Chapter 6: Sniper School Tuesday 04 September 2007

Khudabah, Pakistan — Morning of day seven

It's finally starting to get light, and the damned rats are finally crawling back into their holes and dragging some of their dead buddies with them. The fucking towelheads will be back with the sunrise, bringing a new torture.

Those sick fuck bastards. They spent all yesterday raping some young woman, a white American aid worker they caught. They tied her down on a nasty bed in my room and took turns on her all day long. I think every man in this whole bumfuck town showed up. The worst of it was, last night, they left her tied up and the rats — well, it's not a pretty sight; they ate quite a bit of her.

I'm glad that she had passed out by then and was spared the pain. Most of all, I'm glad that my Jens wasn't with me; I would die if she had gotten caught. If I ever get free (Now that's a joke; like that will ever happen) I'm going to kill every one of the bastards in this town.

Maybe I can bolster my mind against them with some good memories. Anything before they got their hands on me is a good memory.

Kaneohe Bay Hawaii — Tuesday Day Three

Jens and I had a wonderful evening. When I woke up in the morning, her back was pressed tightly against my front and as usual, I had a morning wood. It was sandwiched between my belly and her back.

She was already awake, and rolled to wink at me. "Good morning, my love. Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

I smiled. "Good morning, beautiful. That isn't a pistol in my pocket, and I'm most definitely happy to see you. How'd you sleep, my love, and how do you feel?"

She yawned and stretched. "I feel wonderful. I can't believe last night. You took such good care of me, and then you even slept with me. You do know this is the first time I've ever slept with a man," she winked at me.

I pulled her into a tight embrace. "It won't be the last time."

Then I swatted her on the butt. "Time to get moving, lazy bones. I'm pretty much ready to go, so I'll get breakfast this morning."

"Can't you hold me just a little longer?" She asked, batting her violet eyes.

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. You've already pulled this one on me, and if it was the evening, I might agree. But we have things to do today," I answered.

She pouted. "You're such a slave driver!" Then she jumped up, letting the sheet fall to the floor. She was still nude underneath, and my eyes about popped out of my head.

"Like the view, big boy?" she teased, and ran off to her bedroom. I was glad that she left, because once again I had to adjust things.

I jumped up and went to take care of my quick morning duties and put the house back together. Breakfast wasn't going to be oatmeal today. Instead, I made vanilla-almond granola covered with yogurt; it's very tasty, and much faster to make.

Jens came skipping into the kitchen. "Good morning, darling. Thanks so much for making breakfast. Oh, this looks almost as yummy as you." she hugged me and kissed my cheek. Then she swatted my butt. "Let's eat. I'm starving."

During breakfast, she looked a little apprehensive and wasn't her normal talkative self.

I gave her a no-nonsense look. "Okay Jens, I can tell you have something on your mind, come on and spill it."

She got this real worried look on her face, and wrinkled up her forehead. "Ben, my darling, my honey," she began.

Uh-oh. I think this is going to be bad

"I didn't tell you everything about Daddy coming last night because I was worried you would be upset, and I didn't want to ruin the evening." She took a deep breath. "Mom is also coming with him. They're planning on us going dining and dancing with them tonight. They've already made the reservations at the Honolulu Star Sunset Dinner Cruise. I'm sorry, my love, but Mom wanted to meet you because I've told her all about you and my love for you."

I let this information sink in for about three minutes. Jens grew more and more worried. Finally I opened my mouth. "My love, I have to say this is a big surprise. At first I was shocked and of course concerned, then I thought about it, and I'm looking forward to it. I think I need to tell both the General and your mother about my love for you and to get everything out in the open for at least them.

"This will not change the state of our current relationship; I still consider us 'married without all the benefits.' I promise you that by the end of the night, I'll have convinced the General that our relationship is the right thing, and I will also have swept your mother off her feet. Semper Fidelis, my Jens."

I must have said something right. She came over to me and sat in my lap, hugged me tight, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, my love. I was so worried that you would be upset and just take off."

I gave her a stern look, "My love, I would never do that to you. However, I'm a little upset at you."

Her eyes widened, and the tears started forming in the corners of them.

"Now don't go crying about this until you hear what I say." I stroked her hair with one hand and gave her waist a squeeze with the other. "I promise you that I'll be totally open and honest with you about everything, and I also expect the same from you. This is the only way that our "marriage" will work. I'll tell you anything and everything and I expect the same from you.

