A PLACE CALLED HOME

Chapter Nine

He’d been right when he’d told her she was going to be sore. Sore didn’t even begin to explain all the pain in places she hadn’t even known existed. Her hip ached every time she moved. Her shoulders felt like they were still carrying the heavy body armor, and between her thighs felt richly abused and sensitive.

She wanted him again. She’d awakened that morning, alone, his scent heavy on her skin, in her bed, and she’d wanted.

He hadn’t asked to spend the night. She hadn’t pushed. She refused to let the tiny fear that snuck into bed and cuddled up next to her chip away at her trust in this man. Instead, she’d kissed him gently and closed the door behind him. Exhausted.

Satisfied.

And as she’d fallen into a dreamless sleep, she’d been amazed at the tenderness the rough man had shown her.

Now, at the office, she was struggling to concentrate. Her brain was in a haze and the only thing she could see clearly was the memories from last night.

Her inbox chimed, yanking her out of her daydream. Captain James Marshall, Reza’s commander. “Hmm.”

She opened the message.

Captain Lindberg, please send a status on the following soldiers’ mental health

evaluations.

SGT Chuck Wisniak SPC Neal Sloban PFC Erol Spintz

All troopers are pending adverse actions and the delays in their mental health evaluations are delaying proper adjudication of their separation actions. Your incompetence is impeding my ability to accomplish my mission, v/r

JPM III

Emily smothered her irritation that Marshall was being so demanding and demeaning. Apparently, he and Reza hadn’t talked, because Reza had the latest information about those packets.

She tried to remember the compassion she’d felt when Reza had spoken about Marshall’s past, but instead all she felt now was irritation that Marshall was so hard and unforgiving. She flexed her fingers and started typing a response.

“Whoever pissed you off, it’s not really the keyboard’s fault.” Olivia stood in the doorway of her office. Her friend’s hands were bereft of her favorite mug.

She sucked in a deep breath. “Can I just complain for one hot second about how rude some of these guys are? And I quote: ‘your incompetence is impeding my ability to accomplish my mission’”.

“Someone needs some therapy chocolate,” Olivia said, laughing. “Who’s got you so pissed?”

Emily pointed at the computer. “Irritating captain of the day.”

“Obviously,” Olivia said dryly.

“What are you working on today?”

“About twenty-five legal reviews from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment. I’ve got a stack on my desk six inches high that’s only getting higher.”

“Can you see if you’ve got a packet on a kid named Sloban?”

Olivia nodded. “Sure, but shouldn’t that be with final review board?”

“It should be, but no one can seem to find this packet and it’s running up against the timelines from higher.” Emily fired off a terse response to Captain Marshall.

Someone made a noise in the waiting room and Olivia glanced over her shoulder. “You might want to get cracking. Your waiting area is filling up.”

“Are you serious? It’s supposed to be a training holiday tomorrow.”

“Yes, and that’s exactly why some of them are out there. To get five days off instead of

four.”

Emily frowned at the censure in Olivia’s voice. “You don’t think they’re all faking, do

you?”

“There are a couple of familiar faces out there. Repeat offenders some of your peers have caught lying multiple times. I can’t pin their stories down and yet, they keep coming back.”

Emily picked up her pen, flicking the cap off. “Have you told their commanders?”

“I’ve yet to find a commander willing to press a malingering charge. It burns so badly that they’re here and we can’t turn them away. I do the legal reviews on these cases and some of them are so obviously faked. It burns me on a fundamental level that people are trying to game the system. It only takes one bad claim to tarnish the image of this place for everyone.”

Emily’s inbox chimed and she glanced at the screen before turning her attention back to Olivia.

Olivia sighed quietly. “Have you talked with Colonel Zavisca about it?”

“What am I going to say? There’s no way he’s going to allow us to turn away patients. All it takes is getting one diagnosis wrong and we’re screwed. So we’ll keep pushing everyone through the system.” She glanced at her watch, wanting very much to call Reza. A slow smile spread across her lips.

