Whiskey Delta – Chapter 12
Humvee by Night by thesolitary at deviantART
“Do you know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?”
-Pope Julius III
The heat was finally dissipating now that the sun had set. From their spot overlooking the city, they were able to catch some of the breeze coming in from the south-east. It had a warm, wet feel, like it was from the marshlands or all the way from the Gulf. But at least it was better than the stink they’d been subjected to for the last twelve hours.
It was also a welcome relief from all the char coming from the city since. All of the fires they had set had managed to exterminate a good deal of the rot, but now they had the stink of burning meat to deal with. And they had seen what that meat looked like close up. Not an appetizing thought by any measure.
All the while, the bombs kept falling. No explanations had been given since the BCT had been withdrawn and the last of the civies had been airlifted. Just the order to pull back to their forward positions and wait. Meanwhile, the 150th, which had taken the time to restock and refuel, were taking another run at the area. No one knew exactly what would happen when it was all over, but the LT had said there would be nothing until morning. All they could do now was dig in and wait.
Sitting on the hood of their Humvee, Dezba watched the plumes burst on the horizon. The others had grabbed a tire and tried to get some sleep. But at the moment, everyone was still wide awake. They had endured too much excitement during the day to go down for a nap right now, and sat around and waited for something to break the silence instead.
“You gotta hand to these monsters, man,” said Jones finally.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Mill asked from the other side.
“Well, they aint exactly smart, right? I mean, they just walk into a hail of bullets and get their brains blown out. But they don’t exactly give up and run either. Every time we clear them from an area, they just wait and go back the second we leave.”
“What’s this ‘us’ shit, white man?”
Dezba laughed. He doubted Jones would get the context of that joke. And he didn’t seem to take it as an invite to shut up either.
“Whatever, point is, it kind of makes sense, right? If they could just get their act together on the whole fighting us thing, they’d actually be a lot more dangerous.”
Dezba’s leg thumped hard against the radiator guard. Every head that was resting against a tire sat up instinctively. The shock of his boot sent a shudder through the vehicle no one could ignore.
“Sarge?” said Majorca. “What’s up man?”
Dezba took a deep breath. His foot began tapping gently against the guard now. His eyes stayed focused on the horizon. Getting up from his tire, Mill came around to his left side and tried giving him a shake.
“Sarge? You wanna weight in on our discussion, sir?”
Dezba let out a sigh, shook his head. “Don’t much care for this topic, Private. Please inform the FNG that one firefight doesn’t entitle him to talk about this fight like he’s some kind of authority. If he wants to help those fuckers become better fighters, he oughta let them bite him and be done with it.” He looked Mill in the eye. “You get all that?”
Mill withdrew and nodded. “Yes, Sarge. FNG!” he called to Jones. “Sarge says to shut the fuck up, Whiskey lover!”
Jones shrunk back against the right rear tire. Mill went back to his and sat down, slinging his rifle over his lap. For a moment, no one in the squad talked. Which was unusual, and made Dezba wonder…
“Where the hell is Whitman?”
Majorca got up from his tire. “He was manning the left rear, wasn’t he?”
Mill looked to his left. “Nope, not here.”
“Did he say he was heading of?”
Everyone answered in the negative. Jumping off the hood, Dezba grabbed his rifle and stalked off, muttering to himself angrily.
“Fucking Whiskey Tango fool! Probably jerking off as we speak…”
The squad heard him and laughed. Everybody had expected he’d be sneaking off to rub one out since he met Sandy. But he had broken the cardinal rule. You never snuck off to get in a Combat Jack without letting your squad or the Sarge know in advance. People who wandered off sometimes didn’t make it back. Whiskeys loved stray, exposed flesh, and getting a bite on your junk was about the worst thing that could happen to a grunt.
Past Second Squad, he found Corporal Rickson, awake and walking the line. His eyes were up the on the horizon too, watching the bombs fall and the explosions plume. NCO’s could never sleep as long as the bomb still fell, not the good ones anyway. Only grunts could catch some Zs while the earth still shook.