"You should have told me this last night and not held it in and worried about it. It hurts me to think that you didn't trust me enough to know that I'd be able to deal with this."

Well, I guess I said too much that time. Jens started crying. "I'm so, so, so, sorry. I didn't want to hurt you; I'll never hurt you again. I promise I'll tell you everything."

I held her close and kissed away the tears. "Hey, it's okay. Come on, now, stop the tears. I have something to ask you, my love. It's important, and I can't do it while you are crying." Her tears stopped, and she sniffled a little. I stood up with her in my arms and sat her setting on it. Then, I got down on one knee in front of her and looked up into her eyes.

"Jens, I am formally asking you to go on a date with me tonight, to go dining and dancing with your parents."

She jumped of the chair and grabbed me around the neck, hugging me tight and knocking us both back onto the kitchen floor. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I'd love to go dining and dancing with you tonight —," She stopped, a bit abashed, and asked, "Oh, do you know how to dance?"

"Can pigs fly?" I replied. Mama loved to dance and made sure that I was an excellent dancer. "Sergeant Donaldson, we need to get moving and do our PT this morning. Ten hut!"

Her jaw dropped a little, but her military training kicked in, and she jumped up and stood at attention.

I felt a little bad about doing that, but dammit, we needed to get going for the day. "Fall out and be ready to leave for the gym in five minutes."

She saluted and skipped off to her room. But on her way out of the kitchen she called over her shoulder, "I can't wait to tell mom that we slept together last night," and laughed.

Oh, no, she wouldn't really do that would she???

We ran over to the gym. I'd designated Tuesday for the back, biceps, and forearms. One thing I forgot to mention, when I am doing PT I usually wear some adhesive tape on both index fingers, being a sniper, I need to make sure that I can feel the trigger, so I can't afford to get calluses on them.

All my workouts consist of five one-minute sets (I don't keep track of the number of reps) with one minute of aerobics between sets.

The first exercise was bent-knee dead lifts, with an added move at the end. You bend from the waist, keeping your knees slightly bent slowly lowering the dumbbells to the floor, and then you slowly raise back up, making sure to keep your abdominal muscles tight so you don't hurt your back. When we reached the standing position, then we did a shoulder shrug trying to touch our ears with our shoulders. In between were jumping jacks.

Next, we did standing dumbbell upright rows. Standing with the dumbbells at our waist, we would slowly bring them up almost to our chins. The added move for this one is that once the dumbbell was at the chin, we pushed it out in front of us until our arms were straight, brought the weights back in, and slowly lowered them back to our waists to finish one rep. For our aerobics, we did cross knee raises — right knee to left elbow, and left knee to right elbow.

Bent-over dumbbell flies made the third exercise. First, we put our heads on a table or bench so our waists formed a ninety degree angle to our legs. Then, with the dumbbells hanging down towards the floor, slowly moved our arms outward until our arms were parallel to the floor, held that for one second, and tried to pinch our shoulder blades together. Then slowly back down for one rep. We did squat thrusts in between.

The last back exercise using weights was weighted back twists. We grabbed a weighted bar (a barbell would also work), stood with our feet slightly more than shoulder width apart, and rotated to the right and to the left. This is a good workout for the lower and mid back. We did lunges in between.

Then we switched to the functional exercises. The push up is the best functional exercise for the chest and triceps. Its counterpoint is the pull up for the back and biceps. I love doing pull ups.

First, we did normal grip pull ups, and I'm proud to say I kicked butt on them. Normally, women don't have enough strength to do a decent pull up, but Jens did really well.

In between, we ran in place.

Then, we did hammer pull ups, where our hands faced ninety degrees from a normal pull up. This really isolates the bicep.

Then we kept the aerobics up by running in place again.

The last functional exercise I like to do is a climbing wall, but they didn't have one here. They did have a peg board, so we did that, and then more running in place in between.

Then, we moved back to the weights to finish off the biceps, starting with seated bicep curls using a blaster. In between, we beat the shit out of the heavy bag.

Next came standing hammer curls with more bag work in between.

All that was left then were the abdominals and the forearms. We did hanging leg lifts for the abs: hanging from a pull up bar, we slowly raised our legs to a ninety-degree angle to our body, then slowly lowered our legs back down for one rep. In between, we did windmills.