“You look like you have a juicy secret,” Olivia said, narrowing her eyes.

Emily burst out laughing, thinking about last night with Reza. “Maybe.”

“Wait a sec…You went to the range yesterday and never came back. You didn’t…” Olivia glanced over her shoulder then slipped into the office. “Spill in thirty seconds or less.”

“Yeah.”

“With Sarn’t Iaconelli?”

Emily bit her lips together and nodded. There weren’t enough words to express how knotted up everything was inside her. It was a good knot.

“And?”

“And what?” Emily asked.

“Okay, seriously? You have got to tell me more than that silly smile.”

“There’s not a lot to tell. He followed me home after the range and…yeah.”

“Wow,” Olivia said. “He made you speechless.”

Emily grinned. “Pretty much.”

“Oh, we’re going to have to talk later.” Olivia glanced down the hall, then back at Emily. “Ah well, back to work. Want to get lunch later?”

“Maybe. I’ve got to tackle the triage now that it’s blowing up.”

“All right. Well, let me know.”

Olivia disappeared into the hallway, leaving Emily alone with her thoughts and her aching body. It hurt if she shifted wrong. A good hurt, a reminder that last night had actually happened instead of just being a really great dream.

Her phone vibrated on her desk and she answered it automatically. “Captain Lindberg, may I help you?”

“Captain Lindberg. It’s Sarn’t Iaconelli.”

Her blood warmed at the sound of his voice. “Hello, Sarn’t Iaconelli. What can I do for you today?”

“I wish I was calling for something other than business but sadly, duty calls. I wanted to give you a heads-up that Wisniak is on his way to your office. He’s been put on the duty roster and he’s freaking out about it.”

She heard a thousand unsaid things as she jotted down notes and the echoes of an old argument between them. “Why would he be upset about being put on duty?”

“You don’t really want my opinion on that.” He cleared his throat. “Just listen to what he says and keep in mind that he was assigned duty.”

She frowned, surprised that he wasn’t trying to argue with her again about Wisniak being weak or spineless.

“Okay. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Sure.”

He hung up and left her feeling vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t called for pleasure. Her phone vibrated on her desk again and she looked down.

When can I see you again?

She smiled.

***

Reza finished reviewing the latest evaluation report, wishing that some of the sergeants in his platoon spent more time learning to read than shooting things on the range. Some of them could barely put together a coherent sentence and while Reza was a long way from being a Rhodes Scholar, he could at least figure out the difference between a noun and a verb. Most of the time, anyway.

He glanced at his watch, needing an update from Foster for the last ten minutes on Wisniak. Rage churned in Reza’s belly at the malingering sergeant. While Captain Marshall was doing everything he could to throw Wisniak out of the Army, it grated on Reza’s last nerve that he had to send someone—again—to hunt Wisniak down.

He tried to consider Emily’s opinion on the kid, he really did. But now Wisniak had turned up missing again and the irritation was back in full force. Foster walked in and plopped into the chair on the other side of Reza’s desk.

“I am so sick of chasing this motherfucker down.” Foster took out a pack of dip and stuffed a wad in his mouth. “You using this?” he said as he grabbed the water bottle off Reza’s desk and promptly spit into the cup.

“Not anymore,” Reza said dryly. He kicked his feet up on his desk, knowing Captain Marshall would immediately go into labor with kittens if he saw him with his boots on the desk. Reza was beyond giving a shit. They sat in silence for a long moment.

“Do you ever think Wisniak wakes up in the morning and goes ‘Man, I am a fucking sissy’?” Foster asked, fidgeting.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Reza asked when Foster couldn’t sit still.

“I was up all night drinking Red Bulls and playing Call of Duty.”

