Page 34 of Healing Home

Chapter 9

Link sighedas their assault was aborted again. They’d readied themselves six times now for this final assault, and every time something fell through; oh, there was a sandstorm moving in, or their CI didn’t show up, or some other bullshit excuse. The Teams were chomping at the bit to get this done.

They’d been deployed to half a dozen villages and cities. Every place where the Taliban had decided to show their asses and kidnap innocent people, their teams had shown up. Three of the groups had been rescued already, but there were three more that were more heavily fortified than the first three. Two SEALs had been wounded in the initial assault, so that was a bit of a downer on morale, but they were ready. It was just getting command to commit.

Normally they were more than happy to throw them into the line of fire, but this op had been different. They were trying to solve it peacefully, because before long American forces were going to have to pull out of Afghanistan and the Afghan people were going to have to deal with the Taliban directly. If the Americans could leave on good terms it would be the best option.

There was only so much you could reason with terrorists, though.

As his platoon headed back through the city to their base, they stayed on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary. For the most part the city was deserted. The civilians knew that everything could go to shit if the peace talks didn’t work and they’d gotten out of the area to protect themselves. Well, most had. There were a few stragglers that had nowhere to go. They had no food or money and they were living off what they could find in the streets.

There was nothing funny here to sketch.

As always, his thoughts returned to BB. It had been weeks since he’d been deployed. Had she taken another contract? He should have asked her more about that. How many contracts had she taken to help her sister out? Would she even remember him if he returned and sent her a text? Surely she would. Right?

It was useless trying to guess at all that. Yes, he thought they’d connected perfectly, but they’d had so little time together. Two days was not enough to know if you could spend the rest of your life with that person.

No, he wasn’t sure he agreed with that thought. BB had been perfect for him. Her humor had made him laugh and he hadn’t gotten tired of talking to her, or listening to her. And the sex, well, he’d been dreaming of it ever since he got here. Not sex in general. Sex with her in particular.

Fuck, thinking back he realized it had been her hug that had done it for him. Strong and sure she hadn’t hesitated to wrap her arms around him and hold on, even as dirty and travel-swampy as he’d been. It had been one of the most magical, surreal moments in his life.

Just thinking about the comfort he got from her was enough to drown out all the discomfort he was experiencing. There was a fold in his sock or something that was rubbing a sore spot on his right arch. As he’d fallen-in this morning with the rest of the platoon he’d gashed his upper arm on a piece of metal sticking out of a bombed-out building. The current LT had asked him if he needed a medic but Link had waved it away. Now he was thinking he should have gotten it checked out because it was really bothering him. If he closed his eyes, though, just for a second, he could imagine the feel of BB’s arms pulling him to her, and it was the sweetest feeling. Made him forget everything else.

Damn, he missed her.

They got back to camp and he tried to join in with the talk. His regular team had been re-deployed, just without Ryan and Black. Two new guys had taken their place and they seemed to be melding fine. He’d gone through BUD/s with Earnestine but Favore was a couple of classes older, more experienced. He’d taken over Black’s position, though Link had been notified that he was next up in the promotion rotation. That should have excited him, but he was just kind of ‘meh’. Maybe it would make it easier on Black to retire if he knew Link was taking over.

When they hit camp he headed to the medic tent. The young man looked at him reproachfully. “You should have cleaned this out before you left. Now it’s got infection in it and it’s too old for stitches.” He pointed at the deeper end of the cut. “I’m going to give you a tetanus shot and you should take antibiotics for a few days, just to make sure nothing nasty starts growing there. We may be too late already.”

Link craned his arm, looking down the length of the cut, but he couldn’t see where it ended on the back side of his arm. The medic held a small mirror for him and Link could finally see the cut. Damn, it was a good bit deeper on that back side. If he’d known it was that bad he would have come here immediately. There were a lot of nasty bugs floating around the area.

The medic bandaged his arm and gave him a packet of pills. “You need to take these until they’re gone. No pain pills. I have a feeling you wouldn’t take them anyway. But seriously, you need to finish these to make sure you kick the infection.

“Yes, sir.”

Link headed back to his rack, feeling like he needed to sleep. Without even taking off his boots he stretched out on the cot that had been assigned to him. Just a few hours…

The clang of the alarm was loud in the night, but it took his brain a precious few seconds to kick into gear. His bones ached from sleeping in one position for so long, and his arm positively throbbed. The medic had wrapped a bandage around the cut before he left and Link could now tell that his arm was swollen, and hot to the touch. What the fuck?

One of the guys stopped to yell something in his face and Link realized it took a minute for him to hear. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He winced as he pushed to his feet and swayed. His knees felt rubbery and he looked around.

Night had fallen, and it was now illuminated by fighting. He tried to remember when he’d crashed. It had been hours ago. They’d gone out in the early morning, returning a couple of hours later. It had been before noon when he’d gone to the medic. He glanced at the watch on his wrist. 1822. Had he seriously slept almost six hours? Grabbing his rifle and head gear he left the tent they were staying in and found his team, struggling through the loginess. It felt like he’d been given sleeping pills or something, but he knew it had to be infection. And though it had to be ninety degrees out here, chills wracked his body.

“You good, Link?” Swamp Man stopped in front of him and gripped his vest, giving him solid eye contact.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he lied.

Link pushed the illness aside and focused on what was going on around them. There was gunfire to the south, the direction of the Taliban. “Sounds like it all went to hell.”

Swamp Man laughed. “Totally. We’re rolling out in five minutes. Are you good to go?”

Link nodded. “Hell, yeah.”

Whether he was or not he would be going in to back up his team. Period.

The fight ended up being one of the most crazy of his military career. Taliban had pulled in support somehow and were trying to fight their way out of the city— with the prisoners in tow. His platoon and two others encircled the building where they’d been entrenched, forcing them back inside. Snipers were picking off the terrorists as quickly as they could and Link saw a few civilians go down as well, unfortunately. The platoon they were backing up headed to the west to cut off some of the escapees, but Link heard an explosion, then people were yelling over the radio. Their K9 team had hit an IED.

Fuck.