“Rickson?” he called and saluted. “You seen a hillybilly fucker wandering around these parts?”
Rickson laughed. “Uh, what’s he look like, sir?”
“Last I heard he had the moon in his eyes and his dick in his hand. That ring a bell?”
Rickson laughed harder. Any chance to mock Whitman or his ilk was always welcome with him. The man never did too well with boys from the trailer park in the unit, the kind of kids who generally assumed he – like them – didn’t know who his father was, or engaged in some recreational gang banging. Somehow, being black and raised in a suburb by both parents didn’t seem to make sense to them.
“I think I saw a Whiskey Tango matching that description around the latrines a few minutes ago,” he said. “They were pretty sparsely occupied, so I imagine he’s probably well into pulling it by now.”
“Oh… good. I was so worried he was dead.” Dezba nodded. So he could look forward to the boy being alive to annoy him another day. I did seem like too much to hope that a Whiskey would reach up from the hole in the ground and grab him by the Johnson. Rickson laughed and issued a farewell salute.
“If you find him, sir, please tell him I told him to go fuck himself.”
“Will do,” he said, returning the salute. He plodded on. Third and Fourth were in their spots, decks of cards and back copies of Swank deployed on their hoods. He noticed a few of their men missing from the line, no doubt they had slipped off with a magazine while they could. If they were weren’t grabbing spots at the latrine, perhaps they had found a foxhole where it was a bit more private. Anything to pass the time…
A couple dozen more paces and he was in LAV territory. The armor crews were all bragging about the day’s kills, showing the spots in the treads where they had run over the more aggressive Whiskeys who tried to jump on and take down their gunners. Dezba didn’t bother to hang around and hear about it. He already knew the details well enough, including the ones they weren’t sharing.
Like how Alpha Company had practically combed a dozen or so of the bastards off their chassis’ when they found the BCT stuck on one of the side streets. It was like watching a bunch of mammoths trying to shake a host of marauding monkeys from their backs. Only the rare one actually came off and fell beneath their treads. It was strangely desperate and comical. It was only after Braun ordered them to open up with their .50 cals and SAWs that they got clear and were able to carry on.
And of course, the BCT boys had bitched pretty heavily about all the dings they had put in their armor in the course of doing that. One would think they needed to keep their vehicles looking pretty or something.
It was then, between the supply area and their rear that he spotted the CandC truck. Haynes was there, his subordinates gathered around, with the LT standing in front of him. Things didn’t look too good. As usual, the Colonel looked pretty hard and angry. No shouting was taking place, but Dezba could hear the steel in his voice. The LT, naturally, was standing there taking it, looking firm but forced to endure whatever the Colonel was laying on him. A couple times, he saw Braun nod or utter an affirmative.
Dezba wasn’t sure how long he watched for, the seconds seemed to stretch on in these situations. But eventually, Braun nodded one last time and Haynes waved him off. The latter went back to his Bradley while the LT walked off. He had the unmistakable gait of someone who had been plenty well chewed out, looking somewhere between angry and hurt, but with his head still held high. Dezba caught his eye and the LT headed right for him.
“Sergeant, just the man I was looking to see.”
Dezba saluted. “Me, sir?”
“You and every other Squad commander,” he replied, returning the salute. “Word has just come down from HQ. Alpha Company is to pull back to base. We’re getting new orders.”
Dezba frowned, then looked back towards the city and the falling bombs. “What about the op in the city, sir?”
“That goes ahead as scheduled. Turns out we encountered less resistance than previously though, so we’re moving the Battalion back in to clear the city of any hostiles that remain. But the Colonel says HQ asked that we not take part in it. Apparently, they got some special planned for Alpha instead.”
Dezba grumbled. ‘Special orders’ usually meant only one thing: punishment for fucking up. No one who received them ever doubted why they were getting them either. He looked back to the LT gravely. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with those people we saved now would it?”
