Chapter 4: Adjustments

A little over an hour later, there was again a knock at the door. Upon being told to enter, Corporal Lincoln walked in.

“Sorry, Shaun, you’re not getting to see my gloriously naked ass unless we’re in the shower, and even then, you don’t get my gear,” he said to Connors, then turned to Anderson. “Sir, that was the last one.”

Jackson stepped into the office as well. “All the night shift perimeter guards are on duty. I must say, Sir, you surprised me with your personal choice.”

“Andy, I think you’re reading our CO wrong,” Sergeant Hawk said.

“I am? Please, enlighten me, Brian,” Jackson replied.

“Are you sure you want me in the room when you psychoanalyze me and then discuss the results with your peers?”

“It’s all good, Captain. Shit, with the stuff we had to tolerate and put up with the last few years, it’s good to actually be doing our job under orders where we actually can do our jobs.”

Anderson frowned. “You were a car salesman. How tough was that?”

“All the woke shit we had to put up with. I saw a salesman get fired because a customer followed one of our office girls into the ladies room, and he went in after the customer. The customer said he was identifying as a woman, and complained to corporate. Our store got fined by the Feds, and our owner damned near lost his franchise over it. You would think you wouldn’t see that in Oklahoma, but ... Tulsa was almost as bad as Austin, Texas, with that shit, until push finally came to shove. But that’s not what I was talking about, Sir. You’re going to mind fuck these women, so at least the ones that walk out of here when we’ve won are going to thank you. That Muslim lawyer isn’t going to know what’s hit her.”

“Oh, she’ll know, at least some of it. I’m quite certain at some point, she’s going to wish I’d put her in the ground with Davis. Speaking of...”

“Handled, Sir,” Jackson said. “The tribal pig farm will get her mixed in with our regular food waste tomorrow. Teeth aren’t a problem; she had dentures. Those’ll get powdered and burnt with her hair in the regular burn pit. That’s one good thing about working with some of the baddest fuckers that ever broke the law. I learned lots of ways to dispose of unwanted trash.”

“That’s enough, Top,” Anderson said with a slight bite. “They’re not trash, human refuse, or even scum of the Earth. They’re fucking idiots and morons, but they’re not criminals.”

Jackson nodded. “Apologies, Sir. Like I said this morning, my tolerance for bullshit is a lot lower than yours, which is why you’re our Commanding Officer.”

Hawk laughed. “Lighten up, Andy. Captain Anderson isn’t chewing your ass. He’s our Commanding Officer because we’re not running a prison here.”

“We’re not?” Corporal Connors asked. “You could’ve fooled me, with the razor wire, guard towers, security cameras, and all of us wearing guns.”

“Nope. We’re running something you don’t expect to find in America unless their side was running it. We’re running a reeducation camp. Oh, I don’t think that’s in our official orders, the ones we’re operating under. I didn’t figure it out myself until Captain Anderson sent that Muslim woman to his quarters. But remember, I’ve been a salesman for more than fifteen years, so I’m used to listening to what my customers say. That first woman in, the feisty student that went to Four? Your description of an antisocial psychopath scared the fuck out of her, because she thought you were describing yourself. Instead, you mind fucked her. You’ve been doing that with all of them. That’s why you told Shaun what you did, about the mistakes made after 1865.”

Sighing, Anderson stood up. “Normally, I would love to continue this conversation.” He pulled his glasses off, scratched an itch on his forehead with one of the temple pieces, then put them back on. “You will all quietly pass the word around that we will not discuss this matter in any location where one of our detainees can overhear it. I need to relieve Sergeant Brooks of his duty, so he and I can both get some rest for tomorrow. We’re all tired after today, I can see it in your body language. We all thought the last two weeks, putting the final touches on this place and getting things sorted out was fun, especially being back in uniform. Welcome back to the real fucking Army tomorrow morning. Reveille at oh six thirty.”

Jackson snickered. “The men were wondering when the fun was going to start. I’ll have the buckets ready.” The other NCOs in the room chuckled as well. Then Jackson called them to attention, without saluting.

Anderson smiled. “Carry on, men. Good night.” Stepping outside the office, he put his cover on, then headed for Barracks Five.

That building was completely surrounded by a double strand of razor wire, with a guard armed with a rifle at the ready watching the building entrance. “Good evening, Sir.”

“It probably will be, Corporal Orbrero. Where’s your backup?”

“PFC Price is walking external perimeter of the wire, he’ll be back in about two minutes. Plus, of course, Corporal Davis in the command center has everything on video, as well. We’re running live mikes on our fixed positions at all times.”

“Anything going on inside?”

Orbrero shook his head. “No, Sir. I think we took the starch out of them for now. It didn’t hurt that their nightly water ration was dosed with Benadryl.”

“No problems with any of them misbehaving once they were in the barracks?”