“Oh. Lay off the energy drinks, man. You look like a meth addict.” He sighed heavily, scrubbing his hands over his face, wishing he wasn’t familiar with what meth could do to someone’s life. “Anyway, I’m sure something like that goes through Wisniak’s head every time he falls out of a squad level run.” Reza wondered, though. What if he was wrong? An uncomfortable feeling settled around his shoulders, pressing down like a soaked wool blanket. “Man, why can’t we get him out sooner?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” Foster said. “Personally, I wish he would just go AWOL.”

“Bite your tongue. Do you know how much paperwork that is?” He didn’t want the damn kid to go AWOL. He just wanted him out of the Army.

“Yeah, but then he’s gone and we don’t have to chase him down every time he doesn’t get his own way.” Foster leaned forward. “Do you realize this is the fifth time he’s been to the R&R Center this month? And he’s never pulled staff duty as long as I’ve been here.”

“He pulled it once when we first got back. Then he started having all these appointments.” Reza thought about all the times he’d had to change the duty roster to accommodate the Wisniaks while guys like Foster were left holding the bag. All the guys who couldn’t keep their shit together and pull twenty-four hour duty.

It burned that so many couldn’t pull their own weight. That they depended on others to do the basic things that kept the Army running.

“You ever think about some of the shit we did downrange, Sarn’t Ike?” Foster’s question came out of a long lull of silence that had hung between them.

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

Foster rubbed the bottle against his temple. “Sometimes I think being downrange is better than being home.”

“Don’t say that. At least at home, you’re not getting shot at.”

Foster coughed and the sound that came out of him sounded suspiciously like “bullshit”. “Whatever. I know you think about it.”

“’Course I think about it. I think about all of them.” Far too often. Sometimes he could still hear their voices in his head.

Foster spit into the bottle, his gaze distant and unfocused. “Yeah, well, the war sucks. I want to go back and blow something up.” He looked up at Reza. “I know that like half of them are your cousins and all, but I really fucking hate Iraq.”

Reza flipped him off. “My mom was Iranian, shithead. Not every brown guy from the Middle East is an Arab.”

Foster grinned and things settled back to the normal they both knew. “Yeah, well, Iraq still sucks. Anyway. What’s on the honey-do list for today?”

“Head down to the clinic and see if you can’t find out who the review board person is in charge of Sloban and Wisniak.” He handed Foster the last known location of the missing packets and hoped that Foster could smooth talk one of the civilians down there into helping him out. “And they need to finish their processing over at the Copeland Center before their board files are complete.” Reza closed down his computer and stood up.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Emily.

“Sarn’t Ike.”

“Reza?” Emily sighed and he heard the distress in her voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need someone from the chain of command down here immediately.”

He turned away from Foster, lowering his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Can you come to my office?”

“Emily, am I the right person for this? If there’s something that needs to be reported, you need to go through the right channels.”

“I don’t know what the right channels are, Reza.” She sighed hard. “I need your help.” A whispered plea.

One he couldn’t turn down.

***

Emily stood the moment Reza walked into her office and closed the door behind him.

She didn’t expect him to cross that small space. Or to put his hands on her shoulders.

Or to see the worry in the dark lines beneath his eyes. “What’s wrong?” His voice was flat, calm, but laced with unspoken worry.

“I’m fine.” A single palm on his chest, her fingers pressing over his heart. “I have a situation that I don’t know how to handle.”

He took a step back and her skin protested the lack of warmth from his closeness.

“Why didn’t you ask your supervisor?”

“Because this involves an officer.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Your commander.”

She thrust a sheet of plain white paper at him. “Read it. Then tell me what to do.”

He scanned the handwritten notes quickly, then read it again. His jaw tightened as he read more slowly the second time and heat crawled up his neck. By the time he looked up at her, he radiated pure fury. “Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I was. It explains why Wisniak won’t pull duty and why he’s having such a hard time any time he’s around Captain Marshall and some of his minions.”

“Emily, he’s alleging he was hazed at the duty desk by Song and Peters, and Marshall knows?”