Braun shrugged. “Maybe. But this comes straight from the Mage, no questions asked. We push off in thirty mikes, so you better get your men ready.”
Dezba shook his head, the unenviable combination of anger and guilt beginning to well up inside him. He knew that this was the Colonel’s fault. No doubt he got on the horn with the Mage complaining of how things did not go as planned and blamed it all on Alpha Company ince he was not about to take the fall for it. With no one to contradict his statement, the Mage must have assumed Alpha wasn’t trustworthy enough to send back into the fray. They would be the only ones not taking part in the assault, rerouted instead to base for some bullshit task instead.
“Yes, sir,” he said finally. “I was just on my way to grab one of them now.”
“Carry on then, Sergeant. Wheels up in 30.”
They snapped out quick salutes and parted, the LT heading up the line while Dezba rushed towards the latrines. During the few seconds it took him to get there, he had plenty of opportunity to punish himself some more. For one, he knew that the LT and Alpha were getting the shaft because of his own actions. He had been the one to pull them off their line of advance for that little rescue mission. He was also the one who turned what should have been a regular sweep and clear into a full-fledged demolition. It was bullshit that they were getting any heat for it, but in the end, it all came down to him. The LT and the Company were getting it in the rear because of him…
He found Whitman at the latrines, standing over a hole dug in the ground with a wooden box sitting over it. Camo nets hung over his head and his pants were down just enough for him to do his ugly business. He could hear from his rapid breathing that he was just about finished too. He crept forward slowly, not wanting to catch his attention too soon. It was important to interrupt at the right time.
A few more seconds, a couple more paces, and he stopped moving…
“Private!”
“GHA!” Whitman yelled, and not from completion. He dared not turn around, but Dezba could imagine the look on his face. “Sarge? What the fuck, man?!”
“Private, what is the protocol for sneaking off to have a Combat Jack?”
Whitman grumbled, his back still turned to him and his shoulders slumping. “To inform the NCO in advance so as to avoid panic upon an unsuccessful return.”
“Exactly! And since you neglected to tell me, that puts you in dereliction! Plus, I just got word that we’re wheels up in less than thirty mikes. So you better get back to the convoy!”
Whitman stood awkwardly, looking this way and that. “Uh, sir…?”
“Forget it, Private! You fucked up and this is your punishment. Now you’ll just have to deal with the frustration like everybody else!”
“Goddamit!” Whitman dropped the magazine that was in his left hand. Pulling his pants up and fastening them, he reached down to fetch it before leaving.
“Uh, Private,” Dezba stopped him. “Leave the mag. I need to use the latrine.”
Whitman looked down at it dubiously. “Uh, sir… I wouldn’t recommend that.”
Dezba grimaced. The magazine and the image of the bucksome vixen on the cover suddenly didn’t seem so appealing. Imaging what Whitman had been doing with her kind of made her look… cheap.
“Alright, Private, keep the damn mag! But get the fuck back to the convoy ASAP. We’re out of here in less than 29 now.”
“Sure, Sarge,” he said, hoisted his pants up and turned to leave. Remembering something of relative import, Dezba grabbed Whitman’s arm and stopped him before he could run off.
“Does little Sandy know you’re jerking off to that rag instead of thinking of her?”
Whitman smirked, but didn’t other to look him in the eye. Under the right circumstances, even Billy had shame. Still, he managed a wise-ass remark.
“Sarge, how can I think of her when I haven’t even seen her naked?”
“It’s the thought that counts, Billy. Now go on, and sanitize your hands too!” Whitman got a few feet away before he though to add: “And don’t let that mag touch the inside of my vehicle!”
Alone, Dezba took a quick look around and dropped his pants. But contrary to what he was implying, he had no intention of using the moment to get one out. It had been many hours since his last visit to a field latrine, and he almost regretted not using the college’s before their gunships had blown it all to hell. At least in there, he might have found a stall and some decent toilet paper. But at least he wasn’t doing it in a hole with no seat.
“Thank goodness for small blessing,” he said, keeping one eye on his watch.