Last came the forearms. I am not sure what it's called, and I think I saw it on a Raquel Welch western movie where she was raped and became a gunfighter to kill her rapists, but I have a piece of broom handle about one foot long. It has a hole in the middle with a rope running through it, and at the other end of the rope is a small piece of dowel. We put weight plates on the end with the dowel and then rotated the broom handle, cranking up the weights, then lowered it back down and cranked it up in the opposite direction. We just talked in between. I was lazy that day.

To finish off the hour, we did balance exercises on wobble boards. Jens was pretty bored on the wobble boards, so I started pushing her off.

"So, you think you're a big, tough Marine, do you," she challenged. "Do this." She grabbed a fitness ball, put one foot in the middle of it, and proceeded to stand on the ball, "Come on, big boy, and give it a try."

I did, and really couldn't get the hang of it. She was laughing the whole time and egging me on. At least I didn't fall and break my butt.

"What's next, dear," she asked.

"Oh, I was thinking that I don't want to get your muscles so sore that you can't dance tonight, so we'll take a little swim over to Kahaluu point and back. I know the General and your mother are coming in this afternoon, and I figured you would want to meet them," I said.

She smiled. "You're so thoughtful. Thank you. I'll call for our escort and tell them to meet us with a zodiac."

Oh damn. I forgot about the fricken escort. I wonder if they will be with us tonight.

We met the escort ten minutes later and handed them our sidearms. They gave us each a pair of goggles, we jumped in Kaneohe Bay, and started swimming for the point. We swam freestyle for awhile, and then I started swimming a modified butterfly stroke that I like. The water was a little choppy, so it took us an hour and forty-five minutes to swim to the point and another hour and forty to swim back. The zodiac came up and gave us our sidearms, and took off.

Jens looked at her watch and said, "Oh, I have to hurry and get changed to meet Dad and Mom. I'll race you to the house. Last one there is a rotten egg."

We beat feet to the house. Jens is a fast runner, but I'm just a bit faster. I slowed up right at the end so we finished together. We passed DI Anderson's platoon again, but we were going so fast that we didn't hear the insults this time.

As we unlocked the door, I remarked, "I guess I will do some reading this afternoon."

Jens piped up, "Oh, no way, Mister. You're coming with me to meet Dad and Mom. So get your ass moving and get into your dress blues."

Oh crap, I thought I was going to have at least until tonight to get ready.

I went into my bathroom and gave myself a quick haircut — just a cheap pair of clippers set on an eighth of an inch and I am fine — and jumped into the shower. I touched up my shave from that morning and put on my dress blues. I figured that I would wear the evening dress uniform tonight. I arrived in the living room at the same time as Jens. I have never known a woman to get ready that fast. It has to be the USMC training.

I looked at her and said, "Damn, you sure clean up well, for a Marine," and laughed.

She looked at me and replied, "Oh, damn. I forgot my underwear. Would you like to see?" She batted her eyelashes.

I thought about calling her bluff, but figured I'd have to rearrange something in my pants if I did. Luckily, the Humvee pulled up and saved my ass.

It's a big deal when the USMC General comes to any base. They usually have several weeks notice to prepare things. However, this was sort of a surprise visit. I'd heard that the BCO (Base Commanding Officer) had been chewing ass to get things ready, and the base looked great.

The Humvee dropped us at the heliport, and we took out place in the receiving line. The chopper was right on time, and as the door opened, the band started playing the Marine Hymn, and we all stood up a little straighter and a lot more proud. I'd never seen the General's wife, and as he helped her off the chopper, I could tell where Jens got her good looks from; it certainly wasn't from the old man.

Because we were just lowly Non-Commissioned Officers, we were at the end of the line, and even though I outranked Jens, I put her ahead of me in the line as a sign of respect. The General came up, looked at me, and shook my hand. I gave him my best Recon shake.

He said, "Sergeant Major Blaine, it's good to meet you again. You are rapidly becoming a legend in the Corps. I look forward to talking with you later."

His wife Evelyn was right behind him, she walked up to me and didn't hold her hand out right away. Instead, she looked me up and down her eyes noticing my two Silver Stars. She finally held out her hand for a shake. I took it gently, and then she squeezed the hell out of my hand while looking in my eyes with a friendly smile.

"What sort of half-assed handshake is that? I thought you were a Marine, but perhaps you're a just another poser!, " then laughed. "The General and I look forward to getting to know you better later tonight."