction provided by the opening weekend of the XXXIV Olympiad in Los Angeles to launch an attack from Kaliningrad and Belarus.

Brock’s job as a cavalry officer had always been to find and fix the enemies’ positions for heavier-hitting armored units. That was what he was going to do, go find the Russians and hopefully not get killed in the process.

Colonel Mitchell, an old friend from his 2005-06 tour in Iraq with the 3^rd Armored Cav, gave Brock a two-person tactical electronic warfare team and one armored reconnaissance vehicle. His orders were to head east and gather intelligence, use the man-portable system to identify enemy units and report when he could.

Drones were proving ineffective at collecting real-time tactical intelligence and satellite imagery was spotty, along with GPS interference and most phone networks being degraded. V Corps was trying to coordinate a response with half an eye open. So far, on this first day, only the Polish Army was engaged in fighting, but US and allied units would soon be in the fight as they moved from their bases in Western Poland and Germany.

Based on the damage he had seen as he drove into the city, Poznan had been hit hard by ballistic and cruise missiles. Camp Kościuszko, the home of V Corps, was badly damaged. Brock had parked his mud-spattered Porche Cayenne in what was left of the camp motor pool, leaving the key. He shook hands with Bob and bid farewell to the soldiers.

Specialist (E4) Denzil Washington, a big friendly African American soldier, drove them out of the city heading east on the E30 highway, they would be on the road all night. While Specialist Mescal, who he had been reunited with, sat in the back working the radio and controlling the remote gun system on the roof, a big M2 Browning .50 Caliber machine gun. The last person in their team opened the left rear door and climbed into her seat, their interpreter. A young blonde woman dressed in a Polish army battle dress uniform said hello in accented English and introduced herself as Anna as she placed what looked like a school backpack at her feet. As she buckled in Anna said she was a volunteer in the Territorial Defense Force and until this morning had been working in a café.

As Denzil drove, Major Steele settled his helmet on his head, made sure his Peltor headset and mic were plugged into the internal coms and radio, and adjusted his rifle between his feet. He was at war, again.

National Cemetery Nashville

Lt Col Steele read off the names of the first two soldiers saying a few words about each person and their date of death. One young man was a tank crew member killed in action with the 1^st Armored Division the other was a young woman assigned to a Patriot Missile battery killed at the beginning of the war. He found the faces of the young woman’s parents, a white middle-class family, in the front row and thanked them for their family’s sacrifice, the other family was not in attendance.

He saw Denzil’s mother, a young pregnant sister, and a couple of grandparents sitting in the front row watching him. Brock had made it a point of meeting the family on his return to the United States and talking to them about their son. Unfortunately, Denzil had been one of 289 Americans killed fighting the Russians in Poland. Over a thousand American soldiers had been wounded but thanks to modern military medicine, fatal casualties were kept relatively low, thank God.

Specialist Washington’s death was not glorious like in a movie, but he had been doing good and had been a fine soldier. At the time of his death, he was scouting in front of the main force. He left the relative safety of his Striker Armored vehicle to help a Polish family get to safety on the outskirts of a small town east of Warsaw and had been killed by Russian artillery fire. After the war, the Polish family he had helped came forward and talked to a Stars and Stripes news reporter about how Specialist Washington saved their lives that day.

Like he had done for the two soldiers before SPC Washington he made a few personal remarks then went a little further. Brock mentioned Denzil’s time as a running back on Salem High’s championship football team, his desire to serve in the Army like his grandfather, along with his love of family, and spoke briefly about how he was killed. As he spoke, he looked at Denzil’s family who nodded acknowledging his words, his mom dabbing her eyes with a tissue. Brock had made sure Denzil was awarded a Bronze Star medal, something for his parents to hold onto besides the Purple Heart.

Lt Col Steele again thanked the Governor for his support of Tennessee Veterans, ignored the mayor, she was not a pleasant person (bitch), and acknowledged the Adjutant General, who was coming over for BBQ later. The master of ceremonies took the podium and invited up an Air Force officer to speak.

Brock’s emotions were locked down as he left the stage. He didn’t return to his seat, he stopped to collect Julia, then headed for the Veterans motorcycle club members standing in their leather vests and jackets at the back of the seated crowd. Their arrival had been loud and a sight to see as nearly 50 shiny clean bikes of various makes rode through the old masonry archway into the cemetery.

After representatives from the Air Force and Navy read off the names of their service members killed in action, a Navy chaplain said a final prayer. The master of ceremonies invited everyone to attend the wreath laying at the memorial statue further down the driveway.

Zack thought his dad had done a good job with his remarks. He looked good in his dress blues and Stetson Cavalry hat with its solid gold cap cord and acorns above the 3inch brim, brass crossed cavalry sabers and a silver oak leaf signifying his dads rank, were pinned in line above each other. He spoke in a strong solemn voice, pausing to look at the audience and gold star families. His remarks were short and then he left the stage and went and stood with the bikers behind Zack.

Zack let go of Danika’s hand as they filed out of their seats.

“We’ll see you at our house?” he said, making sure he would see her again today.

“Yes, of course,” Danika replied. Her parents had stopped to talk with another Air Force officer and his wife.

Heidi looked at Danika. “It was nice to meet you.” She said smiling.

Zack watched the two girls. He wasn’t sure how genuine his sister was. Danika gave Heidi a short hug and then kissed Zack gently on the lips before leaving to join her parents.