Chapter 2

Yea, that sucked. Humid, hot as balls, and crawling in ragheads. It was like a few years before in Afghanistan, but this time instead of weekly attacks, they were almost daily. Our technique is that we would have a helo drop us off a mile or so from the engagement point, then we would sneak in. We were the anvil for the regular ground-pounders, who would engage the Jihadi and get them running.

Hopefully into us, where we would fire them all up and pick off the remainders.

We were now moving farther and farther out and were even at the point where we would have to hike 20 miles to our position or they would use the movement of the helicopters to determine where we were likely hidden. Then the Jihadi got smart, and instead of running away, they would move sideways.

Well, just because you are a retarded Jihadi that believes that cutting the throat of what you call an Infidel guarantees you a forever with 72 virgins does not mean you are a complete idiot. But they had largely been cleared from the area, and even the locals were getting better at hunting them down.

So we were assigned a week of downtime before going home. Biggest fucking mistake of my life, next to asking Cecily to marry me. I had just finished a weight session in the gym and was heading back to my hooch when the alarm went off. Not that it mattered, it was a second behind the first impact and I was already sprinting for the nearest bunker.

Bunker, once again a word more fancy than it deserves. People hear that and think of some super complex underground facility, full of computers and filled with magical displays that show anything they want. In reality, just a concrete culvert six feet tall, covered in sandbags and half-buried in the dirt. I was 20 meters away still when it hit.

I remember flying, and my ears ringing. Then hands grabbing me and pulling me inside, and pain. Somebody yelling for a medic, as another saying my body armor had taken most of the blast. Then largely nothing.

From that, I know what happened only later. A flight to Germany, via Qatar. Surgery, more surgery, spending a few weeks recovering from the surgery, then another surgery. More recovery, then a flight to Maryland.

By this time I had a good idea of what had happened. I was almost to the bunker and caught the edge of a mortar blast. I had a chunk the size of a softball ripped out of my left thigh, bone cracked and a metal rod put in. Two chunks the size of golf balls were taken out of my right arm. And enough zippers crisscrossing the rest of my face and body to feature in a monster movie.

Well, at least the family jewels were still intact. Not that I was likely to be using them again, with how my face looked. Jesus Christ, it looked like I had gotten into an argument with a fan. And lost.

Well, what followed was 2 years of rehabilitation. Learning how to walk again, learning how to use my arm again. Which sucked because as bad as the muscle damage was, the nerve damage was worse. Little strength, little real aim. Most times if I tried it just flailed around. The scars got a lot less visible, and at least when my dad came to visit me I no longer frightened animals and small children.

He was encouraging me to come home, as even then I was starting the process to be retired. And not too bad a deal. I had picked up Staff Sergeant as I was recovering, and would be retiring at 80% pay. But I had no interest in returning to California. I thanked him but said I had to look elsewhere.

One of the buddies I was hanging around with was a Jarhead, who was from this town a hundred miles or so from the coast. Not too bad, it was a port city that was inland but connected to the ocean. Which meant they got ocean ships. I think he expected me to be surprised, but I explained that I had lived in a similar city in the middle of California. I know it often surprised people when they would drive through the middle of California, and see ocean ships from the freeway. It was before my time, but the local museum even had photos of Destroyers tied up there. Over 100 miles from the ocean.

He got out before I did, but he left me his address and I promised to at least look him up when I got out. And about two months later, I finally got my walking papers. I had already had the Army bring my Mustang out of storage and bring it to DC, and most of my belongings shipped to my dad. So with my cane, I got into my Mustang and took a drive.

I took my time, though. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, I just bounced from town to town. I did this for about a month. Pittsburgh, Atlantic City, Chicago, Buffalo, it was just where I felt like going at the time. Then I was making the call and pulling into my buddy’s house in Compass City.

And like he said, it was a nice town. Similar to Sacramento in a way, a decent-sized town, split by a river running through the middle. Not on the coast, but shipping came up the river so it had an active dock area. Even like Stockton it had an old Navy base, closed decades ago and slowly rotting away. About the only thing still active on it was a state prison.

But one thing I learned real fast. Earl was a great guy for a Jarhead, but somehow he had gotten addicted to the happy pills in the hospital. I kept taking him to the VA, encouraging him to get help but he would not do it. But I was there all the time, trying to do more and more, wanting to repair my broken body as much as I could.

I had even taken up Karate again. It started almost as a joke, I saw the flier at the VA so I went. It was free, and I figured it would be fun to kill an hour or so. But the instructor was this old dude, with one arm. He lost his in a rice field outside of Saigon. And while he actually did teach Karate, it was more spiritual. Like zen, like meditation. The physical training was part of it, but he also worked to help us build our minds. To be calm when frustration got to where we wanted to strike out. To relax when our bodies betrayed us in some way.

And we often talked late into the night over beers about the arts. I by then had high belts in Karate, Taekwondo, and Judo. He knew Karate, Kung-Fu, and Krav Maga. We would compare styles, but each admitted that some of what was helping us the most now was the mental disciplines we had learned.

I became his assistant, which was nice because it paid me something more than just my pension. I had moved out of Earl’s place, and gotten my own. And over the next few years, I even had a few girlfriends. None of them ever seemed to last long, and most were broken vets like I was. Then there was a funding cut, and we were told that there was no funding for Martial Arts training anymore and that some fuckheads in Congress said it was not appropriate that people who were broken in fighting should be taught to fight.

Fucking idiots. The Way was more than fighting. I was even wanting to fly to Washington and see if I could get them to understand. But Dale said not to bother. “You can’t reason with people like that. They are not dealing with reality, only what they want reality to be. You can talk to them until you are blue in the face, it will not matter. They will never admit they are wrong, it’s easier to teach a skunk to not smell than to tell a politician anything.”