“It happens,” she said quietly. “The Army isn’t immune to hazing.”

“I know that,” he snapped. “Marshall might be an asshole but he wouldn’t ignore something like this.”

“So you think Wisniak made all this up?”

Reza read the paper again. “Damn it,” he whispered. “You need to call the cops.”

“I don’t have to alert the chain of command?”

He shook his head and handed her back the paper. “Not in this case. They’ll find out soon enough. Call the cops. Make the investigation official.” He swallowed hard. “It’ll keep it from getting buried that way.”

Emily’s hands shook as she picked up the phone and dialed the MPs. Her voice wavered as she reported the information she had to the special investigator. The entire time, Reza stood big and steady in her office. He was furious. That much was obvious but she couldn’t figure out why.

She wanted to know. Wanted badly to ask. But she didn’t. Instead, she finished the report and hung up the phone. “The special agent will be by as soon as he can. Sadly, this is the fourth hazing incident reported on post this week.”

Reza released a sharp breath and some of the tension eased out of his shoulders. He crossed the small space, resting his hands on her shoulders. She needed the comfort of his touch.

“What happens now?” she whispered.

“Now, I go brief the sergeant major and get Wisniak moved someplace where he’ll be safe.” She frowned and he caught her. “What?”

“I didn’t think he mattered to you,” she whispered.

He lowered his hands and looked away for a long moment. “Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong.” He met her gaze. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Reza.” He stopped near the door, his head bowed, his hand on the knob. “Do you believe him?”

“What I believe isn’t important.”

He closed the door behind him, leaving Emily alone with the feeling that she’d done something horribly, horribly wrong.

***

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Sergeant Major, I would normally love to screw with you but not about something like this.”

Reza stood at parade rest in Sergeant Major Giles’s office, afraid to move and set the old man’s PTSD off. Normally, Reza would have taken something like this to the battalion command sergeant major but in this case, whereas it involved the battalion commander’s top company commander, Reza had skipped a level of command.

Plus, he trusted Giles. He might be a cranky old bastard but Giles had honor where there were few honorable men left. Generally, the higher one went in command, the more honor was merely preached instead of lived. It simply wasn’t possible to maintain one’s values. Not if one wanted to be successful, anyway.

“All right, Ike, if you say this is legit, I’ll let the boss know. It’s coming through the MPs?”

“Yeah, Sergeant Major. I was there when the doc called the police.”

Giles chomped on his cigar, and Reza felt like a hamster cornered by a hungry cat. “You were there?”

“Wisniak is in my company. The doc asked what she should do. I told her to call the cops and let the police sort it out.”

The cigar twitched and Reza braced for the explosion. “I’ll let the boss know.”

Reza snapped to the position of attention and went to leave. “Sarn’t Major, Wisniak needs to be transferred out. He’s made an allegation against members of this unit. There may be reprisals against him.”

“No one is moving until we figure out if this is a legitimate complaint or not.” Giles swore and threw his cigar down. He picked up the phone and damn near stabbed it with the amount of force he used to dial. “It’s Giles. I need you to give me a room in your barracks. And it needs to be kept quiet.” Pause. “Roger that.”

Giles jotted down a phone number. “Call Sikes and get Wisniak moved across post. Don’t tell anyone where he is.”

Reza stuffed the paperwork in his pocket and turned to leave. “Roger, Sarn’t Major.” “Ike?”

He stopped at the door.

“Next time, give me a heads-up before you tell someone to call the damn cops.” His voice was laced with disappointment. Shame crawled up Reza’s spine.

Shame that he hadn’t trusted his sergeant major. Shame that the leaders Reza was supposed to advise and support were weak. Were bullies.

That he was one of them.

That he’d failed to protect the weakest among them.

He had no response to the sergeant major’s quiet admonition.

But the urge to drink ramped back up, twisting in his guts. Demanding that he do something to squelch the hunger in his soul for just one drink.

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