Orbrero smiled, his teeth glistening in contrast to his brown skin. “If you mean trying to start anything violent, then, no. Couple of them tried to flirt with us, but ... not with these bitches, no way! They weren’t happy we were inside the whole time, and there were some complaints about their lack of accommodations. They know which one is the pee and shit bucket, and which one is the hand scrubbing bucket.”

The sound of his footsteps preceded PFC Price’s arrival by a few seconds. He also was carrying an AR-15 that was combat slung. “Evening, Sir. All quiet around the back, and I used the thermals to check through the walls on all three sides. They’re down for now.”

“Good. I know doing this tonight may not make a lot of sense to you, and it’s not like we don’t have lights around and under all the barracks. I want everyone to get used to it early, so this’ll be second nature by the time they figure some things out and actually start actively resisting.”

Both men nodded, with Price saying, “We understand, Sir. It’s not as bad as when we were in Fallujah, or anywhere else in the sandbox, but this still isn’t regular safe.”

Orbrero snorted. “No Hajjis coming over the wire, no mortar rounds landing on spots that your interpreters had paced out, no interpreters fragging your bunkies – hell, this may as well be paradise.”

Anderson chuckled at that, then told them to carry on. He then spent the next few minutes checking out the other four barracks and talking with the troops guarding them as well, before entering the command center.

Corporal Davis was sitting at a desk with three computer large monitors on it, two of them showing video from inside one of the barracks, while a third showed was open to the internet. There were seven more monitors, effectively flat screen televisions, on the wall directly in front of his desk, with split screens on each. Five of them showed three camera views from inside each of the barracks, with the fourth view of the door to each barracks from outside. One of the others showed the view along each of the four fence lines, while the seventh showed views from cameras inside the perimeter, between buildings.

“Evening, Sir. Our guests are all bedded down for the night, with one exception. Top Jackson already called me about tomorrow morning, and I sent out notice to all our men, so everyone in First and Second will be rested and ready for the fun.”

Anderson snorted. “I think you and the First Sergeant have different ideas than what I do on what fun is.”

“Nothing personal, Sir, you’re from the generation before ours. When did you enlist?”

“Officially took my oath in ‘85, when I graduated from University of Kentucky and their ROTC program. I had a six year commitment, so I was a platoon leader during Desert Storm and then company commander for a bit, then I got out after that. Why?”

“You’re wearing the combat patch from the 24^th Infantry, so you’ve heard shots fired in anger before.”

Snorting, Anderson said, “Yeah, sort of. What we went up against at that time...” He shook his head. “They weren’t fighting us then, they were just trying to get home. Don’t get me wrong, Saddam was a worthless son of a bitch that deserved to hang. But most of his troops weren’t religious fanatics. We had them so out-classed it wasn’t funny. I watched a T-62 shoot an M-1, and the round bounced off. The M-1 shot back, and the silver bullet not only destroyed the T-62, the explosion took out a T-55 that was next to it. The old Soviet stuff was shit. It was a slaughter. I don’t think my entire platoon went through a single magazine of ammo that week, we were too busy escorting prisoners. Then we had to use a shit load, at Rumaila.”

Davis frowned. “I thought that was a massive one-sided battle.”

“It was. We blew the living fuck out of them with artillery and armor. No, we were on mercy patrol, afterwards. They surrendered, but when there’s someone stuck half-inside a burned BMP with no way out, or laying in the sand looking like a VC at the end of ‘Platoon,’ after the airstrike, but still alive...” Anderson tapped himself in the middle of the forehead. “Officially, they had seven hundred plus killed, because nobody wanted to admit we put a good four hundred of them out of their misery. That’s why I couldn’t stay in. I tried to get back in after the Towers, of course, but by then, some of the shit from the burning oil wells had caught up with me.”

“I understand, Sir. Thing is, you were an officer. I’m sure as their platoon leader, you ran with your men when you could. But you had officer shit to do, so a lot of times it was your platoon sergeant leading things, wasn’t it? You were also having to give orders and direct your platoon. Which, if I’m guessing right, probably had more men in that one platoon than we have in our entire company. That’s what Sergeants and Corporals are for, so they can run the squads while you’re figuring out where the squads need to go. That’s also why we enjoy PT training more, too.”

Smiling, Anderson said, “You sure you didn’t go to OCS, Davis?”

Laughing, Davis shook his head. “No, but my GI Bill benefits paid for my college after I got out. Officially, my psych profile puts me at one hundred percent disabled, which isn’t the same thing as a get out of jail free card when you bust up a fraternity house during Red River Showdown week. But it helped. I have ‘suppressed anger issues’ and PTSD, according to the psychoanalysts. Which simply means when a coed calls me a war-mongering myrmidon, and she’s wearing a ‘COEXIST’ sweatshirt, she’s going to wear whatever I happen to be drinking. To quote the comedian, ‘And that’s how the fight started.’ Even though UTA is in Austin, it’s still Texas, so I just had to be careful for the next couple of years. Graduated, decided being a Longhorn sucked, so became a Sooner for my graduate work, and stayed in Oklahoma afterwards. I can pay the sales tax to not have to pay property taxes.”